Episode 7 The Beechgrove Garden

Well, hello and welcome to Beechgrove. I've drawn

the short straw this morning. Temperature outside

is already past 20, goodness knows what's like in here,

but it's tomato-planting time, and I'm getting these bags ready

and I'm doing my morning work-out, because they are in a terrible state.

They are heavy, heavy, heavy and, therefore, they are very wet inside.

Here's some of the compost from a bag that was burst

and it's really not ready for planting.

I should've been planting tomatoes today, but I'm not going to because this stuff is an awful state,

simply because the bags are actually stored out of doors

and they're compacted, and that's no way that you should be

expecting plans to get away quickly.

But the system is simple - nine varieties, all in the same compost.

Because we've had quite a few comments from people saying

that their tomatoes lost their flavour.

One chum up in Peterhead,

colloquially known as The Blue Toon, grew Shirley last year, and Sungold.

Sungold no problem, lovely flavour. Shirley, no flavour at all.

But what is flavour? It's such a subjective thing.

Well, we're going to try and find out -

nine different varieties, all in the same compost,

and later in the season we will formulate a wee test

and all the crew will get to test it and we'll see what happens.

But in the meantime, I can make them ready,

this is how we grow our tomatoes here this time -

in a grow bag with these on the top. Reason?

Well, the compost in here will go in there.

Plant the plants in the top here

and the vertical from there to the ground gives sufficient for drainage

to work effectively, because as the season progresses, if you're

in the bag itself, it gets flatter and flatter and flatter.

Air is excluded and the thing is just gummed up with water.

That's why the instructions are to cut slits in the side.

Don't like that at all, so mine always grow in this fashion.

And they'll get away to a marvellous start.

Now then, in the rest of the programme...

This is one way of reusing your tree stumps.

But this week, we've found an alternative.

And my principal task this week was to find some stunning flower colour.

And, by George, I think I've cracked it.

Well, this tree here, the Blue Cedar, makes a lovely focal point

on our main lawn.

But you can see the branches are really growing and, well, to make it

easier to cut the grass, we thought we'd make the border a little bit wider.

So what you need, basically, is an edging iron just to cut the turf -

make a nice, neat cut with it.

And then to lift it, this is Jim's tool, it's a turf lifter,

and, you know, it's really quite heavy and I've never used one.

Personally, I prefer to just use a border spade.

And what you want to try and do is lift up between an inch

to two inches, so that's about 2.5 to five centimetres.

I've already started this one,

and you've just got to keep it at a flat angle and that's it.

And, hopefully, that's not too bad underneath.

Now, I've got a cunning plan

because we're going to use this elsewhere in the garden.

Since I'm passing the pond, it's great to have a look at it -

wonderful in the sunshine, great reflections

and those Marsh Marigolds look really wonderful in the sun, too.

Now, this is the area where I want to do a little bit of turfing

and I'm also going to be sowing some seed.

So we were saying, initially, you know, when you lift your turf,

try and get it as even as possible, but that's not always possible.

And I find that a little piece of angled aluminium is the answer,

it's a bit like a knife.

So, basically, you can go along like this,

turn it round...and scrape a little bit more off.

And that makes it much easier to lay down

and we just butt it against the one there - bit of soil around it.

Now you might wonder why on earth am I putting turf here on the edge?

Well, basically, this has got to be a little bit proud of the path,

so that when you're cutting it, you're not ruining the mower blades.

Or, if that was against a border, it really is quite a good idea,

if you're doing a repair, that you have turf on the edge

and then you can sow the other side.

So, what we have done is we've put the soil down

and you do this little sort of shuffle walk -

you use your heels and then you firm it down, give it a good rake.

The next stage is that you've got it nice and level with the turf,

we've put on some general purpose fertiliser

and then it comes to the sowing.

And I think the easiest way to do this is to try out one area,

so what I've done is I've actually measured out the amount

of grass seed you need for a square metre, it's about 25 grams,

and you just, basically, sprinkle this on and it gives you

an idea of how it looks like when you've actually finished it off.

And I've measured this out, it's actually about eight square metres

that we need, and so I've actually split the seed into two.

The reason for that is what I would do is

I would sow one one way and then I would go across the other way

with the other sowing and it just makes sure that you get even distribution.

The other thing I should mention is the grass seed that

I've used has actually got a little bit of Perennial Ryegrass

in it, so it's nice and hard-wearing.

We're not going for the bowling-green type of grass here.

Finally, you can see how dry the soil is,

so once I finish this, we're going to have to get the sprinkler on.

Our garden visit this week brings me

to Argyll in search of colour and, by Jingo, I think we've succeeded.

We've come to the National Trust for Scotland garden at Crarae

which is on the shores of Loch Fyne over there.

It's an east-facing garden, it is

renowned for its plant collections, in particular Rhododendrons,

and I'm off to meet the head gardener, Nigel Price.

-Hello, Nigel. How are you?

-Jim, welcome to Crarae.

-Nice to see you, dear boy.

-Thank you for bringing the sun.

-It's about, what, five, six years since I was here last?

-Six years.

-Carole Baxter sends her best wishes to you. She hasn't seen you for a while.

-Yes.

But here we are in this fabulous garden.

Can you remind us a wee bit about the history of it?

It's about 100 years old.

So it was started Grace Lady Campbell, that's the big house here.

She was responsible for planting around the house, a little bit

on the side of the burn, and then her son,

Sir George, took over and planted what you'll see later.

And when did the National Trust take ownership?

-We took ownership 11 years ago.

-And how many of you are there?

There's two-and-a-half of us - I'm the half.

-Looking after this whole area on behalf of the nation.

-Exactly.

-100 acres.

-How do you measure a steep gorge like that?

I mean, this is the nearest you'll see to a Nepalese gorge, isn't it?

It really is. It just looks like somewhere in the Himalayas.

-Fantastic. You've got much the same aspect as Brodick Castle.

-Yes.

-Doesn't it? You're, kind of, east-facing, so you're open to some of these horrendous winds?

-Yes.

And, unfortunately, we are losing bits of windbreak,

so it is tending to get...

-So vital.

-But in the gorge, we've got perfect shelter.

Now, just slow down, young fella, me lad. I'll be out of breath.

Well, just have a rest here for a moment.

I'll tell you what occurs to me when I come to Crarae and other gardens of this ilk.

There's a collection of plants here from all over the place

and they're so happy in each other's company.

-Especially the Rhododendrons.

-Yes, they're at home here.

-Yes.

Very often you will see young seedlings coming up,

self-sown seedlings.

So, in fact, it's the right place for them to bring up their children.

It certainly is.

Now, earlier on, you said, Nigel, that this

whole place was something like 100 acres.

Are the whole hundred acres available to be seen?

No, only 50 acres are open at the moment.

We'd love to get the other 50 open, as well.

The other 50 was actually a forestry experiment

created by Sir George from the 1930s on.

And are we looking at part of that here?

-In the background, you can see these huge trees are some of the plots that he planted.

-Plots?

There's about 100 different plots...

-Oh, really?

-..of some really quite unusual species.

So, these have never been seen in this country before

-when they arrived?

-That's correct, yes.

-And he got to find out...

-He was seeing if they were actually suitable.

-What a vision.

-Absolutely.

What a vision, eh?

Like the rest of the woodland garden, great visionary.

Which way now?

What's this one, Nigel?

This is Rhododendron Calophytum from Sichuan province in China.

OK. Even the sort of shape of the leaf and the seed head

and everything - stunning.

You know, Nigel, that last Rhododendron that we

talked about there, it's the first one you've actually named.

Yes.

Let's just pause a moment and catch what we can see from here.

Now, that fantastic scarlet one, down there. Is it deep crimson?

That's one called John Holmes,

named after one of the founders of The Rhododendron Society.

The lovely lavender colour there which is showing up.

-That's a Chinese species called Rubiginosum.

-Yes, yes.

And the big pink one across there?

That amazing pink, that's an Arborium from Nepal.

But, listen, it strikes me that this

must have been some place to plant up, because of the typography.

Yes, we are told that Sir George would fill his pockets with

seeds and seedlings and just abseil down and fill in

the little nooks and crannies in the rocks.

So not only had he great vision, but great determination to succeed.

We hear a lot from people about gardens and they say,

"Wait a minute, it's just a Rhododendron garden.

"It's just summer, spring and early summer." But this place

is an absolute delight in the autumn for autumn colour.

Our autumn colour is stunning.

And, in fact, in front of us here, we've got two star plants of autumn,

we've got Disanthus and we've got

-the Cornus controversa, this lovely tiered plant here.

-Yes.

-Well now, that is what I would call a stoater of a tree.

-Isn't it fantastic?

There's a few boxes of matches to be got out of that! Is there a story?

Sir George planted that when he was 14, apparently.

It came from Inveraray Castle.

-Inveraray Castle, not Inverurie Castle!

-Inveraray Castle.

We don't have a castle. My part of the world.

This has just been stunning, absolutely stunning.

-And the weather has been good today, hasn't it?

-Yes.

-We're heading for the pond.

-Yes, we are.

-Is the old what you call it in flower?

-There it is, the skunk cabbage.

Wow, yes! The American skunk cabbage.

-Do you know that's on the alien list?

-I'm not surprised.

There is a good way of getting rid of it, though.

-Apparently bears love to eat it.

-So we need to reintroduce bears.

It's a stunning plant, absolutely stunning.

Nigel, unfortunately, we have run out of time, dear boy.

-Thank you for your time.

-You're very welcome.

-Have a super summer.

-And you. Thank you.

What a wonderful garden, Jim, and those rhododendrons are stunning.

It was nice to be back.

Things have changed, but it was just lovely to see a bit of colour for a change!

Yes, and look at this!

My old man would turn in his grave if he knew I had anything to do with this.

He used to do the council bedding, didn't he?

Absolutely, it was one of his specialities. This is a disaster!

We should say that we have three sections here, of course.

There are meant to be yellow wallflower and a nice red tulip,

a single early and double early with two different bases here

and it's all just fallen apart.

The tulips will look stunning in about a week's time.

But the wallflowers are so disappointing.

They were very tiny when they went in.

They were cell grown, they weren't grown in the ground.

I don't believe in this cell grown stuff

because you just can't get the bulk into the plant before winter arrives.

You've got to almost put the plant out big to stand the weather.

So you're a believer that you sow them by the end of June and into July

and you get nice big plants?

Yes, plant them and that breaks the root

and you get a nice bushy plant,

and by the time you come to bed them out in October,

-we used to use a spade!

-I know, it is such a shame, but also, November, December was very wet.

Not necessarily deep cold but they weren't happy.

Absolutely disastrous there.

At least we have got an absolutely stunning little myosotis.

This is beautiful.

Very often the myosotis shows a little bit of mildew on it.

It's clean, compact.

If it just stays there a wee bit longer,

that tulip should look quite good over the top.

-They're slow, aren't they? But the pansy is quite nice.

-That is denim.

-That is a cracker.

-It is, it is lovely.

OK, we like the myosotis, we like the pansies.

Let's take another look at the hyacinths because they are fantastic.

They've done well.

Even the Gypsy Queen now looks quite nice

and there's a yellow one, City of Haarlem, so that's a good news story.

As they say, all things in paradise are not always perfect,

-so we come to this little terrace border here.

-It is a disaster, Jim.

The lavender is in its second year

because it did come through that first winter.

I never thought French lavender would come through anyway.

A waste of money. Here, it just doesn't do well.

We should maybe recap for our viewers on what we've got here

because this is a terraced area here behind us.

Down here, we have the silver garden so this border here,

on that side is a raised bed but on this side, it's not.

So it warms up one side.

We thought it was good drainage but it's not enough.

-Definitely for the French.

-It hasn't worked, has it?

Some of the angustifolia forms are doing OK, that's the English Lavender.

It's time to say, look, let's start again, what else can we choose?

That is fair enough, and we are standing here with a few examples.

This leads into our silver garden.

That is where we had our 25th anniversary.

Gosh, we're onto our 35th now, aren't we?

Catmint.

Purple and silver, obviously there's a nice association

and I think that's a good idea.

It is quite often used in place of lavender.

I can always remember the double borders at Kellie Castle

where there should have been a lavender hedge either side,

it just didn't work.

Heavy soil, wet soil. Catmint worked up a treat.

-Dare I say it, that should be hardy.

-Yes, yes!

Artemisia, again, it is lovely. Do you want a bit of height?

I want something with a more permanent structure, to be honest.

Again, I have my doubts about the heartiness.

We had it in the seaside garden

and when we had the really hard winter, it got hammered.

Holly?

A bit expensive.

Obviously, if you're going to do a hedge type thing,

but since these obelisks fall to bits...

Well, they've only lasted one or two seasons.

Why not make obelisks of the likes of the Silver Holly and then in between...

A bit of catmint, or how about that lovely little Lonicera Nitida?

-There is a variegated form.

-I think that's right.

I'm looking for a formal treatment in this border so it will be clipped.

So catmint and then go on to a bit of height.

-And obelisks of the Silver Hollies.

-I like the sound of that.

If you were watching three weeks ago, you would have seen young Christopher

creating a stumpery, and already the plants in here look superb.

This one down here, that is really looking much at home.

So too are the cowslips. We have some ferns and ivy.

The whole thing looking as though it has always been here.

That is what you want, but this is quite labour-intensive.

The boy was quite tired by the time he'd finished.

So what do you do with stumps?

That's a really good question and we often get enquiries from our viewers

about what to do with tree stumps.

Effectively, this is our problem corner,

because these were conifers that were taken down quite a few years ago,

and while we've left them in the ground, the good news is they are not resprouting.

However, if you have things like sycamore or poplar,

the chances are they will be resprout and what you need to do then

is use something like a stump killer or even bring in a stump grinder.

For us, we're just going to leave these in situ

and create a gravel garden. It's the perfect situation.

It's open, it's even sunny,

and what we need to do now is take off the weeds and actually grade the slope.

We found a couple of problem weeds.

This is couch grass, and you have to get all these little bits out.

It spreads. Every little piece produces another plant.

That is the creeping buttercup.

That grows from these little thorn-like roots, as well,

so make sure you get all of that out.

They're both perennial, so perennial weeds, we don't want them in here.

There's two schools of thought -

do we put landscape fabric down or do we not for the gravel garden?

It is difficult, but this is on a slope and I think,

if we put fabric down and then put gravel on top of this,

it's all going to shift.

I totally agree with you.

But if you want low maintenance and you don't have a slope,

-then the answer is to put the fabric down and gravel on top.

-Yes.

But if you don't do that, it means you can actually have self-sown seedlings.

Which have a free rooting zone right down into the soil below.

So we're going for the naturalistic approach,

but we will perhaps have to do a little bit of weeding, as well.

We will have to do some weeding and that will be easy enough

because of the depth of the gravel, two inches.

-It's coming on.

-What are you doing now?

Once we've got it completely graded,

we're going to put a windy path in.

That's going to be a bark path,

so that will give differentiation from the top to the bottom.

-Right, get on with it then!

-Oh, you slave driver!

In order to plant up the grass garden, we're going to beg, borrow and steal from elsewhere.

I've come to what is the comparative trial we did with grasses.

These have been planted for a year,

and what we are going to do here is lift one or two.

This is a thing called Deschampsia Tatra Gold.

It is just coming into growth, that is a fantastic plant.

What we will do with this, we will clean it up a little bit,

take one or two of the weeds out.

We will put that in a barrow and divide it up a bit later on.

One or two of those. There's a thing here called Elijah's Blue.

I will lift that, as well, that's got a little bit more debris round about it.

That will divide up and make two or three plants

and that will look good down by that gold one, as well.

Then we will collect some from elsewhere in the garden.

Ready, steady, tramp! Don't forget to use your heels.

So, what we're doing is a final firming.

How far is it to the South Pole?!

Then we'll do the final rake, then we're going to mark in a path.

Yes, that's the idea, a little winding path.

Do you think this is going to start the rain?

As you can see, we've gathered quite a few plants together,

many of them have come from the garden.

You've already seen George lifting those grasses

and I think they're going to look absolutely magnificent.

A nice contrast with those grasses are the cocosnias.

That was a trial that Jim looked at in the last couple of years

and just imagine, later on in the season,

you are going to have those lovely vivid colours of the oranges

and one or two also have yellow flowers, they'll look brilliant.

I think it's also important to have a little bit of evergreen interest

and because it is a gravel garden,

I've chosen one or two that are prostrate conifers.

This one, this is the Siberian or Russian Carpet Cyprus.

In ten years, that will spread by about four feet, or 1.2 metres,

and what's interesting, it's like the cryptomenia japonica.

In the winter time, it puts on a beautiful bronze foliage.

It is not dying, that is the interest over the wintertime.

Added to that, we also have some wonderful euphorbias,

and now we just need to place the plants.

When it comes to the planting, we've got to bear in mind

that we are going to be putting on two inches of gravel

and the last thing we want to do is swamp the plants,

so I'm just taking out a very small planting hole,

I want to tease out the roots of this Euphorbia and we're leaving it proud.

Then, it's basically like mound planting, I'm going to put

a little bit of soil around the edge and after that, we can add the gravel.

George, thank goodness we had lots of hands to help us.

Gardeners and even the crew at one point, I think!

Absolutely, because we have moved so much soil and we have done so much here today

in making the path and getting all this gravel up, that was hard work.

I think it's quite nice having a bark path because you have that contrast

of colours, and with the gravel, we've got two sizes, so a fairly fine gravel.

Then there's this large stuff here

which we have made into a long swathe here.

Then we have these punctuation marks with the cobbles, and that is going to be a tall plant.

These large cobbles around it,

the big leaves of that will just look splendid.

That is the Globe Artichoke, isn't it?

Then they have these punctuation marks which the stumps.

-I like these.

-Some are buried.

-We will have to know what was here.

Then we will see them.

I am pleasantly surprised - already, it looks quite nice, doesn't it?

You shouldn't be surprised, it was all a vision that you had.

-We need a seat now, don't we?!

-Yes, we do.

It is brassica planting time.

Four-course rotation brassica plot,

and that helps to keep at bay the old problem of club root.

We don't have club root in this garden largely because

we actually raise our own plants, we take these precautions.

We try new varieties from time to time.

Right behind me here is one that only has a number.

Red cabbage, but we try it against Greyhound, which is one of our standard varieties,

something we do all the time.

Never, ever do a new variety on its own,

we always have something to refer back to.

That has worked over the years.

We also, a few years ago, did a little test to show

the wider you space these brassicas,

the longer they will take to mature and the bigger they get.

So we tend to keep them quite close.

These ones here are being planted at 40 centimetres apart.

This is Greyhound Cabbage.

You will notice them down at the bottom of a V-shaped drill.

I always seem to garden in windy gardens

and that gives them a bit of protection.

Then, as you are doing your cultivations, you earth them up,

so they are really well rooted and they grow perfectly well.

The two scourges which affect our brassica crops are wood pigeons

and caterpillars from the cabbage white butterfly.

So from an early stage, as soon as this row is planted,

it will be covered up with fleece.

Then as the whole area is planted up,

we can put our big net frame on it which gives them plenty of space

but protects them, that's the important thing.

We'll look forward to some decent crops.

This is stage two of my standard fuchsia.

If you remember, we have been removing all the side shoots.

Now what I want to do is make a quarter standard with this one.

That means you got to have a clear stem of between 30 and 45 centimetres,

so we've reached that,

and the next stage is keeping three of these,

you don't nip out the side shoots,

and what I've got to do is pinch out the top, and as those grow,

we keep nipping them out and you'll have a nice, bushy top.

It only takes a few days of warmth and sunshine like this

for our greenhouse gradually to become like the desert, it becomes very arid.

One of the things we have to guard against is that pest,

the red spider mite.

The peach has got it, strawberries would have it,

this cherry would have it, and if you keep the atmosphere fairly moist and damp,

by constantly spraying water around, it helps a great deal.

Of course, the problem is that many of you will be out at work all day and can't do that sort of thing.

At least you can raise the humidity by having a few trays filled with water.

There they are, evaporating.

If I go back to the old days

when we were told to damp down our greenhouse,

it was, get the hosepipe out, get the water going

and then stick your hand over the end and give it a bit of a lashing.

You can almost feel the plants sighing with relief.

This is a lovely job at the moment, planting up the hanging baskets.

Yes, this is a new begonia.

This is a new begonia called Crackling Fire, it's one that we haven't tried before.

We have different colours so I've got rose, what have you got?

This is orange yellow.

We're getting ahead of time because although we are planting these outside,

they're going to go back in the greenhouse and they won't come out for a couple of weeks.

They'll have filled out a bit so you're buying time, in a sense.

They should fill this basket and spill right over.

-A nice spot to be sat sitting in the sun.

-Isn't it gorgeous?

-Look at the flower colour.

-What's your favourite?

-I love the sweet pea.

It is one of the herbaceous perennials sweet peas.

I like the Drumstick Primulas, the wine red one, white and blue.

Maybe next week, we should show how to split them up

and increase the stock.

We should. What about the radish?

Yes, hotbed news, hot off the press - that's the hotbed production of radish

and the ones from the honorary soil, both given the same treatment.

In four weeks? That's brilliant news.

It could have been better, I think.

If you'd like more information about this week's programme,

especially all these plant names, it's all in the fact sheet.

The easiest way to access that is online.

Don't forget you can find us on Twitter and Facebook, as well.

Next week, I'm amongst the cucumbers, what about you?

I'm back to the West Coast to another stunning garden.

-See you next week.

-Bye!

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