Episode 16 The Beechgrove Garden

Hello, and welcome to Beechgrove Garden

on a bit of a thundery morning.

I hope it stays dry, at least while we get this work done.

Delightful to see Chris back. You're furtling away there.

Pegging in the border.

This is the Thug's Border as it's been locally called.

-That was your remit.

-It was.

Area of ground that was a bit redundant,

didn't really know what to do with it, very poor soil.

So we adopted all the plants from around the garden, you know

those ones that are just too vigorous, they're too enthusiastic

and decided to really test their mettle in here.

And for the most part they're doing pretty well actually,

considering the weather, but this is a guy that took my eye.

-Tell me about it.

-Yes, this is a new addition to the garden.

-Right.

And it's a lilac, it's the Himalayan lilac,

Syringa emodi and it's "Aurevariegata"

Now, Himalayan lilac, high altitude, should be hardy

but the beauty is, it's multi-stemming from the base,

so even if it gets cut back in the winter, plenty of growth coming through.

I'll take this chance to ask you a question that's always puzzled me

about whether or not to mulch herbaceous plants.

Maybe this is a year when it should have been done?

Well, mulching normally we do in autumn, don't we, with herbaceous.

Mulching in summer, different matter really.

I think, on a new border like this, where there's plenty of open ground,

you're getting lots of evaporation of moisture, you know,

depending on which report you read, it could be 25-50% of moisture saved

by applying a 5cm layer of mulch.

So it could be worth investing in,

if only you could predict the weather.

If there's mulching to be done,

I've got to do it myself because George and Carole aren't here.

In fact, they're creating a community garden out in Ayrshire.

Well, I'm offski. I'm away to look at my melon.

-Singular.

-Yes. HE LAUGHS

Now, George and myself have come to Dunlop this week

and it's a lovely small town set in the rolling countryside of Ayrshire.

Dun actually comes from the Gaelic meaning "fort on a hill."

So Dun is the fort and we're looking for something that is lop.

Lop is a corruption of the Gaelic word Luib,

which is "a bend in the river."

So when we put the two together, we get Dunlop,

"the fort at the bend in the river".

There'll be more from Dunlop later in the programme.

Well, I've come to admire my one and only melon on this plant

and as a reminder, it took me back to the days

when Dad was in charge of a nursery

and when all the bedding plants had gone,

the big six-by-four sashes, frames, were all left empty.

So I used to put a dollop of muck in each sash in the ground

and plant melons and, of course, the staff were able to look after them

and help themselves at the end as they ripened during the season.

So it was a wee throwback to these far off days.

I've only got one here and it's sitting up on a wee pot,

you see, in order that the air gets at it.

I want to look after it and give it the best shot.

There we go, that's better.

That's better. I had hoped that by this time

it might have been sitting on a pot this size

but that's wishful thinking.

It is the variety "5 Desserts",

well, they're going to be very small portions, I can tell you.

But if I only get one off this one, so much, that's it.

So I'm just going to prune it back, take off the excess foliage,

and give it every chance.

And over here, you see, we've got plenty flowers

so plenty potential melons.

Look at this.

And that's one or two. There's one there, that looks as if it's set.

If that's set, we don't need this one so I'll just take that off there

and I'll go over it and probably reduce the amount of foliage.

Why so many flowers and yet so few melons set?

I think it's back to the weather again.

I think that you can pollinate by hand and all the rest of it.

If the pollen doesn't absorb moisture and burst,

it's not going to do the business.

It's the same as we have with other fruits in the greenhouse,

when it gets too dry, too arid, it just doesn't do the business.

Which is unfortunate that we picked a season like that.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Now it's time to look at His Nibs' melons.

I think he'll need a combine harvester by the time he gets there.

I think I detect a hint of sarcasm

from the lower slopes of the garden and he's right.

There's a fair amount of growth. Remember this is the hot bed,

this is about animal urine in straw,

it's about newspaper, layered compost.

A really hot bed covered with polythene

and the temperature in here has been phenomenal.

Well over 30 degrees, soil temperature into the 20s

so perfect for growing melons.

The disadvantage is high humidity which can cause rot

and also a lack of pollinating insects

so really this has had to be dealt with by hand-pollinating.

The trick is to find a male flower, that's the male there,

you can see a nice open bloom,

and importantly behind the bloom there's no embryonic fruit evident.

Compare that with something like a female, for instance.

There's the bloom and there is the embryonic fruit.

So what we've had to do is constantly come open it up

and transfer the pollen across to make sure we get some fruit

and there are embryonic fruits in here

amongst the this wealth of foliage and flowers

and there's one, only the one admittedly, melon.

Fairly small, but it's getting there.

Give it a bit of time. Maybe.

So whilst Jim and I stand here, contemplating our melons,

George and Carole are off in sunny Dunlop,

helping the local community transform a municipal park

into a modern community garden

that they're referring to as The Wee Gardens.

Carol-Ann, as the project leader,

what can you tell me about the history to the site?

Well, the site used to host a bacon factory

and after that the Wilson family who owned the site,

and I believe the factory, handed it over to the community of Dunlop

and for a time people had their wedding photos taken here...

-Oh, lovely!

-..and the gardens were a functioning garden, but obviously,

over the years, it just became a bit tired and fell into disrepair.

And the real motivation behind,

sort of, getting it all going was Denise and Calvin here.

Oh, right, so it was you two. How did that come about?

Calvin was over playing in the gardens about two years ago,

really enjoyed himself,

all his friends came along and helped him,

they were having picnics,

and he came home one night, watched The Beechgrove Garden with his dad.

-Calvin, you watch The Beechgrove Garden?

-Well, that's brilliant.

He asked, could we ask The Beechgrove Garden

to come and do our garden so here we are, two years down the line.

Fantastic, so, look, what do you want out of the garden?

I think it's a great place for all different age groups to come together

within the community. That whole inter-generational aspect.

It's somewhere that families can come and enjoy, learn together.

-School's going to be involved.

-Yeah.

Local rural and things.

Absolutely brilliant, I think it's going to be.

-And if you get weather like this, well...

-Got it made, haven't we?

Yes.

Lynn Harris, you're the garden designer for this project

and a great friend of Beechgrove, so what's going on here?

Well, the community wanted to reinstate the paths

that were already here and we've added a few new ones

and I thought it would be a great idea to make this a formal.

This is the main entrance, so this is a formal path,

lined with Prunus "Kanzan",

which when they're mature will form a lovely arch.

So, a brilliant entrance to the garden.

But with these avenues, what is it you have at the end?

-You need something at the end.

-You need a focal point at the end.

We've got something nobody else has.

-We've got Nessie.

-Oh, my goodness.

No, the kids are going to make a Nessie out of old tyres.

So this is the children's playground,

nice and soft area for them, lots of bark under there.

And well shaded. These trees make a huge difference to this site?

Actually, we've kept most of the trees,

although we took out a lot of the shrubs which were overgrown

and really past their sell-by date, we've kept most of the trees

so we've got fruit trees, we've got a nice specimen birch there.

And we've got some great trees in the wildlife area over there.

What I like about this, is the way that the burn

runs through the whole thing.

It was such a fantastic feature of the site,

there was no way I was going to do anything

and what we're doing is, we're trying to enhance it

so we're going to have lots of bog planting, irises

and we're going to repair the banks, basically

-so that there's no damage in the future.

-This is wonderful.

It's fabulous. And this deck is right in the middle

of our wonderful bog gardens.

So does this flood naturally onto here?

It does, it does and actually the reason

we chose to have the bog here is that this was lower

than the level up there so it was an ideal place for a bog garden.

And there's two distinct types of planting in the garden.

We've got a lot of wet planting in the burn and in the bog garden,

and up on the crazy paving there and in the stone circle,

we're going to have a lot of dry planting.

And scented, so the stone circle is going to be sensory.

So this is the stone circle area,

which we're going to have two sets of low Dutch walls

with planting in between, coping stones on the top,

so people can sit on the walls amongst the planting.

So they can touch and feel to their hearts' delight.

-Very touchy, feely and smelly.

-Absolutely.

-Yes.

So, George, all along this side of the garden is the wildlife border,

full of lots of flowers, berries, all sorts of yummy things.

-For the bugs and bees?

-And the butterflies too.

-It's a veritable feast.

-It's a bug's bonanza, isn't it?

-Absolutely.

Well, you know, we're quite lucky on this site

because there are one or two mature trees

and it includes one or two really old apple trees which is great,

but they do need a bit of rejuvenating.

And what I mean by that, is we need to open up the habit a little bit,

take out any of the diseased or dead wood,

and anything that's, like, crossing over.

Now I would only do this in the dormant season.

That's the right time to do this.

And don't take out any more than about a quarter of the growth

because what happens, if you've pruned too much out,

you get these huge water shoots.

And a good example, that I would take out in the dormant season, is,

do you see that branch there that's curving in?

I can't quite reach it, but I would definitely prune that one out.

We're also adding some soft fruit.

Lovely blackcurrants, a glade of blackcurrants.

Gooseberries, a nice tangy fruit. A slight problem here though.

A lot of the leaves have been eaten

and that is actually gooseberry sawfly,

so you need to be aware of that.

It's too late to treat it now, but next year.

It's a little caterpillar.

If you treat it, then hopefully that will combat that.

Sloes they're putting here, which will create a little bit of a hedge.

And I'm really partial to sloe gin so hopefully that will fruit.

Then we're adding more of the top fruit.

We've got a self-fertile plum and a pear and we're also adding apples.

Now, this one, although it is said to be self-fertile,

I think it's always good if you add another one as a pollinator.

And what I'm going for is a crab apple, "Golden Hornet".

Crab apples are really good at pollinating our dessert apples.

And the thing is, we've also got a bug hotel

and I hope that will encourage some more pollinating insects.

This is our nature station. It's a bug hotel.

It's got a slate roof and this enables us to get spaces

that things go in-between, things can live underneath.

We've got a robin box here.

If it was in a more isolated spot, birds would nest in amongst it.

Where is here, kids can stuff that with straw

and minibeasts will go in and live in it.

Here we've separate bits for them to stack things into.

Pine cones for the ins and outs that things can live in, keeps them safe.

And in there, this is for hibernating butterflies

and all this wood in here is a great habitat for minibeasts and slaters,

all the things that kids like to get in amongst

and touch with their hands.

Angela is one of the development officers

for the Royal Horticultural Society Scotland.

She's brought a group of children along to make some pallet gardens.

They've sown all of their mixed salads here from seed,

grown them all on themselves.

We've got a nice mixed salad and this is going to be Dunlop's Salad Bar.

And over here, with have a lovely rainbow bed,

again the children have grown all these crops on from seed.

We've got Swiss chard, we've got some salad bowl lettuce

and we've got some Lollo Rosso lettuce.

And they're going to grow them on

and they'll be able to come and pick their own salad leaves from their garden at Dunlop.

-There you go.

-Can I do that one?

-We'll dig a wee hole for that one.

We wanted to create a more,

kind of, natural play area for the kids to come.

Something that maybe we had when we were younger.

So I think it's quite exciting and I think the community will love it.

-Will I get a spade and help you?

-Yes.

So, from Nessie, our own monster at the end of the avenue,

back to those two monsters at Beechgrove.

Well, I would have hoped that Mr Anderson was talking about my melons

but we'll see some monsters further round.

First of all, a really good crop of chard here.

It's doing well, it's loving the heat,

but we have had reports from people of them bolting

at simply a lack of water.

Any drought will cause them to bolt

but a nice selection of colours there.

Let's move on to cauliflower.

Well, that'll be our monster. Cauliflower, the variety is "Nemo".

There are actually four all ready at the same time, F1 hybrid.

That's a problem sometimes in the garden.

We'll come back to that, that's another story for another day.

At the other end of the row,

we've got a pinky-purple rouge coloured cauliflower

called "Graffity".

Not so sure about that,

I think I would have to be blindfold to eat that one.

Now then, let's look at the onions

because they are loving this weather.

Just look at them. A great bed of onions.

As I said a couple of weeks ago, they are growing through corn starch

which means that you don't have any weeding to do.

Corn starch, of course, is compostable,

so it just gets dug in or put in the compost heap.

But look at these red ones.

These are the ones that really tell the story

because they're quite often difficult in this colder climate

here in the north of Scotland but they're absolutely stunning.

Looking great. And they're going to get bigger yet.

Then peas.

Now this row of peas is "Kelvedon Wonder" and "Hurst Greenshaft".

We treated half of them with Rhizobium

at the start of the season when the seed was sown,

and left the other half untreated,

the whole idea being that the Rhizobium fixes nitrogen

and give them a really terrific start,

a real kick in the pants at the beginning of the season.

But I reckon that if the soil's in good nick

and you've got your cultivations right, you don't really need it.

You can't tell any different treatment of these at all.

Next row of peas, three varieties.

Early, mid-season and late, trained differently.

First and foremost, this is an early variety, "Oscar",

using twigs to keep it upright.

Then, with strings and canes here we've got old "Onward",

great favourite.

And finally, as vigorous as runner beans, they are "Alderman".

Look at the crop that's on that to be picked.

The one that I really wanted to draw attention to is this one.

It's a French bean, the name is "Canzone".

White flowered, which is unusual, growing outside and doing well.

I have it in a raised bed at home,

we've been cropping it for a couple of weeks now and it is absolutely delicious.

Normally they don't take too well to our weather

so we can say thank you again for a cracking summer.

End of tour of vegetable garden.

If you're growing fruits as trained specimens,

either cordons or espaliers or, as we are, as a mini-orchard,

that is to say, containing the trees within these relatively small pots

and leaving them out of a terrace or in a cool glass house,

summer is the time to carry out some fairly radical pruning.

Why do you prune?

Well, because the trees just run away with themselves with enthusiasm.

You have to curtail some of this growth

because you're trying to encourage, in this case, spurs,

fruiting spurs on the "Egremont Russet"

because you'll get the flowers and then great crops.

So where you've got growth, of roundabout 30-40cm

and it's started to go woody at the base, count up roundabout six buds

and just snip them out.

You can do that all around the tree.

It also, incidentally, helps to expose some of the existing fruit

to sunlight so you get much more even and much better ripening.

The same is true, not just on apples and pears,

but also on the stone fruits.

Here we've got a peach, the nectarines, the cherries

and you just have to assess the vigour with these

and that will really dictate how hard you prune.

You can see the peach is almost as vigorous as the apple

so a good, generous snip.

On those, cutting back by about 50%.

But you'll find that if you're growing apricots

then they're slightly less enthusiastic.

Just be a little bit more gentle with the pruning.

The thing to remember

is also to look at what's going on at the base

because if you've got side-shoots like this,

you don't need those, so they can all come out as well.

And one of the slight warnings about keeping anything in a container,

really is that it's totally reliant on you for water and food.

It's a very small rooting zone that you're confining it to.

And this little peach,

well, it's been in the pot just over one growing season

and you can see, it's got a dozen or so embryonic peaches on here,

so great crop for a very small tree, however,

it's fairly obvious that it's not altogether happy.

This is suffering with a little bit of nitrogen deficiency.

So a good dousing of sulphate of ammonia...

..and water that in will help to revive it. It's not a disaster.

It may look a bit unsightly but really, it will recover

and the fruits will swell and we'll have a fantastic crop.

So while I carry on tending and pruning, well,

there's a lot of work being done at the Dunlop Community Garden.

The hard landscape's in, a bridge has been built,

Nessie's even been painted

and someone's even managed to persuade George to stop lounging around

and he seems to have gone off paddling.

There's a wonderful stream that bisects the whole site

and flows down here, but I've stopped at this point

because we're going to create a bog garden.

When you're creating a bog garden, what you've got to do is

to trap as much moisture in the soil as you possibly can.

So what we've done, we've put in a membrane, this membrane here,

a piece of old pond membrane, and that has been spiked,

because we don't want it to become absolutely stagnant and saturated.

It will let some of the water through

but it will trap most on the water coming down this hill.

In amongst it, we've got the usual suspects.

We've got hostas, we've got iris down at the edge of the stream,

and then we've got Caltha palustris, some of the marsh marigold along the side,

and then a huge Gunnera, which is going to over-arch the whole thing.

It will look absolutely splendid when it's finished.

The community managed to get 120 slabs for nothing.

Then the members of the community painted each slab

and paid £5 each for the privilege.

The money went towards buying plants for the garden.

So that's enterprise, for you.

It's... The Beechgrove Garden logo.

-This is quite good then, isn't it?

-It's wonderful.

Coming in through there, going all the way down,

and what we're going to do is plant iris all the way down.

Are you any good at digging?

-Fantastic.

-Are you? Get digging in then.

Right, this is this variegated one. You know what this is.

Yes, this is Iris pallida, "Variegata".

-Eh? Not just a pretty face.

-Oh, thank you, George.

-Makes two of us.

Now the idea is that we get these into the side

and they'll collect all the silt and that that comes down.

-So they'll stabilise the bank then?

-That's right.

Of course, they love to have their feet in water.

-How's that?

-That's absolutely brilliant.

-Put it in there.

-No problem.

-Good girl.

-Right. Turn right round. We're going in here.

-Fantastic.

Dig another hole there. You don't mind me bossing you around, do you?

I love it. HE LAUGHS

Well, I'm in the crazy paving area

and there's a lovely story to this

because when the community started clearing the garden,

they discovered all of this.

To start off with they thought, "Will we keep it? Will we not?"

But they put a power-washer over it twice and it's come up beautifully.

So, although it looks good, I think we need to soften it a little bit

because it's a lot of hard landscaping,

so we're going to add one or two creeping plants

and this thyme is absolutely perfect.

So I take a plant like this

and then I end up cutting off the bottom of the root

and ending up with small plug plants.

I can manage to get three out of this

because it's only tiny little areas that I'm putting them into.

It really is very moist

because we want to get that established to start off with.

Bit of compost into the bottom.

And then I really do just cram this in.

And once that gets established...

..as the community walk over this,

you're going to get a lovely perfume.

So I've got a couple of thymes, I've also got the little erodium.

No scent on that but it's a creeping plant.

Then moving onto the steps,

I've put a little houseleek in-between the gaps.

Again, it's ground cover.

If it does produce one or two flowering stems then I suggest

that they get cut off because you don't want to trip over them.

And then along the edge, London Pride,

and that's all going to knit together.

Last two or three plants into the bog garden, George. Aye, just put these there.

Wonder what they call two Georges ploutering in the burn?

-Well, it has to be Young George and Old George.

-What one are you?

What one do you think? THEY LAUGH

Now is this burn always this height or does it get higher?

No, no, in summer it's really down.

-We're holding it back a wee bit there.

-And in the winter, how high?

-It goes right up.

-Oh, crivens, right.

-But it goes away within a day or two.

-But there'll be a bit of erosion on this bank.

-Definitely.

It would all cut in there, wouldn't it? So have you got any stones?

Some in there? We could put that... Aye, put that there, give me that.

-Dinnae throw it.

-You manage it?

I'm all right, for an old man!

But if we put these all the way along the side,

that would then stop it.

Another one for here?

-Come on, you're supposed to be young.

-Aye, aye...

-There you go.

-Grumpy George, eh?

-That's it.

Well that'll stop it and we'll do that all the way down

and that'll stop it biting into the bank.

-Brilliant.

-Brilliant.

Maggie, you've brought me to your garden

and I know that you maybe want to donate some plants to the project,

so what did you have in mind?

Well, I thought I'd maybe like to give the giant hosta

and the giant daisies here.

I noticed that there were some hostas in the garden already,

but they were a different colour and this one's quite big

and I thought that it could be split up

and put in various different areas.

It's absolutely brilliant, I mean, it's a lovely hosta.

And if we split that up,

I reckon you're going to get at least a dozen plants, maybe more.

The only problem I would say to you is

this is not the best time of year to be shifting it, all right?

They are herbaceous,

and you'll know that they die down in the dormant season, don't they?

-That's right.

-So my advice, really, would be to wait until October.

When the leaves have gone down really dig it up,

give it a good soaking if it's fairly dry

and then you can divide it up

and you're probably better with like a spade.

It's really thick fleshy roots. And it's the same with the daisy.

-I'm sure you can wait, you've got a bit of patience, haven't you?

-Yes.

Anyway, that's a few hints and tips for you on how to shift this.

Back to the Garden with Jim and Chris

and they've got some hints and tips as well.

Ignore the watering of rhododendrons and camellias at your peril

at this time of the year.

It's really key to keep the root zone moist because right now,

they're forming the buds that will flower next season.

And there they are, you can see one, two, three flower buds,

plump and fat and that one in the middle, well,

that's a leaf bud and that's going to produce shoots next season.

If you fail to water now, what happens is the plant panics.

It will drop its buds and you won't get any flowers.

It's not only the plants that need water at this time of year,

the compost does as well because if it's dry it won't compost.

It will just stay as a dry heap so get the hose out, water

and make sure it's thoroughly soaked.

This one is being emptied in there so I'll get it soaked,

then I'll fork the remainder into this one, soak it further,

down with the lid and it'll start cooking.

Chris, it's always been a bit of a challenge

to get a crop of sweetcorn in this part of the world.

Tried it under cover and here we are.

We started under cloches and we will get a crop.

There's good pollen coming off there, look at that.

Just a delicate dusting.

That's what it is, but we're only, I think,

going to get one cob per plant, but happy to get this far.

We had them covered down to here.

Which is fairly obvious when you look at these fellows here.

That's what happens when you don't cover them. It's the same variety.

Down to here then we took the cover off about the end of June

and they've come away quite reasonably well.

It's a handsome crop. There's vigour there and, as you say, it's only one cob.

Keep putting the water on. When it's dry, you've got to keep it watered.

And we're going to leave the last word

with the folks down there in Dunlop.

-Bye from here.

-Bye.

-Well, Carole, what do you think of that?

-It's absolutely fantastic.

This site has been totally transformed.

The guys have worked so hard on the wall

but it still needs to be finished.

Lynn's design has completely changed this site.

And it's been so much fun.

The planting has gone on here, in the burn, on the slopes,

with a smile on the face and I've had such great fun.

We've been well looked after.

Very enterprising, they've even got money from loom bands,

which is fantastic, all going to the garden project.

So, until the next time, from the Wee Gardens project, here in Dunlop,

goodbye.