Episode 5 The Beechgrove Garden

Hello there.

Welcome to Beechgrove Garden.

We've had some stunning weather of late

but today a little bit of a spit in the wind, so to speak,

a wee bit of a shower, which is fine,

cos I'm going to be in the conservatory.

I am going to be potting on some of our little Pelargoniums.

Just getting to the stage where they need a little bit more encouragement.

I am using brand-new compost.

We showed it a couple of weeks ago, this is brand-new, it's peat-free

and it's lovely. It is made of wood product

and green waste, but for once, this one really attracts me,

really looks good.

So, first of all, pick the pot.

Put in drainage. There's been a bit of a controversy about the drainage

in the tearoom, of the mornings.

Do we or don't we?

I come from an age when we used John Innes compost

which was more than 50% loam

and tended to drift down and block the drainage.

So it's a habit of a lifetime, draining.

I will tell you a bonus if you still use a wee bit of old pot.

It adds a bit of ballast because these composts are quite light

and the plants don't topple over.

But you can also use some of the riddlings

out of your modern-day composts. Look at that.

That's how I get rid of it,

into the bottom, to ensure that we've got good drainage.

In with some compost.

Now, then...

squeeze.

Lift the plant carefully.

The roots are just beginning to run round the edge

and this plant's needing some encouragement.

What size of pot? You should have room round the edge

of the ball of soil for one finger.

With these modern composts,

the other thing that is rather important

is that you don't compact them too much.

A little squeeze with your fingers then tips of the fingers

round like so.

The plant is ready to loup away.

It is really going to do rather well.

This is one of our older ones here.

It's getting a bit floppy, you can see that.

So it's going to get the business, it will get chopped back

and I will create some cuttings

for exchanging or selling on or whatever.

That can be done still at this time of the year.

These young plants go out onto our little bit of staging here.

By the way, look at that,

Pelargonium ardens... isn't that lovely?

Absolutely gorgeous.

But some of these trays don't have any gravel or hydroleca on them

and I think this is much to be preferred

because it helps to hold the moisture

and gives it a nice feel round the plants.

Standing in the tray itself, the plants can be standing in water,

which is not good news.

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

I'm back with my new-build families,

trying to rescue something from the chaos left behind

by the housing developers. I'm trying to turn

barren soil like this

into a real opportunity for growing plants.

If you have a greenhouse at this time of year

and you're sowing lots of seeds,

you probably wish the greenhouse was twice the size

because there is so much going on at the moment.

Look at all these seedlings here germinating.

At the moment, I'm just picking off

this Gaillardia here

which is a new variety, and I'm going to be looking

at about ten different new varieties of

half-hardy annuals and hardy annuals.

This is a Gaillardia called Red Plume, so we've never

grown it before.

Always handle the plants by their leaves,

not by the stem.

If you damage the stem, you have lost the plant.

As well as this trial that is going on,

I'm going to be looking at a range of cut flowers as well.

These are all half-hardy and hardy annuals,

things like Antirrhinums,

Ageratums.

Once those get planted out at the end of May, beginning of June,

we will then be able to see how long they actually last as cut flowers.

And then another observation is looking at dahlias.

A whole range of dahlias. We have dahlias here

as tubers, so these will be growing to about

three to four feet in height

and they make great cut flowers.

We also have dahlias that have been brought in

as little plants

and you'll notice these ones, there's flowers already forming.

I don't want those flowers at the moment.

What I want to do is encourage nice foliage.

It's too early for those flowers,

so pick them off at the moment.

Then we've also grown them ourselves from seed,

these are beautiful, healthy plants.

It's a variety called Redskin.

Quite a compact variety.

Just like Jim, lots of potting on at the moment,

so I'm just moving them on,

just by about an inch, basically.

Look at the lovely root system there, just lightly tease that out.

And so that's three of the observations

that we will be looking at this year.

These dahlias, which look great,

are ready for the next stage and they need hardening off.

We are just going to put them in the cold frames.

Of course, these are our lovely new cold frames

and we're easily going to fill these up.

Speaking of new projects,

Chris is visiting again his new-build families,

finding out how they've got on

and what is the next stage for them.

New-build developments like this one are particularly prevalent

across Aberdeenshire, as they are in many prosperous areas of the UK.

One of the peculiar things is that so often

the new housing is built on this -

previously un-farmable land.

So how do you get from this

builders' rubble and wasted agricultural land

and marshland

to the garden of your dreams?

A few weeks ago we met Anna and Andrew Robertson,

who had recently moved into their new home in Portlethen.

Garden-wise, it was a ten-by-ten plot

of soggy turf,

from which they wanted to create both family space and a productive garden.

The ground was so wet that the only solution was to build up,

creating raised planting beds.

The last time we saw Anna and Andrew,

we left them with half the raised beds built.

Look at this! There's no need to ask what you guys have been doing in your free time.

It has been keeping Andrew, especially, very busy.

-I should think you have not seen anything of him.

-No.

An amazing amount of soil and timber work.

It has made a huge difference to the garden.

The difference is unbelievable and it is amazing

how much space we still have even though we have so many beds.

One of the things we straightaway said is,

"Don't worry about coming in,"

because the more detail you put in the bigger the space will appear.

You actually don't feel as if you have lost any lawn at all

but look at what you have gained, a planting opportunity.

You will be pleased to see I managed to twist James's arm

to come over and give us a hand

to finish putting the topsoil in,

and as Andrew was so good at bringing the topsoil in,

I think we should leave him to it, don't you?

I think so, just for a little while, anyway.

A bit more practice required.

-Meanwhile, we can have a look at some seedlings.

-Sounds good.

-Get stuck in.

-Thanks!

The first thing I am quite proud to point out

-is my peas.

-They look great.

They are coming along, but they did have me worried.

There was nothing happening, so there was that temptation

to have a good poke and a prod. But they have appeared.

See this pencil? Don't put it anywhere near any plants.

Don't go prodding around in there.

Patience is the most important thing when you're sowing seeds.

It's a great crop, very uniform.

They haven't gone yellow, which is what often happens with peas

if they are really struggling.

I think they need a little more time in the cold frame outside.

They will grow good and tough.

When they get up to around five or ten centimetres or so,

that's the point to then think about

transplanting them out into the garden.

The lettuce here, they are looking

a little kind of windswept and wonderful.

As far as I was concerned,

I have kept them where I thought was a light area.

I've been mutating them because they're leaning

and then I turn them and they lean the other way.

Putting them in a pot whilst they're germinating beneath the soil,

fine to put them somewhere which is not in great light.

As soon as those seed heads start to come through,

that is the point you need to put them in the light

and I moved one of these pots of lettuce over and already

they have started to straighten up.

On the windowsill there is much more light, plenty of warmth,

and you will find that these seedlings will very quickly

turn into this cut-and-come-again crop.

But I think what's under here reveals you have hidden talents.

-Look at that.

-It certainly worked.

-How have you been getting on with the propagator?

It has certainly been a learning curve

because I was quite nervous about how I was doing it

and how deep to do the seeds and things, but they've turned out well,

they're about ten days old now.

So we've got tomatoes, squash,

cucumber and celeriac,

which is a little slow but that's OK.

Keep your pencil out.

The toms are looking good, they need pricking out

and the squash and the cucumbers,

how deep did you sow those seeds?

I did them just under the surface

so you could still see a little bit of seed.

I think there is two issues with that. The first is the depth

of seed, it is quite a big seed,

so the time you have timesed that by 2½,

which is sort of standard planting depth -

if in doubt sow it 2½ times the depth of the seed -

then it puts it a good few centimetres down...

A lot deeper.

That anchors the plant in the ground

and stops them becoming a little bit ungainly.

And the other thing really is that

they should have come out of the propagator

a little bit earlier than they are at the moment.

Under normal circumstances, with something like your tomatoes

you'd be picking the seedling up like that, very delicately,

with that little seed leaf.

As soon as you grip the stem,

if you grabbed hold of it like that and squeezed,

that's the end of the plant.

Just use a pencil... This is when you're allowed

to stick your pencil in the ground, you see.

But this is so big and they are so leggy,

I'll just pick it up...

And you'd be expecting it...

-Compost.

-If I had not done it deep enough

and it had not got so hot, it would be about half the size?

About half the height, yeah, and that is the point

at which to transplant them or prick them out.

I'm just making sure that's going deeper.

Because it was sown a little bit shallowly,

I'm going to put it a little deeper.

Anna and Andrew's garden is intended

not only as a productive space but also an ornamental space.

That means when it comes to laying out those structural plants,

the trees and shrubs,

placement is everything.

Use the plants to block views and create views.

I have just noticed you have kind of massacred it,

or it looks like you have massacred it, to me,

what are you up to?

One of the ways of clothing fences

and walls in gardens like this,

bring them into production, use them,

because it is a great vertical surface.

Some plants just do really well

when they are trained against the fence.

For two reasons. One is that you can contain the growth

so it prevents it getting too big,

but also you can use a plant

which is ordinarily a little bit tender,

because you use the shelter of the fence or the wall

to help protect the plant.

This is a little plum called Victoria

and essentially what you are doing is encouraging the plant

to stay small, but also the branches are fanning out

so some going almost horizontal

and then going out in these sort of splay lines like this.

For instance, this one had lost

its leader, the piece which we want to go up vertically,

so I am just tying this one in up here.

And it will give us the vertical bit

of the fan, here we go.

And then this one we'll bring up to there

and that one we'll train in down there

-so you can see that gives us...

-It's a really good shape.

..the perfect shape.

This looks a little daunting, lots of packets going on.

This is just a scaled-up version of exactly what you were doing inside,

so think of this as just a large pot,

which is essentially all a raised bed is.

I've divided it down so the entire bed

is all about leaf crops, it is really simple.

It is a very effective bed with quick effects.

This bed here is all about peas and beans.

So we have gone for some beans which were available

from the garden centre. They are a little bit torn and quite congested

but it is worth having a go at them,

just to give us a really good head start.

The peas that are in your propagator that we were admiring earlier,

those can go where this cane is going

and that cane over there,

so give them another week, maybe,

-and then you can pop those out.

-Just a small space.

-Exactly.

And down here there there's a kind of shift from

vegetables to flowers.

We have a range of hardy annuals -

sunflowers, there's Cosmos, Antirrhinums, Calendulas,

a real vibrant mix, but we've opened them all

and mixed them all together in a tray. You can see there is

-real diversity in there.

-Yeah, there's quite a selection.

The nice thing about these is because they are hardy and tough,

you don't have to worry about how you sow them.

So just grab a handful

and scatter them around on the ground.

And then just loosely break them in.

The important thing about putting these in

is that they will bring the pollinators in,

because in all the time we have been here,

-we haven't seen a bee...

-No, there is nothing.

..or a ladybird or lacewings around,

and it is those organisms which will pollinate so many of your fruits

and things like your peas and beans.

If you can bring the insects in, you have the complete garden.

Now we have to make sure we take care of it while you leave us to it,

-so...a few weeks.

-We'll be back in a few weeks

-to see how you're getting on.

-I'll keep in touch.

I really think those raised beds with Andrew and Anna

look absolutely spectacular,

and we have a similar situation here in our decking garden.

These are large raised beds,

effectively a giant container,

and this year what I'm going to do

is fill that bed with a range of lettuce.

Four different types we have - Butterhead,

Cos, loose-leaf and iceberg.

And then three varieties of each.

That's 12 different types

and I am going to create, effectively,

a chequerboard effect.

Because there's different colours and different types,

I think it will look really attractive.

These, though, still need to be hardened off

so they won't be planted out for another week yet,

but they are looking good.

Here in the decking area it is all about small-space gardening

and planting in containers.

Here's a bit of a comparison with Anna's and her peas,

which were really tiny, not ready for planting. These ones are.

It's a variety called Bingo.

Lovely root system on there.

They grow to two-foot-six,

75 centimetres.

So they will need a little bit of staking and a little bit of support,

but they are absolutely ideal for a container.

We've got tatties. Every year I grow tatties -

15-inch pot.

These ones are just beginning to come through,

you can just see the shaws,

and as they start to grow you've got to earth them up.

They were planted two weeks ago,

just the same time as Jim was planting them in the main plot,

and so this variety Jim has actually planted,

and we'll be able to compare how many we get.

I'm using two types of compost.

I'm using a peat-free compost

and a peat-based compost

and I am going to do exactly the same

with a Jerusalem artichoke,

so in the bottom,

a little bit of gravel for drainage,

then a couple of inches of compost

and I'm going to manage, I think, to get four of these.

With the potatoes I only put three tubers,

but four of these in the base.

It belongs to the sunflower family and it is a new variety

called Gerard, red-skinned,

and then a little bit of compost on the top.

Whilst I remember,

I also have a new variety here

of rocket - lovely peppery taste to it,

it's a British-bred variety called Dragon's Tongue.

And there's lovely red veining on that.

"In Flanders fields the poppies blow

"Between the crosses, row on row."

What an emotive poem,

a wonderful poem, commemoration of World War I

and all the trouble that went on then.

This, of course, is the centenary

of World War I.

Now, the poppy

was growing in the cornfields, in Flanders Field,

before that time, came up and seeded.

The seeds fell into the ground.

The ground was churned up by the tanks, all this mud

and glaur and filth that there was there.

And yet, when spring came,

after these terrible winters,

those little seeds

with their magic inside them grew and became poppies.

Wonderful flowers to commemorate Remembrance Sunday,

and we have used these ever since.

The British Legion have asked as many of us as possible

to sow poppies this year

so what we're going to do here is sow this one,

which is a Ladybird poppy, a wonderful one

with little black spots at the base of the petals,

we will sow these into these pots here

and they should be flowering by the end of June,

I would hope.

The ones at the other side, we have one called Victoria Cross,

but the main Flanders poppy

we are going to sow in this big area over here.

I have mixed it with some sand in here,

some black seeds in there mixed with the sand,

so it can get some good distribution,

so I will sow that now and then we will rake it into the surface.

Earlier, Chris was in Portlethen.

Now he's moved along the coast

to Cove where he's with Brian and Susan in their new garden.

We may well be just a few miles down the coast

and still in a new-build environment

but the soil conditions here couldn't be more different.

There is actually some topsoil,

albeit it still needs improving.

Last time we were here, I rather recklessly promised Susan

there may well be an opportunity to lounge on a deck.

-Look at this.

-Hiya!

SHE LAUGHS

-This is all right.

-I hope your feet are clean.

-Am I allowed it to tread on this?

-I'm still to stain it so I hope your feet are clean.

Clean-ish. Have you been told off for walking on the deck?

I've had many rows for walking on the deck

with my feet apparently muddy, yes.

I hope you've kept him off your lawn, in that case.

I've tried my best, we had to keep it watered

so there has been a couple of wee sneakies onto the grass.

-What do you think?

-I think it is absolutely fabulous.

I can't believe where we've got to already.

I think it looks bigger now than it did when it was just a pile of mud.

Can we stand on the grass?

You see, I'm qualified so I can stand the grass

but I think only those who know about...

Of course you can stand on the grass.

It's been a couple of weeks so it's fine.

In fact, the more you walk on it and start to mow it now,

it's already knitted together,

you can't pull the turf up.

The sooner you put a mower on this

and start to shorten those leaf blades,

the more you'll encourage a decent lawn to emerge.

And you've got your trees in.

Nice rhythm coming up the path here

and just a few days away from flowering, in fact,

and the hedge is looking great as well. I'm really impressed.

You've done a great job!

Just a few little tinkering bits around the edges to do

-and we'll be...

-Just a little bit.

-..almost there, back to the lounging.

I'll be back to lounging, indeed.

So, what do you want us to do next, do you think?

We've got the pergolas,

so if you want to have a crack at putting those pergolas in...

A timber arch and we can start to think

what we will climb over the top of them,

revisit the hedge and pull that into shape a bit.

Then it's about prepping the ground

so we can then move on to planting.

I'll finish my coffee and then we'll get cracking.

-OK, let's get going, then.

-Yeah, fab.

I have to tell you, I am a little bit concerned about this chap,

he doesn't look very healthy.

This is the Rosa rugosa. What's happened

is that because we put them in as bare-root plants,

very often a bare-root plant is really challenged

because it has literally been taken out the ground

and so any growth can die back.

I would say, at the moment,

don't worry, because in the next couple of weeks it might come back.

But if it hasn't come back in a couple of weeks,

we'll think of replacing it with one of the spares we have over there.

Oh, my goodness!

That's what you need to do.

I was enjoying watching them wafting.

SHE LAUGHS

It's always one of those things with bare-root planting -

when you put them in the ground,

you need to encourage them to grow from right down here,

especially with a hedge.

You want a nice, bushy hedge.

Look at the look on your face.

I'm just kind of sad!

They were starting to have their leaves, have their flowers

and I thought, "Oh, yes, this is good!"

-Got to take them down.

-OK.

What we need to do is go along and look for a bud.

-You see the dark mark there?

-Yeah.

You just go above the bud, slightly sloping cut

and away you go.

And it is pretty horrifying.

-But it's in the best interests of the plant.

-OK.

I can't believe I'm doing this, cutting all that lovely growth off.

Once the hedge pruning is done,

we can then think about the final preparation of the planting beds.

There's no short cuts when it comes to preparing

the beds, it's all about removing as much debris

and rubble and brick ends as you can from the garden.

Unfortunately it's backbreaking work,

but then you can add organic matter, fork over

and you are ready for planting.

So what are we doing out here looking at all these lovely plants?

Well, they are all selected for your conditions,

some for shade and some for sunshine.

And I thought it would just be useful

for you to pick the ones that you like

and start placing them out in the garden

and we'll just have a look to see how you're arranging you border

because only by seeing how you do it

can we then start to refine it and tweak it.

The only thing I'll say is look at the labels,

because they are all big, glamorous pictures,

they show you the promise of the plant.

Think of yourself not as a gardener but as a conductor.

-These are your orchestra.

-Right.

And you want to bring them to a crescendo.

-But not all at the same time.

-Oh.

-This is a lot of pressure.

-Have a go.

See what you can do.

Each plant is there for a function.

If it doesn't have a reason for being there, it shouldn't be there at all.

You have plants like the Daphne here,

just look at the way that's growing.

It is growing up like a great fountain

-and it will be festooned in these pink flowers.

-It's beautiful.

It is a really good eye-catcher at this time of the year

and it will just get better and better over the next week or so,

so I would say put it somewhere where it's going to catch your eye,

which is right on a corner.

-It is like putting a vase on the mantelpiece.

-OK.

Then you need things to flow underneath it.

So, geraniums, really good at just carpeting and mounding,

flowing over the deck.

Where's Brian? Not too much over the deck, just marking the deck,

-enhancing it.

-Yeah.

-Make a corner of them so they come round like this.

-OK.

These support this guy.

Your wall plants are good, your Camellia, brilliant.

Fantastic spot for it,

winter-flowering. When you sit in the house

and you're not so tempted to lounge,

you need to be close to it.

No point hiding at the back of the garden where you can't see it.

-No, it's beautiful.

-And the shelter of the wall is exactly what it needs.

-A new entrance to the garden.

-Very nice.

-Somebody's been working hard.

-He's very industrious.

Very quiet, but industrious.

He's getting on with it, but you get a sense

of the way that the rhythm in the garden is working now

because of the way the plants are being been laid out.

You planted your Prunus Amanogawa

so we have this six up the path here.

Then, when we come down from that,

-the centrepiece is then roses.

-Yes.

The old-fashioned flowering bush roses.

And so we've got those in between the cherries.

That gives us a layer at this sort of level.

But then that leaves these scallop-shaped gaps,

so in this one we've got iris and then we are repeating the iris

over there so there is a sort of mirror image

but it's not too geometric,

-you are skewing the geometry slightly.

-Not so many straight lines.

Then, underneath the iris,

you need something which is just going to

dance and flow,

so the Aubretias, the geraniums, the Bergenias.

So when you look at the garden, you look at a series of layers.

The Prunus, coming down to the roses,

the spikes of the iris

and then the flowing of the carpet of the herbaceous

underneath, so everything has its place and its function.

You do make it sound lovely.

-So what do we have to do - just started digging them all in?

-Yeah.

I hope you're going to help!

SHE LAUGHS

You have to get tactile, get touchy-feely with them.

Do I need to sing to them as well?

If you're prepared to do it.

-I'm quite a good singer.

-I'll be outside the gate, listening.

SHE LAUGHS

You can't leave me!

While I leave Calum finishing off the gravel areas,

Brian manfully constructs a few more timber products

and Susan gets to grips with her new horticultural friends,

developing something of an intimate relationship,

and next time I come back,

the garden should be bountiful.

When you get all the different classifications together,

there's about 15 different classifications of tulips,

you see the range, not only of height and colour

but flowering time. What's your favourites?

I have two. There's this one here which is Cum Laude,

a late single, and a late double called Angelique.

That's just a pretty little one, that.

-They'd go rather nicely together.

-They would.

These are lovely embedding displays

but I will go for the small one down the bottom there,

Tulipa tarda,

because it will flower year after year,

it is reliable.

My favourite is the one the Dutch called the botanical tulips,

Greigii, because there's a wide range of colours.

We've got Albion Star here, but I like the height

and the stature of it and it works well

and these will naturalise in a rock garden perfectly well.

Brilliant. If you'd like any more information about the tulips

or anything else on the programme this week,

it is all in the fact sheet

and the easiest way to access that is online.

Next week, I'm in amongst the hanging baskets.

This week I planted a field of poppies,

-and next week I'm doing a river of gentians.

-Nice!

Well, I'm back in my usual spot - in the vegetable garden.

-Until next week...

-Goodbye.

-Bye.

-Bye.