Episode 6 The Beechgrove Garden

Hello and welcome to Beechgrove.

On a cool, misty morning, you find me

in the veg plot about to sow some garden peas.

Simple job and this is the way I've always grown them, either side

of a fence here of wire netting, a V-shaped drill, sow either side.

As they grow up, you can cleat them in with a bit of string

and keep them nice and tidy, and they're easily picked on that basis.

We've got two varieties of peas.

We're going to have Kelvedon Wonder on the first half

and Hurst Green Shaft, one of my all-time favourites,

in the second half. Now, what's funny about this?

All we're doing is taking some peas out of the packet,

just as they are, and popping them in about an inch apart or thereby.

But we always look for something different to do, and quite

a number of seed companies actually offer an additional treatment.

As you know, legumes can fix atmospheric nitrogen with

the little nodules on the roots,

but of course the seeds going into the ground don't yet have roots,

so they've produced this material which they call booster

and it's a bacteria found in the soil.

This one in fact is a rhizobium powder, like so.

The seeds are going to be coated with this rhizobium,

so they're getting a boost right from the start,

even before they've got their own roots well established.

And as usual, I want to see whether it's worthwhile,

so half the row without, half the row with. There we go.

We'll come back to it in due time to see how progress has been made.

Now, it's time to look at some brassicas.

I'm sure you're wondering what the dickens I'm up to here.

-HE LAUGHS

-Let me explain. I understand gardens are getting smaller,

families are getting smaller.

So, we don't need to grow huge great cabbages.

We know that if we give cabbages plenty of space

they'll just keep on growing and get bigger and bigger and bigger.

What we're looking at is a good yield off a given small area,

so what I've done here...

There we have 25 Minicole cabbages in a square metre.

Here we've got 13, roughly half, not quite but nearly,

and here we have 9.

Now, the fact of the matter is that these are going to produce

small cabbages, nice, small tight heads, quite quickly,

because as they get overcrowded they want to mature.

This spacing here, I would reckon to be the compromise.

It's the one I'm most likely to use.

That's 13 to the square metre, as it happens.

This one, only 9.

They're just going to keep on going and going.

They'll be like space hoppers.

How do you get that in a pot?

Now then, in the rest of the programme.

You know me, any excuse to go fishing.

But today, I'm not fishing in a pond,

I'm fishing for a river of flowers.

And Italy in East Lothian? Wait and see.

If you happen to have a greenhouse or maybe a nice bright porch,

this is a great time to be planting up your hanging baskets.

Get them nice and established and then up here we don't actually

put them outside until the end of May or the beginning of June.

There's all kinds of hanging baskets you can choose from

but basically two types.

We call one the open basket, so this one is a wire frame

and it means that you can plant around the edge.

Here's one I've planted up with nasturtiums and I really like it

because you can actually unclip it and then put the plants in,

and it means that you can layer it.

On the other hand, we've this type which is the closed basket

and all you do is plant up the top.

And at the moment, I'm planting this one.

Last week, I was talking about some of the trials we were doing,

including dahlias,

so this is a fairly dwarf variety of dahlia called Fireworks.

Only grows to ten inches in height

and so three plants should be quite sufficient.

Then this basket here. I'm going to try something new to us.

These are jumbo plug plants and there's three little plants here.

It has been potted on and I've got bidens here, which is a yellow

flower. There's lobelia and there's also a verbena.

I've got some different mixtures

and there's going to be some nice colour themes.

So, three plants in a plug

and what they actually say is that all I need is

three of these in a 14-inch basket and that should be quite sufficient.

I must admit there's a little bit of a temptation to want to pull

these plants apart, but as I say three of them there.

And so this is really easy to do up,

and we'll leave it in the greenhouse for a couple of weeks and then,

as I say, it'll look fairly established when we put it outside.

Now, the compost itself. I'm using a multipurpose

and I've added to it a controlled release fertiliser.

That means, not a slow release, but a controlled release

and as the temperatures start to warm up it gradually gives out

the fertiliser and that will last for the whole of the growing season.

Also water retention granules,

and when you add water it looks like wallpaper paste.

You can buy hanging basket compost that have these in them but if

you don't, multipurpose, and adding those should be absolutely fine.

What a wonderful morning to be in the garden.

This mist, quite theatrical and that's appropriate because what I

want to do today is create a feature which is theatrical in itself.

When we moved here to the garden, we created a number of different

features and this is one of them. Leslie created a dry river bed

but it's starting to look a bit tired now

and I thought I would revamp it.

I would recreate it as something completely and utterly different.

Something out of your mind, a river of gentians.

So, where did my inspiration for a river of flowers come from?

Well, a number of years ago I was walking around a garden and I saw

a wonderful river of these grape hyacinths, these wonderful muscari

going off into the distance, and I thought,

"Lock that away, keep that for later."

Blues are great colours to use in the garden to represent water

and we've got forget-me-nots, which are wonderfully blue

but they have this pink on the end, so getting a true blue is not easy.

Then we've got the ajuga.

Well, I could have used that, but that's kind of muddy, isn't it?

Scillas. Yes, but they only last for a short period

but a really good blue on those and the same with lithodora.

That would be a good blue, but the blue I wanted was this one.

This is of the gentian... This is Gentiana The Caley.

It has a fabulous blue flower and that is just like the sun

and the sky being reflected in the river water.

Really, really blue.

The first thing we're going to do is take out all the rocks.

We're going to save them and use them again.

Take out the plants, save them because we'll use them again.

Remove the turf, take out the membrane, replenish the soil,

so there's a lot to do.

Luckily, I've got the squad to help me. So let's go, guys.

Look at that. Isn't it amazing what membrane hides?

What we need to do with this is ameliorate it

because what we're going to plant in here are gentians and bulbs,

and they both need free-draining, moisture-retentive soil.

Now, that's two ends of the spectrum.

It's an anomaly, so what I have to do with this...

I've got plenty grit in here, so what I have to do now is to add

organic matter, so into here a layer of organic matter.

This is some old compost which will then be just dug into that.

And if we mix that thoroughly...

Look at that. We change the colour.

We change the texture.

Callum is lifting the last of the turf.

The team are finishing off the forking-over and raking

and adding compost and topsoil, and soon we'll be ready for planting.

Callum, these are the hemerocallis, but before we plant them

we'll need to split them.

They're going to be used to make the side of the river,

with the arching leaves coming over, so that will define the river.

Now, they're quite easy to split. What do you reckon?

-Maybe split them in quarter?

-Aye, into four. That'll do fine.

Large enough for the ladies to plant with their trowels.

-About a fist size.

-Aye, about fist-size. Something like that.

I want you for an interesting job. Heavy lifting.

Heavy all the way. My favourite.

-Just up here.

-Aye, yes.

Right, what we're trying to do is create rocky outcrops with

stones flowing from it, so there'll be a big stone

and then getting gradually smaller. Then we come further down.

We've another stone and we get smaller, then we have another stone,

so that we're getting this...it's like the water bouncing off one stone

and going to the other side of the river. Like it does in a river.

And then the river of course will be the plants, so we'll just get

the rest of the stones in place, right down to the front.

-See that one there?

-The little...

-The little one you've just put in.

-Oh, that one. You want it turned?

-Just anticlockwise. About one hour.

-This way?

-One-hour anticlockwise.

-Seriously?

-Yeah. You think I was taking the mickey?

SHE LAUGHS

By this stage in proceedings you must be wondering what the man's

got in his head. This is the river that we're going to create,

starting from that stephanandra, the bush which is at the top.

That's where the river is going to flow from.

A river in the spring starts off often frozen,

at least we'll imagine it as such.

And that means I'm going to put some snowdrops at the top with

the white and they're going to come down. In amongst the snowdrops

we'll have some of the scillas,

which will be the first trickles of the water in spring.

As a river flows down, it leaves little pockets of flotsam

and they get caught on the stones, so what we're going to do is put

some of these cyclamen down near stones, so that signifies that.

So, that's three plants we've got in, but the main one,

which is going to give us the water, is this.

This is, of course, the gentians.

This is what really the whole thing is about.

We can't plant them like that because that is far too dense,

far too thick, so what I'm going to do is I'm going to drop this

and I'm going to split it out, and you'll see what it's like.

Look at that. There is what you want. See these thongs?

We're going to plant each one of those in through here.

They look quite small, but planting at this time of the year,

which is ideal for planting gentians,

they will bulk up by the autumn and will flower.

With these gentians I have got here, we've got four different cultivars

and they will flower sequentially from the top down to the bottom,

so they start at the top and the river flows right to the bottom...

coloured blue.

That was a good day's work.

Oh, George, what a fantastic transformation from what it

-was this morning.

-Absolutely.

We've delineated the whole thing with the stones and the gravel.

We've put down the hemerocallis at that side, which will arch over,

but we've got this river of gentians, different varieties

flowering from the top to the bottom in sequence, so great.

And they'll do well in this soil here.

-These plants are really small, though, aren't they?

-They are.

It was like micro-gardening, planting them, wasn't it?

-Yeah. They'll do well in our soil.

-They will.

-This is Aberdeenshire.

This is moist and cool and they love that sort of thing.

If you're down in the south-east of England it might not

be as easy to do this, so you'll have to make other choices.

Yeah, the climate is probably a bit dry, isn't it?

-I would choose forget-me-nots.

-And you could use what?

The muscari, the lithodora. You could have the scillas,

which we've got in there already, or you

could go and just put aubrieta in.

-Pick your blue, make your river.

-And use your imagination.

Here in our trials area, this is our first opportunity to have

a look at some hardy annuals that I sowed last year.

It was towards the end of August and this batch here,

they were covered with cloches and these ones were totally unprotected.

Both sown directly in the ground. And we've got six different types.

I'm afraid two haven't come through.

I don't know why. Whether it's just the weather conditions,

but I'm really pleased. On this batch here that were covered up

with the pot marigolds already flowering.

And this is only early May and you can see the ones that

weren't covered are really far behind.

And the same with the nigella here.

They're looking really healthy and I suspect within two or three weeks,

if we have good weather conditions, we will have flowers on those,

whereas again the nigella there is quite a bit behind.

I'm going to create a succession of flowering because now this

is the time if you want to sow hardy annuals outside this year.

It is direct sowing and basically taking out a little drill.

If you want, you can use the tip of a trowel

but I particularly like to use just the corner of a rake.

And it's quite easy just to take out a little V-shaped drill.

And when it comes to sowing, you can either open the packet

and tap it on the side, but I think you have a bit more control

if you put them in your hand and then gradually sprinkle them

along the drill. It really is very easy, sowing hardy annuals.

They're not that expensive and they give you a lovely splash of colour.

And once I've filled this in, you gently cover it over with the soil.

Of course, these are fairly formal because they are sown in a row,

but the great thing about them being sown in a row is the fact that

when they start to germinate it's usually easy to pick out

the seedlings as opposed to the weeds.

I'm going to look at another way of sowing them

up in the cut flower plot.

Now, over the last couple of years we have seen

the introduction of scatter mixes and I've actually got a range here.

It's a range of hardy annuals and some of them

claim to contain as much as 29 different hardy annuals.

And I've split them into two groups

because these two have compost

with them as well as the seed,

whereas these two here, basically it's just the seed itself.

Called scatter mixes, so that's exactly what you have to do.

I'm just going to pick this one here.

Quite a fancy little thing there for spreading it about, and I

scatter this over the ground, and because this one's got a compost,

all I have to do is just lightly rake this over,

whereas with the other two here, I will add a little

bit of compost on top of the seed once it is sown.

And we'll come back in a few weeks' time and see how we get on.

I'm hoping it'll be a nice floral display.

Now, earlier on I was talking about the garden getting

smaller when we were in the veg patch.

Here in the fruit garden we have adopted methods of compact growing,

dwarf growing, systems that will be useful in a small space.

For example, here we have gooseberry, a fan.

Takes practically no space at all.

So easy to look after.

It makes a nice division from one part of the garden to the other.

Or you can go to cordons.

And here we've a red currant cordon, looking superb.

Look at all the blossom that's on it.

Now, you can't say that for these two here.

These took a hammering two winters ago.

We gave them a second chance

but you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.

After the fruit's picked, they are oot without a doubt.

Then back to cordons again.

Here is a gooseberry in the form of a cordon, looking superb.

Look at the fruit that's in prospect, and you don't get

your hand scratched when you're picking it.

But that look of these bushes is all to do with the management style.

A little bit more about that now.

The crucial part of the management is looking after the soil

and here, of course, we use local authority compost, heavily

mulched, renewed every spring and it makes a huge difference because

you've only got to look at the foliage on these gooseberry bushes.

It is looking stunning and they're very healthy.

That is partly because of the soil conditions and partly

because once a fortnight we spray all the plants in here with garlic.

That is not a pesticide. It is a growth enhancer.

It's like you taking cod liver oil pills in the morning

and feeling better.

So, every now and again you will get an outbreak of a pest or a disease,

and the one that has caught me on the hop this time, because

I'd expect to see it on blackcurrants before a gooseberry,

is this fella, the red leaf-blister aphid, and it causes that.

When I look behind the leaf, there ain't no aphids.

The damage has been done and gone, but where have they gone?

They've gone somewhere else, so you can use a spray to kill

that off, and there are one or two products which are approved by

the organic people and I wouldn't stand and look at it getting worse.

I would want to actually take fire brigade measures.

But overall it's looking not too bad.

Now then, 12 months ago George Anderson went to see a little

bit of Italy in East Lothian, that's how it was described,

to see a garden created by Guy Donaldson and it's a belter!

It's May 2013 and I've escaped from Aberdeen.

I'm down in the south east of Scotland,

I'm in God's own country, East Lothian.

A little village called Gifford.

I'm at a garden called Broadwoodside.

This is one of these fantastic little gems,

described by Anna Pavord as Little Italy.

It has some superb planting and some wonderful design.

Some wonderful colours of spring. These yellows and blues.

So what have we got in here?

At the moment the colours you are seeing are the tulip West Point,

which is tying in with the blue of the brunnera.

And obviously the grape hyacinth in the foreground.

We've got this the roof of the trees here,

but also this wonderful hedge round about, which is quite informal.

This is a very informal hedge. This is the Rosa rugosa hedge.

The Rosa rugosa hedge is a demarcation point between the area

in which, basically, man's hand has played a great role

and the area of the beautiful landscape beyond us...

-which is why we use the wild Rosa rugosa.

-Man's hand.

-How long have you been here?

-These hands.

-These hands!

How long have these hands been here?

These hands have been here for 14 years now.

So, everything we see, you had a hand in planting?

Everything you see, I have planted.

Every tree, every shrub, every bulb, every herbaceous plant.

-So, you have a wonderful ownership in some aspects.

-Absolutely.

So what are you going to take me to see?

-Shall we have a look at the kitchen garden?

-Aye, come on.

The kitchen garden, of course, is really the heart of the garden

and is the area that is the productive area.

At this time of year this is where much of my time is spent sowing

the plants, bringing them on, hardening them off and planting them.

There is nothing precious. There's two houses to feed.

So, there's the house here and there's also my family to be fed,

which means that everything that is grown here is going to be eaten.

-Was the garden always like this?

-No, George.

When I first came here there was no garden here whatsoever.

It was absolutely derelict, full of rubble

and about six feet high in Rosebay Willowherb.

-So that's why the words are on the wall, then?

-Exactly.

An homage to the previous incarnation of this garden.

-This is level here, but yet at the sides it's sloped.

-Indeed.

The original slope came all the way down very slowly down towards

the gate there, so this whole area was dug out

and a level area created for the pond.

But what in fact we created in doing that was actually a clay sump.

HE LAUGHS

The idea of having a lovely yew hedge in there

completely disappeared when we realised what we'd done.

Hence, we have now used willow in there,

what we call a willow fedge, so we have 56 arches, 28 on either side.

That's absolutely fabulous

and your eye bounces around all the different levels.

It has a great formality of the fruit trees over there as well.

Superb.

What else have you got to show me?

-Shall we go and have a look at the south garden?

-Lead on.

This is just exciting stuff. It's like being in a sweetie shop.

It's a wonderful time of year, isn't it? On a wonderful day.

-The south garden, George.

-That's brilliant, isn't it?

What do you think of the pulmonaria? That's a Sissinghurst White.

I think that's a fantastic idea.

That's like a big white-spotted snake.

The benefit of having the space

and the vision to use a single plant for a planting like that is superb.

That has been one of the philosophies in this garden.

We take a long time in choosing which plants will be used

and then we use them in quantity.

So, for example, down here we've only four or five different plants

that are repeated all the way up through the whole border.

A space with wonderful informality down with the Sissinghurst White.

-But look at this.

-Contrasts completely.

-Oh, completely different!

-It's what we call the Topiary Walk.

All of the mop-head topiary,

the elaeagnus, the holly, the Portuguese laurel.

And this is matched and really held in place by all of the box.

They're all the same colour. How did you get that?

All of the box was basically propagated about 13 or 14 years ago.

-I took a couple of thousand cuttings.

-All of one big plant?

-All from one, the same place.

-And all the way up to here?

Yes. The eye's taken from the house all the way through the Topiary Walk,

up to the finial up at the top between the beech hedges.

-Somewhere to go.

-Indeed.

-Where are we going now?

I'll take you into the courtyard.

-Is this going to be worth waiting for?

-You tell me. I think so.

-Oh, my goodness, look at that.

-This is Little Italy.

-Italy in East Lothian.

-Indeed.

-Absolutely splendid.

The size of the grass squares, the cobbled squares,

the mixed-box balls.

You've got pachysandra. You've got everything down here.

All this wonderful symmetry, the trees again over the top

and that border there...

The combination of the astrantia, the Solomon seal and the hellebores.

-That is my type of garden.

-It is.

Just a pair of shears and keep the thing...

What have we got down here?

We'll go down and have a look at the lower courtyard.

This is different again.

Yes. Completely different feel to the upper courtyard.

-Less formal, some say a little bit more feminine.

-Yes, perhaps.

Softer. We have the climbers lining all over the walls, which does soften

-the architecture and of course over here.

-Look at that.

That is just fabulous.

The combination of tulips

and the forget-me-nots has worked really, really well this year.

They're all planted in an area we call the thug bed.

-What's that?

-Well, the thug bed...

as I'm sure you are aware, there are certain herbaceous perennials

that are very vigorous and quite aggressive.

If you put them into borders with other plants, they'll take over.

They'll kill them, in effect. And they would do it quite quickly.

So here they're all in together?

Here we've got things like the Cardoon, the Japanese anemone.

We've put them all into the same bed and we just let them fight it out.

In that way we can control...

We're still able to grow the plants that we would really like

but we're able to grow them in a controlled manner.

To be in a garden where we've got all this mixture of architecture,

roof styles and things like that,

but the thing that really draws it altogether is the gardening.

-And it's wonderfully gardened.

-Thank you very much.

-Guy, thank you.

-What a splendid day.

-It has been our pleasure. Thank you for coming.

Remind us again of the significance of these two pots of tulips.

OK, this is all about celebrating our 35th anniversary

-for the programme, which was last year.

-When they were planted.

They were planted last year and of course the colours for that

anniversary are coral, jade and emerald.

-Hence, some of the colours there.

-You've cracked it.

-We have.

Which is your favourite?

Do you know, I rather like that bronzy, sort of apricot one,

called Quest. I think it's a nice, tight bloom.

It's still to show its full glory, but I quite like the lily flower,

the white-green striped one at the back there.

That's Green Star.

And although I love the colour of Apricot Impression,

I think it's a bit too big and blousy.

It might get knocked about a bit in the wind, mightn't it?

And what about the Snowflakes?

Aren't these amazing? Look at the height of that. And the size.

And a little bit of green to the end of the petals, so that's why

-it fits in this garden.

-Gorgeous.

And I think that little calluna as well, Spring Torch.

-It puts on that colour in the springtime.

-Very nice.

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

it's all in the fact sheet

and the easiest way to access that is on our website.

And what are you doing next week?

I've got a problem corner and it's local, Jim. In Aberdeen.

Well, them cold house tomatoes are needing planted

and that's where I shall be.

-So, until next time, goodbye.

-Goodbye.