Episode 18 The Beechgrove Garden

Hello and welcome to Beechgrove, and we are on the road again.

We have come to Northwest Scotland, to Gairloch.

Isn't it a beautiful place?

Gairloch, of course, means "short loch".

Isn't it a wonderful spot?

They say that if you come to Gairloch, you have actually seen the Highlands,

and it is absolutely true.

You come through part of the Torridons to get here, fabulous mountains.

Look behind us and you have got Longa Island, Gairloch itself,

and then beyond that you've got Skye

and then the huge horizon and this wonderful light,

which is just spectacular.

It's a very special place.

We've travelled about 170 miles west of Beechgrove, just slightly north,

and that makes such a difference with the rainfall.

At Beechgrove we have about 29 inches, here about double, 53.

That's way up about here. You'd need waders.

Indeed. But we are a long way north as well.

If you were to draw a line across the globe, beyond Skye,

keep going and it's Hudson Bay, so that gives you some idea.

Much, much colder there.

Benefiting here from those warm winds, tropical winds coming up from the Caribbean.

LAUGHTER

Unzip the jacket. It's partially unzipped, yes.

Accompanied by that rainfall,

because we get quite a proportion of it in the summer,

and that's what makes a difference, and it also brings the midges.

You have been warned. Let's go.

Jim, George, Chris and I are in and around Gairloch,

finding out what grows, and possibly what doesn't,

here in Wester Ross, come rain, shine or midges.

'We've been invited by the Gairloch community

'to host a question session later,

'and hopefully between us we might even have some answers.'

To investigate a little more about the Gairloch growing conditions,

Jim is visiting the world-renowned Inverewe gardens.

In the 1860s, an enterprising young landowner, Osgood Mackenzie,

had the foresight to carve

the surprisingly exotic Inverewe gardens

out from a barren peninsula on the north-west coast of Scotland,

using the effect of the Gulf Stream,

along with some very serious shelter.

Kevin Ball is Inverewe's present head gardener.

In the 1860s, the garden was like what it looks like

across the other side of the loch.

It's quite remarkable, that when you know what you are doing,

you can achieve something like this.

I know. It was huge foresight Osgood Mackenzie had.

You can see at the moment, we are growing all kinds of vegetables in this area.

Absolutely stunning. Isn't that fantastic?

These are looking particularly good.

The magic of this garden, of course, is this curve.

It faces due south, so it captures the sun all day, really.

which affords us to grow all these lovely variety of vegetables.

And of course, as you go up, you look at your fruit on the walls,

but then you have got shelter and more trees,

and that leads to another environment.

Exactly, it's all about the shelter.

That's a real handsome specimen that's been here for a long time.

Yes. Tell me about this tree.

It's a variegated Turkey oak and it's been here since 1937.

It was planted by Mairi Sawyer, Osgood Mackenzie's daughter,

to commemorate the completion of Inverewe House,

which is now open for the first time

for the visitors to see and get access to.

Yes. Magic environment - even Turkey oaks are happy. Yes!

Do you know, I often say a walk through a well-stocked garden

is like a world tour.

We've just come from Turkey and here we are in Australia.

I know, and these lovely Wollemi pines.

They are doing rather well, aren't they? Yes. So they enjoy this environment.

And growing quite quickly?

Yes, and our foreign visitors are always surprised at how well

they are actually doing here at Inverewe.

The other interesting thing about this very garden is they

are showing more potential, they are growing faster.

Definitely. It's the same genes, isn't it?

Mm-hm. But give them better conditions. Yes, totally.

And they're heading for the sky. Mm-hm. Wonderful.

This is one of the oldest bits

which Osgood developed, and as you can see,

what a range of plants in this area.

And the stature of them. They have definitely got shelter.

Totally. Without the shelter,

we just could not grow this range of plants.

Phenomenal.

I almost need reminding

that we are on a little offshore island because...

Lordy, lordy, lordy! We are in South Africa.

Yes, it is looking quite splendid at the moment.

Absolutely stunning! The old Dieramas here.

They are always popular with visitors, the Dierama.

We have got a medley of different plants and colours.

Even some stuff that I would have thought wasn't quite hardy.

What about the Aeonium? Do they stay all the time?

Some of them are hardy, but most of them we take in for the winter.

If we should leave them out, they would look a little bit too tatty.

I don't think I've ever seen one quite so large as that one.

Yes, that is Aeonium 'Cyclops'. It has got a lovely jade centre.

That's quite appropriate. Very popular with the visitors.

It is the right place to stop and for me to say thank you so much.

It's been great having you here. I am inspired with what you can grow when you get the conditions right.

Thank you very much. Well done, you. Thank you.

Inverewe is a truly inspirational garden, and nearby, in Badachro,

Helena Bowie is attempting to garden in similar conditions.

George went to see if he could help.

Isn't that a fabulous view?

Sky, sea, boats, nothing better than that.

We're on the West Coast of Scotland, where really,

when you stick things in the ground, they just grow.

So, what could be the problem here?

What was here when you arrived first?

A lot of scrap, rubbish,

fishing ropes buried, scrap metal from boats.

You just cleared it all off and then you took off all the vegetation.

Yes. And you exposed this wonderful rock moraine and rock face.

What you have got is something like we see at Inverewe,

and you have got a selection of plants.

Where did you get those?

Some from Inverewe and Turnaig, all locally sourced.

Right. So you went to the local sources.

And asked for advice. You've done all the things we tell people to do.

Good! We harp on about this on the programme.

"Go and look at what's in the other gardens."

So what's your problem? It's where to put them.

I don't know exactly where to site them.

Well, we'll do that. I will put them out, and I might even plant some,

you never know. You might plant them? That's right.

This is what is lovely about the West Coast.

There are so many tender plants you can grow here.

This is a Grevillea.

This is one which is from Australia.

It is supposed to have foliage like a juniper. There we are.

That has wonderful little orangey or yellow flowers.

We are going to put it at an angle.

We are going to put it in like that because I want that to come over the

top of this rock. This rock is providing drainage,

but also that is acting as a night storage heater

so when the sun hits this, it heats it up,

and that will heat the soil at the back and if I can keep the root ball of that plant up a little bit,

away from the water that is running through underneath,

it will cascade over the front here.

When you come down the path here, you can see it properly. Wonderful.

You wanted some cabbage palms planted in the grass.

Yes, please. Right. When you look from the window up there,

when you are sitting there reading a book and you look out here,

these are going to grow quite tall and you'll be able to look through them,

and it will almost be like being in the Bahamas. Wonderful! These wonderful cabbage palms.

But they're in the grass, and there's always a danger when we plant things in the grass

that when we come to mow it, that we damage the stems,

hit them with the lawnmower or strimmer or something like that.

So we're just going to plant them in here. OK. I have taken out this hole.

These look small plants at the moment.

Fabulous roots, look at those.

They are just desperate to get out of the pot.

These are going to go in like that.

I am going to plant them slightly high.

Slightly mounded, like that.

What happens now is that the water will drain away from the roots,

keep them nice and dry, and these will grow straight up.

What we are going to do to be able to cut down any competition

with weeds or things like that - piece of fabric, cut a hole in the middle,

grab your plant like that,

down through the centre, right?

It's just like putting a cagoule on or something like that.

There we are. Then you put stones around that.

You fold it... We'll fold it and it'll look neat.

Stones around it, and that's it.

There's no competition with the roots. It will stop the strimmers.

That's right. Now, there's lots of other things for us to do.

Oh, good. Let's get on and do them. Lovely.

It was Helena that contacted us in the first place,

and because of that we decided that Beechgrove would come to this

beautiful part of Scotland.

But, you know, to set up the Q session,

she's had a lot of help from the people that have been involved

in the fundraising campaign for the Gairloch Heritage Museum.

And, if you come to this area,

I'd highly recommend that you have a look around the museum

because it's absolutely fascinating.

Sadly, we don't have time for that just now,

because we are about to face lots of questions

from the Gairloch gardeners.

The MC is Mark Stephen,

and I'm going to join the rest of the panel,

that's Jim, George and Chris.

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,

and welcome to the Gairloch Community Hall.

We are absolutely delighted to be here.

It is such a beautiful part of Scotland.

You have got the mountains, the sea and the salt air and everything,

and of course you have the midges.

I have a question here -

what do midges in Gairloch eat when they can't get fresh gardener?

Please welcome to the stage the king of Scottish gardening, first of all,

Gentleman Jim McColl.

APPLAUSE

Carole Baxter.

APPLAUSE

George Anderson.

APPLAUSE

Chris Beardshaw.

APPLAUSE AND LAUGHTER

I would love to tell you that's unusual,

but he dresses like that all the time.

Ladies and gentlemen, your Beechgrove Garden Question Time panel.

APPLAUSE

Our first questioner is Isabel McKenzie.

Where are you, Isabel? Have you got a sample, by any chance?

No! Really! Come on.

Right. She's got here sample in her bag - it's all right.

I have got several hostas growing,

and most of them have been attacked by something,

and I wonder what it is and what the remedy is.

There are two things on here.

The first is a very common problem,

and that is the holes in the leaves which you see,

which are caused by either slugs or snails.

The other thing, however, and quite unusually

I can see on the back of this,

it looks like greenfly that are on the back as well.

I don't know if you can poke them with a stick and see if it moves.

No. Well, I wonder if it is indeed frass.

Frass is the excrement from a caterpillar.

To put it politely.

Which is what I have been asked to do tonight.

First of all, the main damage is caused by a slug or a snail,

or something like that. You want to encourage frogs,

and you want to encourage hedgehogs.

Then they will eat the slugs and snails,

and you will find it will clean the garden up a bit.

Other than that, you have to go out at night with a torch

and have all the neighbours speaking about you

while you are wandering about picking the slugs and snails

off the tops of your hostas.

Don't throw them over the wall to your neighbour.

They will make their way back - they've got a homing instinct.

We did some research. When we were kids, we used to get paid to collect,

particularly snails, large garden snails,

and we realised that tipping them over the garden wall was not doing an awful lot of good.

So we then painted each snail

and we put a little mark of paint on each shell,

and each colour that we used

indicated different distance away that we

put the snail after we'd caught it in the garden,

to see how far they would travel.

400 metres in one night.

LAUGHTER

And the other thing, of course,

if you are encouraging slugs out of the garden

by using things like newts and toads and that sort of thing, frogs,

don't put down conventional slug pellets because of course the slug pellets will kill the slugs,

but they will also cause problems for birds.

Coffee granules is something you can try.

You know, if you make a cafetiere of coffee,

I would suggest that you try and use that as a barrier around the plant.

If you grow things in pots, then you can get copper tape.

It almost gives it a bit of an electric shock, the copper.

You can buy them with batteries, the copper band.

You can, which is really a bit cruel.

And I know this is maybe a bit of a waste of your beer, but a slug pub.

You know, a jam jar, buried at ground level.

You're assuming that she drinks beer.

I've tried that. It was quite effective, actually. Good. Jim.

In my garden, I've got several different hostas

in different places,

and the most successful, with not a mark on them, is where they are planted

into an area of ground with a gravel topping.

Landscape fabric, a gravel topping.

The hostas in that situation, with gravel all around, there's not a mark on them.

Ian Crawford, where are you? Our tomato plants have collapsed.

The leaves just wilted completely.

Are they growing in big pots or grow bags?

A grow bag in the conservatory.

In the conservatory. And how are you feeding them?

Once a week with tomato feed.

The very fact that the leaves have collapsed,

to my mind there's one of two reasons.

One is that there is something seriously wrong with the root system.

Are the grow bags pretty sodden and wet?

Yes, the grow bag is sitting in a tray and I keep that well watered.

I would question the possibility

that the roots have been affected by very wet conditions.

The reason I asked about how much you are feeding them,

is because if you feed them too much,

it draws the sap out of the leaves and they collapse.

It's a condition known as plasmolysis.

If you are too keen and the feed is too strong,

basically the solution in the tray is stronger

than the solution in the plant, and it will go the opposite way.

You would have to go back and have a real look,

but my first impression is that by this time of the year,

grow bags get very wet and sodden,

and there's very little oxygen in there, its nearly all wet,

and that is when roots start to die.

When the roots die, the leaves will collapse.

I think the other thing that's worth pointing out

is to go back to your feeding process

and very often when we look at the side of a bottle

or a packet and it gives us a quantity to apply,

a quantity of food to apply,

we look at that and we kind of take that as a rough guide, and very often,

if you follow my grandmother's technique,

if it said four ounces a square yard, she would think well,

if four ounces a square yard is good, then 12 ounces would be really good.

Therefore you get over-enthusiastic with the feeding.

That's something to be really wary of.

Over-applying water, but also over-applying food can be really dramatic,

especially with plants like tomatoes.

It was great watching your face while we were speaking,

because it had "Guilty, m'lud" written all over it!

Yes, that's me. I overfed!

Irene McIntyre.

Can you give that to Carole, please?

I don't want that. I don't care.

We have this invasive bamboo in my garden.

How can we contain it without spoiling the appearance of the area round about it? Right.

The reason I say I don't want this

is I have this in my own garden,

and I am attacking it this year

because it is such an invasive bamboo.

It's one of the Sasas, so one of the broadleaved ones.

Some of the bamboos are fantastic

because they are clump forming.

These ones spread by the underground rhizomes.

Am I right in saying that? How much has it spread for you at the moment?

It has spread probably four or five metres under the lawn in all directions.

OK, that's not too bad because I would say mine has covered the whole of this stage,

and I have been going with my loppers cutting it back,

and then I'm afraid it's using the weedkiller glyphosate.

If you really like it and you want to keep it in the garden,

what you really need to do is dig a trench around the outside

and put in a barrier,

get yourself some... Concrete.

..old fertiliser bags or something.

It doesn't go down deep,

so if you dig a barrier down about 12 inches and put that around,

that should hopefully contain it,

but do it as soon as possible because honestly,

it will take over your garden.

Every single plant, when it gets out of bed in the morning,

is desperate to grow and to thrive and to occupy the niche,

and if you give it the right niche, it will just go absolutely crazy,

and that's what's happening with this.

Don't blame the plant, don't be put off.

If you need a plant to retain a bank that's about the same size

as Aberdeenshire or something like that, this is it.

It's brilliant in that scenario, isn't it?

My name is Hugh McIntyre and this is Beryl. Leslie.

Beryl Leslie. We seem to have a similar problem.

I live at Laide, where we have a fairly large greenhouse

and we have established a peach, 'Peregrine',

fan trained against one wall that will produce

between 50 and 100 beautiful peaches in a year, it really is lovely.

But, for the last two years, it is becoming infested with a little worm,

which appears around the stalk area and will go well into the peach.

We think it might be a codling moth that is causing it,

but we might be wrong about that.

It is the same variety of peach, and the same number of fruit,

and the same grub or whatever inside it.

Even if they don't have an answer, you pair could start a support group.

When you touch this grub, does it walk backwards?

Don't laugh. Does it walk backwards?

Do you know if it walks backwards?

No. No, it just wiggles.

It just wiggles, it doesn't walk backwards.

If it walked backwards, it would actually be a tortrix.

They have a tendency to walk backwards -

when you touch them on the nose, they will back off, as it were.

I don't have this on peaches because I don't grow peaches outside,

but I have a similar problem with apples.

It's typical of what has happened here.

You see how the leaves are just on top of the fruit like that?

With apples, sometimes when you have not thinned them sufficiently,

you will find that they grow close together like that,

just like peaches would, and you think "that is fabulous,

"that will look wonderful on a show bench."

You pick the apple or the peach and you go,

"oh, my goodness, that's another one to eat in the house."

It's all damaged on the top.

I think that sometimes it can be winter moth

and sometimes it can be tortrix,

and it's caterpillars

that are just not satisfied with eating the leaves,

but they use the leaves as a shelter and protection and they eat the skin

off the fruit because they are not going too far into the fruit.

There's no great nutrition in the fruit itself.

They are eating the skin of the fruit,

but they destroy and damage the fruit in that particular way.

I don't know if you can maybe get a nematode to control this.

There seem to be more and more of these biological controls

coming on the market that control more of the pests,

so that's maybe a route you could go down.

I agree with George.

I think it's either codling or it's going to be tortrix,

and I think the only way of determining

is to cut them open and have a look

to see whether the grub is in the centre, or whether,

as George was explaining,

if it's just on the foliage and around the tips.

It does go into the centre. If you cut that one open,

you might find one, because I saw it running around.

Yes, that does sound more like a codling, then.

While you were speaking there, Chris,

Carole was rehearsing for a new cookery programme.

She's marmalised that peach.

Apart from the top, it looks absolutely juicy and delicious,

but there's no sign, I'm afraid, of a beastie in there at all.

There was one when we left home, but it must be running around somewhere.

Search your pockets before you leave.

I'm glad we were able to bring you pair together.

I think we have seen the start of something really special here tonight.

Thank you very much. A final question from Madeline Burbridge.

When in the softer south-west of the UK,

I heartily disliked hydrangeas and red-hot pokers.

Living here in north-west Scotland,

I admire their tenacity in my exposed coastal garden.

Are there plants for which members of the team have a grudging respect?

One of the things I really like because of its persistence

is a New Zealand grass, and it's a thing called Chionochloa.

It's a tussock grass, so it doesn't produce rhizomes that go everywhere,

it produces this massive clump of foliage.

We have it planted outside one of our windows.

You can see it from the window when you are sitting at breakfast.

When the wind blows through it, it has got this gloss on the foliage and these long, thin,

almost hairlike bits of leaf, and it glistens.

When it has been raining,

the rain holds on these leaves,

and it's like a lot of fairy lights all the way along.

My admiration for this plant

is that it shows us the beauty in the weather, and it keeps going

in spite of all the weather that we throw at it,

and that is just one of the most rewarding plants

I've got in the garden.

Jim.

Well, I'm going to... not duck out,

but one of the plants I have a huge admiration for,

whether it's in the countryside or in anybody's garden,

and that is the rowan.

They are, if you're growing them as a garden plant,

one of the finest for smaller gardens because they don't get oversized.

They have got beautiful foliage, they have got beautiful flowers,

they are followed up by the berries which encourage the wildlife

and so on, so it is my all-time favourite tree.

Carole. Right, now I've had a bit of time to think,

and I want to watch Chris's face on this one.

It's a grass.

No! Yes, no!

It's pampas grass, but it is a variety that I really like.

It's 'Pumila', because it's a dwarf form,

and we have a lovely one in the seaside garden at Beechgrove,

which looks absolutely tremendous.

You HAD one. Have you burned it down? Have you not been back?

But it is stunning, and it looks great all year round.

Finally.

I would add sycamore to that list.

There's a whole range of plants

that you have a grudging respect for.

Sycamore for me, it is the number one forest weed.

What I admire about it is the thing

that captured my eye when I was four years old,

and that's the little helicopter seeds that come down in autumn.

I collected a load of those when I was four, took them home,

and my father, seeing that I was kind of interested in gardening,

had given me a patch of land behind the garage where he couldn't get

anything to grow. He gave me that patch of land and I sowed all these

sycamore seeds and they all started to germinate,

and when we moved house, when the trees were about 15 feet high,

I made sure that he moved them and they went to the new house,

and they were planted out, and they went next to the new garage, and they are still there.

The garage has now subsided because of the root damage which has been caused by the trees.

It is a really good plant if you want to prove how effective plants are at growing,

and very good if you want to knock a garage down.

'After a lively panel discussion, we took some more informal questions.'

I then headed out of Gairloch to visit Chrissy and Bob,

who live in an idyllic but relatively barren spot in South Erradale.

What strikes me straightaway as you come into the garden is the grass.

It is immaculate, and such a contrast to the surrounding landscape.

Who is responsible for it?

That's my job. It's about the only job I do in the garden

is look after the grass. Also what makes it so immaculate is the edges as well.

Do you do that? No, that's Chrissy's job.

She's the edger in chief. Chrissy chooses to do that!

My grandfather told me edges make a lawn, so he taught me how to do...

I was just wee, mind, and he taught me how to do the edging.

I have carried it on all these years.

And I think it is true, isn't it?

It really, really works. What about the plants, then?

I'll disappear, then. Are you going to put the kettle on?

I'll put the kettle on.

The colour that you've got here with the archway.

The roses have been outstanding this year.

These just ramble along and they don't get much attention

and then they come out with the honeysuckle. A beautiful perfume.

Yes, yes. On both sides. What about the clematis?

Oh, 'Bill MacKenzie' works wonders over there, and he's twofold.

You get the flowers, and then you get these lovely seed heads.

OK, let's go through the archway, because I would like to see

what's going on there. Right, will I go first?

I spy straightaway the tatties. Oh, we always need tatties.

Most years we've got enough tatties to see us right through to springtime.

OK, so totally self-sufficient in your potatoes?

Yes, we are - we try to be, anyway. I'm a bit lazy.

I'm not good at making tattie drills.

So we plant the potatoes on the flat, and then we put the compost,

a thick layer of compost on the top, and as the potatoes come through,

I drill them up with my handy hoe.

I tell you, that's a real handy hint as well.

Good. You obviously love your vegetables, you have got such a variety.

We are vegetarian, so that's why we've got a lot of vegetables.

And you know, putting on the mesh, do you find that works really well?

Definitely it does, it keeps away all the butterflies and things.

Do you think that tea is ready?

I hope so because my hands are soaking and cold.

Come on, let's go inside. Thank you so much, it's wonderful.

OK.

I tell you what, we couldn't leave this wonderful sojourn at Gairloch

without drawing attention to the community garden.

Isn't it stunning? Absolutely.

15 months ago, there was a gorse hedge along here,

and nobody could see anything. They couldn't see this view at all.

Absolutely stunning. It now looks really great,

and I think it's truly clever with those planters,

you have got a crash barrier at the front, a bit of timber at an angle,

and also a bit of drainage, which I think we need today.

When communities pull together, they can work wonders.

And everybody has made us feel so welcome, haven't they?

It's just been fabulous. It really has. We've had a great time.

We look forward to seeing you at Beechgrove next week

if we have dried out by that time. Goodbye. Goodbye.