Episode 2 The Beechgrove Garden

They're funny looking things.

They are, like big spiders with massive legs on them, haven't they?

Hello. Welcome to Beechgrove. Welcome back, Mr Anderson.

-Thank you very much.

-My two colleagues here planting asparagus.

Now if you were first year students,

one of the first things you're asked to do is to learn how

to prepare land for planting and sowing.

What have you done to prepare this?

-OK, it's been a spade's depth, it's a single digging.

-Mmm.

..and Beechgrove Garden compost has been put in to that

and if you don't have that,

something like well rotted manure, horse manure, something like that.

What's that at the back?

That's just general fertiliser on the backfill soil.

What a bizarre way of planting.

Well, you've got to make sure the roots get spread out

and they are 15 inches apart.

Yeah, OK. These are male plants?

Male plants, a variety called Mondeo.

The idea why you have male plants is that they don't produce fruits, they

don't produce seed, so you don't get seedlings coming up in the bed...

-We don't want the females, do we?

-We don't want the females.

No, no, just be careful.

The ladies actually come into cropping earlier

-but the males have a heavier crop but you're better...

-They do.

Better to keep them separate. We don't want seedlings.

Speaking about heavier crops,

-we've had a sad story here, haven't we?

-Mmm.

Two crops have pretty much failed with us

-in the next-door polytunnel.

-Yeah.

And we do defer, because you have a bed of asparagus

which is 18 years old.

It is. And, you know, people often say expensive to buy

but it's well worth it if you get a crop for that length of time.

-Have you been cropping already?

-I have, 27th of March.

Dariana is the variety which, you know, you don't

seem to get that now. This one, as you said, was Mondeo.

Yes, well, that's it. I better let them get on with it.

Later in the programme, amongst other things,

-we will be pruning again.

-Yes.

-And I'll be doing some winter stem planting.

-Right, let's get on.

And we're just about at the end of the bare root season

but the great thing about bare root plants is that you can save

money and that's perfect for me

because in this series it's all about gardening on a budget.

Well, you know, every year there are some new products turn up

and we want to try them out on your behalf.

The one that's taken the biscuit with me this year

is a new peat free compost, which is also free of green waste,

which should give it a little bit more consistency. This is it.

It will be readily available in major outlets and the texture

is quite rough but it might be a very good growing medium.

We're about to find out.

Now I would not test that on cuttings,

or on seed sowing

but young plants. Here we have some young half-hardy perennials.

Here's a little pelargonium here, ready for potting on.

Look, the roots are just coming around the outside.

It wants to be in a bigger pot.

A little bit of this stuff in the bottom,

measure it, see that it's the right height and, you know,

when you're wondering what size of pot, there should be room

for two fingers between the ball of soil

and the edge of the pot.

Now we load it up. This plant is well established.

It's got a good root system.

It will tell us if the compost is any good or not.

So long as you remember to look after it, water it and so on.

Now this plant won't need watering just now

because the ball of soil was watered before I brought

it out to the greenhouse.

As the ball of soil begins to dry out,

you want the roots to move into the new stuff.

That's how it becomes established. It looks quite nice in that.

So time alone will tell how good that compost is.

The other thing that I discover is that commercial

growers of vegetables, seed plants,

use a mixture of bio char,

which is a material which is halfway to being charcoal,

made into a compost, and coir.

What they do is they mix it together, biochar and coir.

Then the difference with these is that for the most part you

maybe have more difficulty getting them,

they're not as readily available as that sort of stuff

but they make an excellent medium for sowing seeds.

There we go.

Now the next thing, of course, is to sieve it.

Put it through the sieve and then it'll be ready.

Now we don't waste that. That goes in the bottom of the pot.

Don't throw away anything at all but here we've got a really lovely,

fine mixture ready for seed sowing.

The other new thing that's on the market,

this is this mixture in here, is agretti,

which is known as land seaweed.

This is the one all the chefs are after.

It's in short supply. It's Italian and we're going to try it out.

On the packet it says sow in a nice sunny position, well-drained site.

Not here in Aberdeenshire we don't.

We will try it here and once we know what it looks like,

and how it goes, it will be absolutely fine.

I can't wait to taste it.

I tend to like these sort of samphires and all the rest of it.

Isn't that quite...?

It'll be in the greenhouse.

A cold greenhouse.

So we shall wait and see.

Then we will test out this mix on some tomatoes,

and some climbing courgettes, would you believe...

There we go.

Label it. Stand back

and watch the grass grow.

JIM LAUGHS

Aren't these wonderful?

Even on a cold, dreich, damp day, at Beechgrove,

there we have the promise of spring, snowdrops and crocus

and aconites, all coming up.

But, do you know, we can't just wait till spring

until everything comes out and gives us a bit of excitement.

So what I want to do is introduce you to winter stem colour

and I've got a range of winter stems down here

and we can use those in a particular way.

We plant them so that the winter sun,

which of course has lots of reds and oranges in it,

and yellows in it when it's shining, because it's at a low angle,

that will hit these stems and really make them sing and zing

and they will get lots and lots of excitement. Look at this fellow.

This is what I'm talking about. Look at that.

This is Cornus alba 'Midwinter Fire.'

When we look at it that way it's one colour.

When we look at it that way, it has changed colour

and that's what we want to exploit.

We want to exploit the range of colours which we can get on stems.

And then for structure, which is the other thing which is

important in the garden over winter, we've got one or two evergreens.

We've got holly, we've got common broom

and I've got some eucalyptus.

I've got the right place to plant them, it's just down on

this banking and in that way the sun will shine right into them.

Betula albosinensis, the white-stemmed Himalayan birch

is a must-have if you're putting in an example of winter stem colour.

That's what I've got here. I've got one in the back amongst this.

The other selection of plants which we've chosen, we've got

hollies, we've got eucalyptus and we've got broom,

which will give a structure across the whole of the site

and then we've got a whole range of cornus

and of willows which we're going to cut hard back.

We're going to coppice them so it gets lots and lots of young shoots

coming up and when you do that,

you want to plant those plants close together

so you get this effect, which we've got with the bamboo,

where you get lots and lots of stems with bright colour

and the whole thing comes to life.

Well, this is the site that we've selected for the winter stems.

It faces into the south.

It'll catch the evening sunshine, just as the sun's going down.

Remember that's when we get these wonderful yellows

and oranges in the sunset

and these will be reflected onto some of the stems which are here.

We've stripped off some of the old turf that was here.

We've given it a rough cultivate,

I've just raked off some of the extraneous material

and all we need to do now is to set the plants out and get them planted.

For that, a couple of gardeners are going to give me a hand.

One of them could go in just in at the back there, couldn't it?

Could the hazels go slightly to the right, do you think?

We've painted the picture, as it were, with the plants.

We can see where we want them.

Where they're sitting now is where we plant them.

We will give them some fertiliser.

There's some fish, blood and bone there which we can put in around

the hole when we plant them

and then give them just a quick mulch around the tops.

Right, look at that, look at the amount of root on that. Right?

That's the bit that gives you the vigour.

That'll push the shoots up and we'll get lots of growth on it.

I think it'll be grateful to get out of the pot!

When you're planting on a slope,

the problem is that people often

put the plants in at the wrong angle and what happens...

If they put it in at the wrong angle with the slope,

it's lying down the hill. You don't want that.

The thing that's important is that you get the plants

sitting at the right angle.

So what we're going to do here is we're going to take out just

a little terrace, or a flat platform like that

and we're going to put the plant in.

There we are.

We want to get it round that way so that it'll come up straight.

So that's the idea. Then the stem goes up and it works properly.

When we're growing plants for winter stem colour,

the things that we want are young, vigorous shoots.

One-year-old shoots because they have the best bark colour on them.

Look at that there. That's a one-year-old shoot.

That's the sort of colour which you want on it.

This is two and three-year-old wood

and that's just a sort of olive-green.

It's not what we want at all.

So what I want to do is to cut these right down to the bottom.

Right down there, just like that.

That's that one out and I'll take this one off, as well.

-And then...

-CHUCKLES

And then I'm going to cut these back as well.

So pay attention to what's behind me

because the same thing is going to happen there.

Now, you might think that's pretty harsh treatment but, you know,

if you come back next year at this time,

the growth on those shrubs will be at least two-foot long.

Well, that was some pruning that George did there and, in fact,

George was by this lovely bamboo here, the phyllostachys.

I say lovely because this one is fairly well-behaved.

It's one of the clump-forming ones, rather than the spreading.

OK, occasionally the rhizomes do spread a little bit

and so we've got to keep it sort of still well-behaved

and so we will take one or two of these and cut the rhizomes.

But my idea with this particular bamboo...

Normally, perhaps, you would grow it like this

and have it as a hedge or a screen

but in this situation by the pond,

it's on its own and I feel we need to open it up a bit.

So what I want to do is thin out some of the canes themselves

and I want a gap of something about that, and that is then going

to create a nice sort of open and airy habit to it.

Then the other job...

I'm going to take the secateurs

and I'm basically going to lift the skirt a bit and I'm going to

take off all of these little side shoots, or the side leaves.

My aim is to maybe go up to about this height.

I'm pretty sure Mairi and myself have got our work cut out

and I think it's going to take us about an hour to do this.

And this is the result.

All we needed was some loppers and secateurs

and I'm so pleased with it. It really has opened it up.

You get to see the beautiful golden stems

and then you get the wonderful reflection in the water.

Well, we've come up into the fruit cage where

I want to do a little bit more pruning and this is the mini

apple orchard, the ones that we planted quite close together.

They're only about two-foot apart and the idea is we keep them

nice and small.

We train them up as single cordons, or little columns of growth,

getting them up to about that height and that height only.

The idea is to get the fruit buds as close to the stem as possible

so that we get maximum cropping,

lots and lots of fruit

in as small a space as we possibly do.

This one here is doing quite well.

It's a thing called Keswick Codlin.

Look at all these fruit buds.

These are the buds which have these wonderful conical shapes

and that's going to produce lots of flower and lots of blossom

and we'll get lots of fruit next to the main stem.

This one, however, look at that.

This one has got the idea that it should do a bit more growing first.

So what we've got to do here is we've got to prune it back

and we've still got time to do that this far north in Scotland.

We can still prune these things back and we're going to take them

to about two or three buds.

That's the sort of thing that we're doing, giving it may be

a right fright in that way, and that way we get lots

and lots of fruit buds being produced again near the main stem.

This one, however, has gone mad. Look at that.

It's supposed to be on a dwarfing rootstock

but it's growing like fury.

This one is going to get quite a severe pruning.

You've maybe seen that before in the programme somewhere.

I'm going to take off most of those shoots

but really just into about three or four buds,

that sort of way.

Try and retain the shape of the plant at the same time.

I'll take that one to there.

I'll just take that weaker one up there.

That one to there.

So we get lots and lots of growth

in near the main stem

and that's the idea.

We don't want big plants where we're on a ladder having to pick

the fruit. I want to keep my feet on the ground.

I have drawn the short straw.

I pruning clematis and if there's one thing that gets me

upset is trying to prune clematis

because there's all different kinds of pruning,

depending on whether they flower early, mid-season or late.

This is Miss Bateman

and she is in Class 2 which is flowering in early summer.

If you leave it and you get some nice flowers,

then you can prune it afterwards and, with a bit of luck,

if it's an Indian summer you might get a second batch of flowers.

Not in this country. Not this far north.

I don't think so. And that means somebody will write in

and tell me that they do it nae bother, ten miles further north.

All I'm going to do with this fella is tidy up the dead bits.

Like this.

Because, as you can see, you know,

there's some beautiful growths coming away there.

I don't want to spoil that now.

I might take that back to there.

In other words, I'm doing a tidying up job,

just at the present time.

Once I've been over it, checked it out,

then I shall give it a really good dose of fertiliser.

As we do with all these things at this time of year.

As I shall keep reminding you.

I've come down to the area where last year

we grew lots of vegetables in a small space.

This was our small space gardening area

and we grew things like potatoes and cabbage and leeks and onions,

all the traditional things that we normally grow in a garden.

The idea was to try and get them to grow

and produce well in as small a space as possible.

I want to do the same again this year

but I want to stretch it slightly more.

What I'm going to do this time is I'm going to grow

lots of leafy vegetables,

things which will produce leaves for salads and I want to be able

to produce stuff from, what, May right through until October.

So this soil, because we're going to be doing intensive

gardening in it has got to have lots and lots of fertility.

It's got to be, really, really rich soil and in order to do that,

I've got to build it up.

What we've done here is we've added some compost onto the top,

some organic matter and then I'm going to put on a base dressing.

A base dressing is the dressing of fertiliser which you put on.

Generally it's slow release

and that is put on in order to break down, quite slowly,

and I don't want to dig it in too deeply either

because I'm just going to cover it into the top like that

so that the fertiliser is near the surface of the soil.

That means that when the plant roots start to grow,

it's there immediately for them.

That way, we get this intensive growth,

we get this rapid growth and it will go on right throughout the season.

Now if you look over there,

you will see that there are already

one or two weeds starting to germinate.

That means the soil temperatures are, what, 35,

about five or six in the new money, in Centigrade,

and that's about the temperature that some things will germinate.

Peas and beans will germinate in that.

If I grow peas and beans in this intensive system,

what I can have are leaves, flowers and pods

which I can use in the salad.

What's really important is, they have to be very well fed

and well looked after.

A frequently asked question is how do

we garden without spending a fortune?

Because the harsh reality for most of us

is that we spend our cash on our home,

having a roof over our head and there is very little money

left for other things, including the garden.

So what I want to introduce you is a variety of gardening projects

throughout the series, keeping an eye on those pennies,

so hopefully we can garden on a budget.

Mieke Guijt and family moved into a home of their dreams

near Kennethmont in rural Aberdeenshire just last year.

With the house came a garden full of potential

but in a very exposed location and on a tight budget, it's a challenge.

How are you settling in, Mieke,

cos this looks like you've been busy already?

Yes. Very busy.

It was a huge tree and they started chopping on one bit

but one big ranch cracked off so it was a bit unsafe,

so we just decided to take the whole tree down. It would be a nice...

-A nice little project.

-Yes.

-It's something you can do definitely gardening for the budget.

-Yes.

What about your own gardening background?

Well, as you probably hear, I'm from the Netherlands.

So, yeah, tulip bulbs and all sorts.

Small things. Window boxes?

Yeah, and pots and gardening just in little bits.

Then we moved to Scotland and, yeah, rented a house.

A little bit bigger the garden and, yeah, eventually ended up here.

Now you have this, which is beautiful.

So what do you really want to get out of it?

I've got two children, Darren and Lilian, and I'd love exploring

-when I was little, and er..

-Me too!

Yes, and just finding out that there are things roundabout that you can

eat, and that's what I would like for my children, as well.

Just in the woodland that you can just forage for stuff

-and then...

-And the wildlife as well?

Yeah, here there is the birds, it's amazing.

That's what I would like, just to get more, yeah, more of this.

OK, well, you know, you did mention about the foraging,

so I think what we'll do to start off with

is go down into the wooded area,

and we'll be planting some edibles there.

Yeah, that sounds good.

-Well, Mieke, I've got a variety of edible plants here.

-Yes.

They're quite small and they're the plants that we call bare-root.

-Have you ever dealt with bare-root plants at all?

-No, no.

This is the very first time.

OK, well, what these are is they're actually field-grown,

and they're lifted in the dormant season. That's really important.

So it is a limited period.

And normally I'd be saying October to March,

but you can sometimes go September - April.

So we're just into April.

And the beauty of bare-root is that they are cheap cos, you know,

-they haven't got the maintenance of going into a container.

-OK, yeah.

-And they're working out at about roughly £2.50 a plant.

-OK!

-Which is not bad at all.

-No, that's not bad.

-It came as a pack, as an edible hedge.

-Yeah.

And we actually have these at the Beechgrove Garden,

and the hedge is looking quite good at the moment.

However, what I want to do is plant them as more individual plants,

maybe in threes. And we've got...

Right, I'm going to pick this one first of all.

-This is sloe, or the blackthorn.

-Yes?

-Do you like sloe gin?

-Er, I've tried it once, it was quite nice.

-OK, so you might try that.

-Yes, yes.

-Elder, which doesn't mind slightly damper conditions.

-Yep.

We've got cherry plum, with also got pear.

-And the other one is hazel, so some nuts.

-Yes, that's really good.

-Yeah, so that will be quite exciting.

-Yeah.

-So that's probably the cheapest way that we can go.

-Yeah.

Then we move, again, to another bare-root plant, but much bigger.

And this is a crab apple.

I've never grown this variety, it's Harry Baker.

Yeah, sounds good to me. Harry Baker!

Nice, big crab apples, so you could make jelly from them.

And, because it's bare-root again, you're going to save money

-in comparison to having something in a container.

-Yeah.

I reckon maybe about half or possibly a third off.

And then, finally...

Now, this was a request from you, the linden tree,

or the small-leaved lime. Why did you want that?

It's a beautiful leaf, the colour is beautiful.

And then I found out you can... Yeah, you can eat them.

So what better than that? And it's just a memory as well.

They grow in Holland, in front of the farm windows,

-and they lead them on sticks.

-Oh, pleached?

-I... Might be.

-Yeah, that's what they call it. Pleached.

-OK.

And so it blocks the light, but in a certain way -

because of a lovely colour of the leaves,

-you get a lovely light through it.

-Oh, how beautiful.

-Yeah.

OK, container-grown, so we're going a little bit up in price.

-But I've gone for small.

-Yes.

-So, again, that saves you money.

And, you know, sometimes smaller is better

-because it gets established a little bit quicker.

-Yeah.

We will have to stake these two, but, you know, they should be fine.

-So on with the planting, I think.

-Really good, yeah.

Looking forward to that.

-Those roots, we've had those in water.

-Yes.

Because the last thing you want

-is all those lovely, fibrous roots there...

-Being dry.

See all those fibrous roots? You don't want those to dry up

-because those are the roots that take up the moisture.

-Yes.

-Now, you see, Mieke, that's got quite a long tap root on it.

-Yeah.

And I was speaking about the lovely, fibrous roots -

those are the ones that we want.

-So I'm going to just take off a bit at the end here.

-OK.

Won't do any harm.

-We've got some soil conditioner.

-Yeah.

And some slow-release fertiliser - fish, blood and bone.

I'm going to just pop that on there.

And then, if I start putting some of this in...

And while I do that, give it a little bit of shoogle, like that,

-cos that gets the soil...

-To the roots, yeah.

And when you're actually planting, you can use the heel...

So here's another...

-And I'd go the other way.

-OK...

-You don't want to see the colour of the carpet!

-Oh!

THEY LAUGH

You know, the beauty about hessian

is, you know, it's going to let the moisture through.

It's going to suppress all those weeds

and, you know, the weeds are a huge competitor for moisture,

as much as about sort of 60%.

-And for nutrients.

-Wow, yeah.

So even if you can keep this on for a year or two,

-it will pay dividends.

-Yes.

The last thing we are looking at today, Mieke,

is away from edibles -

we're actually going to go for a bit of colour

and winter colour, cos I think that's quite important.

We have a long season, don't we, in the winter time?

So we've got dogwoods, and I've got you two different types.

I got the red stems and also the yellow or the green.

And, you know, OK, I was saying container-grown is more expensive,

but these dogwoods aren't particularly expensive,

you know, compared to some plants that you buy in containers.

I've gone for half a dozen of each

but, in a small garden, somebody could start with one

-and then increase their stock.

-Yeah.

I also thought, because of the water, and the sun,

-you're going to get that lovely reflection of the colours.

-Yeah.

-It's a beautiful colour.

-The next time I come back...

-Yeah.

..a wee job for you, cos I think we're going to do compost bins.

-Yeah?

-So you might have to clear an area.

-Yeah.

And I have a nice little trip for us as well. A bit of a shopping trip.

-OK.

-So we'd better watch the pennies.

Yes. Yes, yes. Budget! Sweet.

So the money-saving ideas are...

bare-root and smaller container plants,

bulk buying and increasing dogwoods by hardwood cuttings,

and carpets used as mulch.

Well, and I keep reminding you, all the plants,

the perennials in the garden need a feed.

And I'm using a proprietary, slow-release fertiliser.

Very popular. It's used in making up composts and so on.

That's the sort of thing for this rose,

which is needing a bit of encouragement. There you go.

And then, with a fork, just get it prickled in.

That's it. The wee bit of mulch.

Then, by Jove, just stand back and watch it loup.

Now, these are lovely, healthy-looking sweet peas.

They were sown in the middle of February,

at now is a perfect time to be nipping out the top.

Because what we're looking for is one, two, maybe three leaves,

and I will nip the top there.

Then what happens is you get beautiful side shoots.

And you will do this whether you're growing them as cordons

or whether you're growing them up a trellis.

Snowdrops are just about finished flowering now, so what we can do

where we've got some congested clumps, we can lift them carefully,

take off the old seed heads, like that - just take them off -

and then gently tease the clump apart.

What you want to do is to get two, three bulbs in each little clump.

And then what you're going to do is you are going to plant these

at the depth they were before.

That's it, just like that.

And what I'm doing is I'm going to plant them

all the way along here,

underneath the winter stems that I've planted

so that we get a carpet of white

to complement the other colours of winter.

Well, I can't really promise that this is the last bit of mayhem

that we're going to cause with secateurs this year,

-but it's time this was done.

-Yeah, the pampas grass.

This is a brightly called Pumila, so it's a dwarf form.

-It's a nice size, isn't it?

-It is.

-A real feature in the seaside garden.

-Yes, yes, yes.

But if you'd like any more information

about this week's programme, it is all in the fact sheet,

and the easiest way to access that is online.

Next week, for me, is alpines. What about you, George?

-Well, I think I might do some pruning.

-Oh, no, take the secateurs!

-You don't dare!

-Plenty to do here.

Well, I'm asking myself a very strange question -

to dig, or not to dig?

That's a question. Until then...

-ALL:

-Goodbye.