Episode 24 The Beechgrove Garden

Well, hello and welcome to Beechgrove Garden.

We're patently not in it today.

In fact, we're in the best kept village in Fife, Strathkinness,

which is on the high road two miles west of St Andrews,

which you can see just there in the background.

And isn't it a wonderful spot?

Absolutely splendid. It's supposed to be one of the milder areas

of Fife because there's mountains to the west and the air coming over it.

It kind of warms up, we say, down into here.

-Oh, really?

-But also,

the soil here comes from an underlying hard sandstone

which was glaciated - wonderful soil left,

the hard lumps which we see, the hills have been mined out, there's quarries in those,

and all the stones from that went to build the Victorian houses and

everything round about, so a great area, really.

Now, something else that's really favourable - we've got the sunshine today -

-is the amount of sunshine hours, about 1,500 on average.

-Really?

Which is really comparable to places down in southern England,

which is fantastic.

-But what about the broccoli, Jim?

-Yes, we are here, in fact, in a field of broccoli.

65 acres of it. Absolutely fantastic.

Cropped from about June right till October, November.

-First frost.

-And the varieties?

This is parthenon.

This is the standard variety.

But you're always looking for something different.

-That's one of the newer ones - look at the difference in the shape of it.

-Yes, that one's Monrello.

Yes, aye. Absolutely fantastic.

Well, everyday's a school day, we've a lot more to learn.

We ought to get moving.

-We should.

-Before we freeze to the spot.

Jim, George and I are out and about in and around Strathkinness,

where the gardening conditions are really rather good.

So we will be finding out what grows and possibly what doesn't

in this area of Fife.

We've been invited by Strathkinness Community Trust

to host a question session later on -

and hopefully between us we might even have some answers.

It's a very small pear. She's not going to win many prizes with this!

It's more of a single than a pear, really.

In the village hall, on the panel, Jim, George and I were joined by Brian Cunningham,

head gardener of Scone Palace.

The Strathkinness community are a pretty active bunch,

and amongst other things they have recently created a productive community garden

and a Jubilee orchard, which Jim and George went to take a look at.

Iain Duncan, trustee of this project.

When did it all start and what were your objectives?

In August 2010, Jim, this piece of ground became available to the Trust,

and it was decided that we could create a community garden and an orchard

in time for the Jubilee, and that's what we set out to do.

We just brought in the various elements of allotments, polytunnel,

fruit cage and greenhouses,

just to give the local community an opportunity to participate.

We created this border from plants that we'd gathered throughout the village, people were throwing out.

So nothing has been purchased, it's all grown from...

And there'll be lots of different village groups taking part.

-Oh, yes.

-There's children, for example?

The school has a very active gardening club. They have an allotment here,

and we have a good relationship with the school, and hopefully we're producing gardeners for the future.

Absolutely, that's the whole point.

But as in every garden, there are wee problems here and there.

-Oh...

-Mr Anderson's off to find one or two.

We have problems.

When they established the community orchard back in 2011,

rather than using grass as a ground cover they were given some plants of

Geranium endressii wargrave, this wonderful pink geranium you see here.

And they split it up into very small portions and planted it all over.

The effect is just fantastic, this is a unique experience to see this.

Really super. They chose varieties of apple which were going to be

hardy in Scotland, and here are the results -

we've got this one, Laxton's Fortune,

absolutely splendid crop on here.

But the crop's getting too high. So to solve that problem,

what they've done is they've taken a series of strings,

tied them to some of the longer shoots, arched the shoots over,

so we have what's called a spindle bush effect on the apple.

That brings the crop lower to the ground,

and then we can take out the centre branch and we can pick all our apples with our feet on the ground.

As we all know, this has been a bad year for blight in potatoes.

And this is what happens if it gets into the tuber -

you see that rot that's coming on round the outside of the tuber.

And of course, once that starts to rot, it allows other things to get in.

But secondly, there's been a lot of slug damage.

There's slug damage in this one. And that is really nasty.

But there's an even nastier problem here,

and that's that little fella there.

Wireworm. Can you see it?

And there's one in there - ooh, dear.

There isn't a control for that either. But good husbandry, in other words,

early cultivation of the ground - keep cultivating and you'll get

the birds finding these in the top layers,

and that's about the only way that you'll control that little blighter.

Mm. That's got a bit of a bite to it. The community group have been very clever here,

they've sown out a number of winter salads,

and anybody can come in and pick them and take them home and use them.

There's also a problem - there's a grape over there which is flowering and fruiting quite well,

but at this side there's one which hasn't done anything this year.

There's the remnants of old flowers here, which means that it started to think about flowering and fruiting,

but it didn't bother. And the reason?

It's too busy growing. So what we need to do is to slow it down.

If we give this one some sulphate of potash,

that will really slow down the growth.

Bit of judicious growing, a bit of feeding,

and that will solve that problem.

So that's one problem solved, one question answered.

But you know, this group has lots and lots of questions that they want to ask us,

and at the Q&A session, that's where we'll find out what they are.

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and a warm welcome to Strathkinness Village Hall.

Please welcome our gardening panel.

First off, the mighty oak, Mr Jim McColl!

Secondly, that lovely graceful willow, Miss Carole Baxter.

APPLAUSE

Genial juniper, George Anderson.

APPLAUSE

And finally, ladies and gentlemen, some local talent.

Head gardener at Scone Palace,

please welcome tender sapling Brian Cunningham.

Right, we'll get straight off into the first question, and that question comes from Mr Hugh Laurie.

The tops of my onions this year turned a grey milky colour and dusty.

Think it was maybe mildew, but I would like you to confirm this, please.

And I've lifted my onions, cut the tops off - I'd like you to tell me,

-will they keep?

-Who will I give this to? Jim, for a start, I think.

-Thank you.

-Cos Jim knows his onions!

Yes, indeed. Yes, indeed.

I think mildew has been quite widespread this year.

It doesn't seem to have checked the growth,

and it shouldn't mean that the bulbs won't keep over winter.

You've got them in a good state, they're well dried off now, they're as firm as anything.

They're a perfect size, they don't be to be like footballs.

I aim for tennis ball size, and they're just about that.

And I can assure you, they will keep in this condition all the way through to next year,

-without a shadow of a doubt. Good stuff.

-Thank you very much.

The best way to store them that I've ever been advised

is to get an old pair of tights...

-OK?

-Unused.

Or not occupied, anyway.

-Well, quite. And certainly washed.

-Yes.

You drop the first onion down into the toe.

And you tie a little knot.

Then you drop the next one on top of it and tie a little knot.

And you hang them up in the garage. And then all you do when need to get an onion for the soup,

you just chop it off at the bottom. But you can actually see them, they're well aired,

-and they keep perfectly in that situation.

-Thank you.

-George, any comments?

Well, I'm pretty envious of these, actually, because there's no way I could produce an onion like this

because my allotment is full of mouldy nose and onion rot and things like that.

-Brian, do you want to come in?

-All I can say is they're far better than

the onions we're growing up at Scone Palace, so if you've got ten minutes to pop up, that would be brilliant.

-He's got a job!

-Thank you very much, Hugh.

Anne Lumsden, where are you?

Oh, dear. I'm not sure I want to even touch that.

I think it's dead, Brian.

This has got to go to Jim, this has got Jim written all over it.

It's quite ghastly.

There you go, Jim. A wee present for you.

-Yes, yes.

-Right.

Anne, your question, please.

What's gone wrong with my tomatoes?

Two weeks ago they were fine.

Now, as you can see, they're just horrible.

And I've lost 80% at least of my crop.

Well, I hate to disappoint you, but I haven't a clue.

To describe them further, it's a beautiful truss of tomatoes,

and they've suddenly gone wrinkled.

Well, I know a bit about that.

And also sticky, with an exudate.

I've never seen anything like that in my life before.

Can I ask you a bit about the rest of the plant?

What's the foliage like?

The foliage was OK.

So you're saying the foliage itself is quite healthy, is it?

Because I wondered about blight or something, Jim,

just like we have the tattie blight.

And I wondered if your foliage was showing a little bit of that.

I've never seen this. Pure and simple.

Congratulations, Anne, you've got something new!

Unknown to medical science.

It has been a very bad blight year,

and of course if in the summer in bright weather you've got glasshouses and so

on with wide ventilators, then the spores can affect the tomato.

That's why it would have been fine to see some foliage,

because that's very telling.

George, you've just done an autopsy on one of them.

Yeah. It's dead.

If it wasn't before, it is now.

It is now.

This is very much like just a really bad attack of blight.

And that's why Carole was asking about the foliage,

because if it had been blight

it would have devastated the foliage as well.

But when you cut it open,

I would have expected much more blackening within the flesh, but there's not.

But I still wouldn't make them into chutney.

No.

-Throw them out.

-Right.

Mrs Catherine Cooper.

Good evening.

I was given a...

..cucumber plant, and the fruit was inedible,

it was just horrible tasting.

It grew well, it had lovely leaves and lots of cucumbers but they were inedible.

You've got a problem there, I think.

Probably the fruits were very bitter, were they?

-Yes.

-Horrible flavour.

-Yes.

-It's a problem with the fact that you've got males on that plant,

as well as females.

-So.

-How can you tell?

-Right, well...

-Oh.

LAUGHTER

Dim the lights so we don't see the red faces.

I'm going to say... There's an old-fashioned variety,

I think it's called Telegraph.

-Yes, it is.

-And that has male and female.

Now, you can normally tell because the female has a little sort of bulge

and that's the one that's going to produce the fruit.

If there isn't a bulge, you need to pick off the male flowers.

But what I would really say to you nowadays,

a lot of the varieties that you can look at in the catalogues are all female.

This year I've been growing...

..a variety called Anbar,

which actually pollinates itself, it's all female.

We have another one called Baby,

and that produces very small fruits and again that's all female.

Where did you get the plant from, did you say a friend give it to you?

It was my daughter-in-law gave me it, and...

Now, what can I say to that?!

She grew them from seed,

and hers and mine were inedible

but another two that she gave away were lovely.

Were OK.

Well, as I say, I think you've got to look at varieties,

and next time pick something that's all female.

"My daughter-in-law gave me a male cucumber" sounds like a Channel 4 programme.

I'm not sure we want to go there, but thank you very much. Right.

-OK.

-Hello, I'm Belinda Newman,

I garden all over Fife cos that's my job.

I'm creating a herbaceous border,

and I want to have herbaceous perennials and also some small shrubs.

Unfortunately, we have a problem with rabbits coming into the garden,

and I wonder if the panel can recommend some plants that we can use

that the bunnies won't eat.

Well, for a start there is a lovely little booklet which is called

Gardening With The Enemy,

and I think the lady is called Janet Thomson.

And she has got a list of plants -

most plants will possibly be eaten by rabbits,

so you can't say they're 100% rabbit-proof.

But one or two things that spring to mind are things that are maybe

poisonous.

So, snowdrops, foxgloves...

I think rhododendrons probably are a bit sort of rabbit-proof.

So that's one or two to start off with,

which has given time for the rest of the panel to think about one or two things.

Right...

-Hi, Belinda, how are you?

-Hello. I'm fine, how are you?

-So you're not at the Botanics any more.

-No.

-Erm...

-That sounds like a chat-up line there.

Oh, sorry!

It's a friendly village.

We can go if you want!

Come up to Scone. Rabbit... Oh.

LAUGHTER

-At least buy her dinner first, come on!

-Throw your spade away.

I'll rephrase that.

Up at Scone, my biggest enemy is rabbit and deer.

It just drives you absolutely mental.

Doesn't matter what list you read,

a hungry deer or a hungry rabbit's going to eat absolutely anything.

However, nepeta, euphorbias,

and I've recently planted a lovely grass, a pennisetum,

and, so far so good, nothing's absolutely touched that.

Philadelphus do quite well as well -

-they nibble at them but they don't touch the bark.

-I've also put down

things like solidago, aquilegia.

I've got liria here as well, which...

Some of the furry-leaved ones, you know,

the ones with the scales and the hairs on the leaves,

they tend not to be eaten by rabbits.

Heebies, and crocosmia.

I mean, crocosmia doesn't seem to be harmed by rabbits at all.

It's interesting that the last roadshow we did,

which was up at Gairloch,

we were asked so many questions about how to kill crocosmia,

and here I am recommending it.

But I mean, you get some fantastic varieties of crocosmia.

The other thing is to get a dog.

Yeah. A Jack Russell.

-Sort the rabbits.

-There's an old saying,

and it certainly is true in gardening, that misery loves company.

We've got two questions here that are practically identical.

So Archie Brown and Mark Edward.

Evening, panel. Archie, Mark.

I could say he's my wee boy but you can see he's not my wee boy.

I have a rather large conifer hedge, which has now turned brown.

This has happened over the last two to three years.

The hedge is a double hedge.

It's three to five feet in width.

A year on, there's more and more brown appearing.

In fact, it's now 75% brown so it's a pretty awful state.

Hello, my name's Mark Edward,

I'm a local hedging and tree work contractor.

And more and more I'm finding what Archie's found here,

in the browning of these hedges.

I know there's a few theories, I know there's some beasties that can get in amongst them,

I know there's sometimes trouble with fungal spores.

I wondered what your definitive opinion in this area would be killing off these plants,

and indeed how you would treat it?

Do we know which conifer?

Is it Leyland cypress?

More often than not, yes.

-That's the most common one planted around here.

-I just wanted to say it in public,

because it's the plant that gets the bad name.

And there's nothing wrong with the plant.

It's when people turn their back on it that it gets too tall.

I have to say, I think there may be insects involved.

But also I would have thought they do need feeding and watering -

very much so, especially in certain ground,

in certain areas where it dries out very quickly.

It's a gutsy sort of plant, and needs it.

Would mulching help?

And also, final extra question -

is the time that you trim it, time of year quite important?

When it comes to conifers or evergreens,

I wouldn't go any later than towards the end of...

Well, end of September you could probably go into, but not into October,

you're much better. Also what you've got to bear in mind

with something like leylandii is it doesn't regenerate from the older

wood, so, you know,

you're better to be trimming little and often rather than going in too

deep into the older wood.

I suspect that this is the aphid that's causing this.

There's an aphid that seems to be particular to Leyland cypress.

Now, what happens is, it's patches.

There's a bit there, there's a bit down here and there's a bit there, then there's green in between.

And so, you're saying yours is 75% dead.

So this has been going on for a while.

And a hedge over the road from me,

her hedge has got this sort of thing and she's left it,

and I reckon it's going to take somewhere about ten years to recover.

And it WILL recover, because this blighter is

one of the fastest-growing conifers in the world.

But it just can't recover that quickly.

But it doesn't want to die either, so what will happen is that

these branches which are still alive will grow out and fill the spaces.

So I would suggest that this might actually make a very good mulch.

I'm giving you jobs now!

The contracting business is going up.

But I think this should be taken out, it should be chipped,

and used as a mulch elsewhere in the garden.

-Do we keep trimming them? Or do we just leave them?

-If you want to keep it and thole the brown,

and hope that it will eventually green up, just keep trimming it.

Keep trimming it. But it will still be like a piebald pony.

-Thank you very much.

-Can I actually suggest a substitute as well,

because I think Jim would agree with me on this -

we've got a bit of a hedging trial at Beechgrove.

One of the hedges is absolutely fantastic,

and I wish more people would grow it, and that's the Western hemlock.

Or Tsuga heterophylla.

It's fast growing, but it just is superb looking.

And a much better plant, I think, than leylandii.

People get a bit frightened when you suggest that as a hedge,

because they'll go and look it up in a conifer book and they'll find that

in North West America it grows up to 200 foot tall.

But you've got a pair of shears.

And you've got a pair of secateurs, and you've got time to keep it down.

And if you go looking at up - I mean, we're all very familiar with it -

don't go to the S's, go to the T's.

It's T-S-U-G-A.

Thank you for your question, gentlemen, I hope that helps.

Got the final question of the evening from May Halkett. What's your question?

Many of us have been inspired by the Olympics and Paralympics.

To improve our fitness,

what training do the team use to maintain their splendid condition?

And what tips do they have formative gardeners to allow them to continue

to cope with the rigours of gardening?

We will go first to the only man ever to get his money back from Charles Atlas.

Mr Jim McColl.

A decent dram at night so that you can have a long sleep and be ready for any gardening.

Brian.

Don't stop. Keep gardening - little and often.

Make the most of that kettle if you're feeling a bit tired.

Get yourself a brew, and then get back outside again

but don't give up.

George?

Mix up the tasks.

Mix up the things that you're doing in the garden.

It may be something where you're stretching up,

so go and do that for a little while, then go and do some digging, then go and do some raking.

Then go and do some sitting down.

My problem - and I think it happens to a lot of people when they reach

my age - is that you forget that you had one cup of tea over there a wee while ago

and there's another cup over there and there's one down here...

and you've actually got six jobs on the go.

But it's fabulous.

Because you're outside, and you're enjoying everything that's going on.

And I think that is what gardening is all about.

And finally, the Beechgrove Garden's very own Green Goddess.

Right... Well.

Well, I do have quite a big garden so make sure you have a ride-on mower,

so that you're not pushing it all the time.

I love to have a bath, having a bath every night.

And also, get yourself a good chiropractor.

Which I have.

Words to live by, children, words to live by.

Folks, that, I'm afraid, is all we've got time for this evening.

Thank you much for coming along, thank you very much for asking your questions.

From all of us here at the Beechgrove Garden team, thank you again for turning up. Goodnight.

After a lively panel discussion,

George went to take a better look at Archie's hedge.

This is the hedge that Archie mentioned last night at the question time.

So we thought we would come along and just have a wee at it this morning.

And it's as bad as we thought.

He suggested it was nearly dead, and by Jove,

it's got lots of brown bits in it, but there we have some of the green still surviving and coming through.

This is a double hedge, planted on the side of the wall, so two rows.

As we suspected, it's possibly dry,

it's possibly been suffering from the wind coming from the west,

blistering the foliage on this side, putting it under stress.

And immediately it's under stress,

we gets attacks by aphids and we get attacks by fungi which are specific

to the conifer foliage.

So it's looking in a sad state.

But you know, if we feed it and water it,

this green that's here will eventually cover the whole of this.

It'll take a few years - but you go and have a look at the other side.

It seems to be OK,

and he's got something decent to look at so we won't take it out.

After a reprieve for the hedge,

I then headed a couple of miles out of Strathkinness,

to see Julia Young's very surprising garden.

Wow, this is spectacular.

I never expected anything like this.

What's the history behind the site?

This was a sandstone quarry that

they took sandstone out of this quarry

for building Victorian St Andrews and then about 100 years ago,

it sprung a spring underneath it and filled up,

so no more quarrying and things.

And we came about 25 years ago.

And started turning it into a garden.

Well, it looks amazing.

-It is nice.

-Yeah. Shall we go down and have a look?

-Aye.

Here is the pond from the other side, see?

And the cliff face is quite spectacular.

So how do you garden that?

This is my wheelbarrow for gardening the cliff.

I jump in there, go over there with long-armed pruners and I pull stuff

out and then I also use the boat for planting water lilies and things.

Somebody gave me some nice water lilies.

I put in all the native water lily and the bog bean and I've got other

plants at the other end that I've sort of put in.

The water quality is really good.

-Very clear.

-Very, very clear.

Must be, because the fish thrive there.

They've actually bred this year for the first time in quite a few years.

-And you've got a touch of autumn colour coming in with the Darmera peltata.

-It's lovely, isn't it?

It's a beautiful plant because I think it's value for money cos you get those flowers to start off with.

-Very early. Lovely.

-Then you get the leaves appear and you've got that

-autumn colour.

-And the autumn colour.

Of course, we see it from the window of the house and it looks gorgeous.

-Quite amazing.

-But there's more sort of autumn colour around here.

Want to look?

Now this is spectacular autumn colour.

A stranvaesia?

Yep. Isn't it gorgeous?

And even the fruits as well are a lovely orange tinge to them,

-aren't they?

-It's actually sort of red all summer but it goes this

wonderful red now, which is nice next to the acer.

The acer will also colour up very soon.

They're quite mature specimens, these.

They are, yep. This whole area used to be Ponticum rhododendron.

We pulled all those out with a little help from our friends.

The aconitums, the monkshood...

-Yeah.

-..are flowering very well.

Lovely to have some at this time of year.

And this is a nice combination.

Isn't it nice? The Viburnum mariesii and the obelia.

And obelia are flowering for a second time.

I know, it's the wrong time of year but it's really great, isn't it?

-I know. Lovely.

-And what about the gunneras?

The size of the leaves, quite amazing.

Aren't they spectacular?

Not that long ago there were two small plants and they put all this

on every year, die right down in the winter.

-And they're even fruiting, aren't they?

-Yep. I know, I know.

There's something all the time round this pond.

Well, there is. I mean, not just here but in the garden, Julia.

And, you know, I feel we've only just touched the surface.

We have to come back, perhaps in the springtime?

-Love it.

-Thank you very much indeed.

-OK.

This is David and Margaret Sinclair's garden

and it's typical Scottish long rig garden,

where it runs the width of the house, the productive bit's at the back.

-Yes.

-And then you've got all this bit down here,

which is the decorative and ornamental bit,

and there's some good things, wee figs there.

They've been here for over 40 years and I think it was great that David

said when he first started, I mean,

he cleared the ground by planting it up with tatties.

THAT is a common ploy.

You often see it cos they're a cleaning crop but I think the secret

is there used to be a slaughterhouse just down there.

So all manner of things in there.

We've even got piebald hedges.

Isn't that fabulous, isn't it?

-It's not the old cypress, either.

-Looks very healthy, doesn't it?

And haven't we been treated well here by the community?

We are a lucky bunch because we go into gardening communities and for

the most part, they're as happy as Larry, they're doing what they want to do.

We go into allotments, private gardens and it's just lovely to be with

and that speaks very highly for the subject, doesn't it? Brings the best out in people.

So if you've been inspired by the spirit of this community

at Strathkinness, well, maybe you'd like us to come to your area

and all the information is on the website and of course

we're quite happy to answer all your gardening queries as well.

Yeah, next week.

Back to Beechgrove and busy boys.

Yes. Busy, busy, busy.

Been great to be here.

-Until next time... BOTH: Bye-bye.

-Bye-bye.