Episode 3 The Beechgrove Garden

Hello and welcome to Beechgrove on a beautiful spring morning.

And what an excuse you've got to be indoors, haven't you?

-Aren't they stunning?

-Yeah, the camellias, what a display.

-Yes.

Donation there, which is one that we grew at the old Beechgrove garden...

-Out of doors.

-Out of doors,

very reliable, and that was the first to flower at the beginning of March.

-Well, these are all flowering in Edinburgh at the moment, most of them.

-Yes.

-In sheltered spots.

Absolutely. That's important.

These have been cosseted, they bring in in September, October,

spend the winter in here and we get the good of them.

-Pick out one or two.

-Wow, look at this one!

Look at that Ballet Queen.

-It's brilliant.

-No wonder

it's called Ballet Queen,

because it does look like a ballet dress,

-doesn't it? Gorgeous.

-Now, this one...

-Yeah.

-Now, it says Jury's Yellow.

-Yes.

-Look at that,

it's like whipped cream, isn't it?

But the question always is,

do we pot them up into a bigger pot?

-You keep on doing that and you'll need a forklift to move them!

-Bigger and bigger.

I like to describe it as being semi-bonsai.

-Yes.

-These things have got a potential to grow up here,

but we don't want them to do that,

so I think we keep them in the same pot,

but we have to refresh the compost.

After they've flowered we tip them over on their side, pull them out,

tease away some of the stale soil and some fresh new stuff and away we go again.

And then the secret is to keep them really well watered,

because otherwise you get the bud drop at this time of the year.

-That's right.

-Meantime, in the rest of the programme...

With a bit of artistic wizardry, I'm going to turn this...

..into this.

And I'm looking at how to stop

uninvited guests feasting in my garden.

Well now, this is the season all started once again in the vegetable plot,

and here we have dig and no dig!

Explain yourself!

Right, well, the no dig one is the one where, what we do is we put compost

on the top only, we never dig it over.

Whereas that one...

Yes, it's been buried in the conventional way,

putting down a spade's depth there.

And we want to see what the difference is.

The crops are going to be the same.

-In this one, because the compost is on the top...

-Yes.

-..the crops last year...

-Yes.

-..were able to get into that...

-Yes.

-..and grow far better.

So rather than, you know, taking two, three years

to notice the difference, we had a difference in one year last year.

But it might not be sustained.

Well, of course the point is that we bury the compost here,

because we're not all making hot compost that's killing the weeds.

-So in a sense, you put it down in order to kill the weeds.

-Yeah.

Apart from the fact that it's very good exercise, digging.

-Well...

-So I'm at the early stage. The preparation of

the first sowing and planting is just the same on the top.

So this has been tramped, as you can see.

I'm going to be planting brassicas in here.

In the meantime, out goes a bit of general fertiliser.

That's about a half-ounce to the square metre.

Or whatever.

On this side, what I'm doing... I'm standing on this line.

The line's been drawn tight,

I'm standing on the line and I'm drawing the draw hoe along the side,

and this is for planting broad beans,

so I'm going down just over an inch in here.

And you can, if you take your time, you can just get it absolutely perfect.

So into that...

..plant the broad beans.

And I'll just space these out at, what, round about,

I would say,

six inches, you might say 150 millimetres, somewhere like that.

Tell you the other thing that's noticeable, Jim,

this one is like walking on a duvet.

-Really, really springy, I don't know what that's like over there.

-I think you're a convert.

Almost!

It's to be proven.

You know, I always think this is a great time of year,

as we start to see the herbaceous springing in to life.

It looks lovely and fresh,

but this is also a time of year when there are quite a few jobs

to be getting on with with the herbaceous plants.

And first and foremost is staying on top of those weeds. And we've got

things like hairy bittercress -

it's already coming into flower.

If you let that set seed we are going to get lots more weed,

so pull them out. The other problem is we actually have

a weed that is a cultivated planet.

It's this one here, it's a cow parsley,

an ornamental one, purple foliage.

It's called Ravenswing. It looks lovely.

But the trouble is it sets a lot of seeds, and as we look at the soil here...

Look, there's one there, there's another one there.

They're all over, and they're actually starting to go in amongst the plants as well.

This is a knot here. And the problem is it's a little bit like a dandelion.

It has quite a taproot,

so the sooner we can get on top of these...

..the better. Let's see if I can get this one out.

See what I mean? In fact, that looks a bit like a parsnip.

Anyway, lots to do there. Also, this is a time of year to be lifting and dividing some of your plants.

Now I'm going to be honest here,

I've done a little bit of preparation.

I've put the spade right the way round this lovage plant.

And hopefully

I should be able to pull that out.

Now, if the ground's really dry,

you want to make sure that you have that well watered in.

It's a plant that you either love lovage or you hate lovage, because

I can smell it now, it smells of celery.

I like it. I know Jim doesn't.

What I'll probably do there...

..is try and divide this

so that we get a couple of good clumps.

And a wee tip, if you've got

a couple of garden forks, if you can put them in

and then prize them apart, that's the way to get

a couple of good plants.

And I know where I'm going to put these. These are going to go

into the herb garden in a container.

And in the corner of the herb garden,

here's our container. Isn't it brilliant?

This was the barrel greenhouse and...

Well, the top, I'm afraid, wasn't looking that good,

but we thought, "Why not use the container itself?"

Perfect for lovage,

because lovage is quite a big plant.

It will grow to a couple of metres in height.

And so in the corner, this herb garden could do with a bit of a feature.

So...

I reckon we can probably get three plants in here.

Now, the young leaves of lovage are great for things like stews and soups and even George's salads.

But also, it's quite interesting to know that lovage is meant to be a rabbit-resistant plant,

and our Brian at Scone Palace has got a major project going on, all about rabbits.

In 2016, the RHS named slugs and snails as their biggest problem

in England and Wales.

But here in Scotland, we've got to do things a bit bigger.

And our Beechgrove Bag has been inundated with problems on rabbits and roe deer.

I'm in an ongoing battle at my workplace,

Scone Palace in Perthshire,

where the signs of blasted bunnies and indulgent deer are all around the gardens.

They have a taste for perennials, which they nibble to the ground,

and the bark on the lower branches of the trees and shrubs

are stripped and damaged.

Trying to protect your plants from deer and rabbits can be a pretty challenging task,

and that's why I like to use a combination of methods.

The most common one I use is chicken wire,

and here I've got it wrapped around a newly planted shrub.

But I hate seeing the plants all caged in like this.

It doesn't look very good. So that's why, when the plants have

grown above the one metre deer-browsing height,

that's when I like to remove it.

Now, that may mean a bit of sacrificial damage,

but as you can see with this cotoneaster that's going to grow about four metres high,

there's plenty of happy and healthy foliage.

The ultimate defence barriers are rabbit and deer fencing,

and that can be expensive.

So around slow-growing conifers, I like to make guards out of post rail and chicken wire.

For plants with clear stems, plastic spirals do the trick.

These are wrapped around the base and can be picked up online.

And for some shrubs like hydrangea,

I use a neat little pruning technique called pollarding,

which develops a framework of bare-stemmed branches

and encourages growth on top,

where the deer and rabbit can't reach.

These are some of the methods that I'm currently using at the palace.

But throughout this series, I would like to try out some new ways.

And one of them is to introduce some plants that are supposed to be

deer and rabbit resistant.

And if you've got a problem like this at home, maybe this is something that you can give a try.

Here we are in the flower garden at the palace,

and it's in this area that I've had a particular problem with deer and rabbits.

So this is the best area for me to try out one of these new methods.

Through the RHS, they have a really good list of plants

that are supposed to be deer and rabbit resistant.

Now it could be because of the smell of the foliage, it could be because

they're poisonous, or it could be purely because they don't taste good.

So what we've got here are some that are quite common to us,

we've got a red-hot poker,

we've got the burgundy winter stems of the cornus,

which has beautiful variegated foliage in the summer months.

Grasses - I'm really keen to try these grasses as see how they do.

The one genus that I'm really

looking forward to working with is this Daphne.

They've very expensive, but the scent you get from these plants

is going to be well worth the effort.

So time to get on with the job.

All of the plants going into this bed are on the RHS deer and rabbit resistant lists,

including Potentilla Red Lady,

cistus and Aquilegia vulgaris.

The cornus is also supposed to be resistant, but I am sceptical,

as I have planted a similar variety in this area before

and it has been completely destroyed.

Next to the cistus that I'm planting

I've got a Geranium macrorrhizum

that never seems to get touched.

And that's probably because

it's got quite whiffy foliage.

Whereas on the other side

there's a Geranium Johnson's Blue.

That one always seems to get eaten down to the ground.

The resistant plants in this bed will be left to fend for themselves.

I'm not going to protect them in any further way.

So that's our plants in the ground, but what we've got to remember is a hungry deer or rabbit is

going to eat anything.

And that's why I'm keen to try this method,

which is a repellent spray.

Now, I'm using plants that were already in the ground

and I know that they are a particular favourite of the rabbits, these daylilies.

And this is the best time to do it, the foliage is all lush and it's fresh.

So you're going to have to do this, probably once a month.

It's a non-toxic spray and it also acts as a nutrient,

it gives the plant a wee boost.

And another useful tip to remember is,

say you're going to be planting out a bed from scratch,

it might be wise to put these plants into a wee holding area

and give them a couple of applications of this

before you actually stick them in the ground.

As a last line of defence in this bed,

I've added some chicken wire to a tulip tree

and also some plastic spirals to the base.

So in our final bed we're going to sacrifice some plants,

plants that we know are deer and rabbit favourites.

I'm talking about geums, hostas,

I'm going to plant some penstemon and apple blossom,

and one of my favourites, these Lysimachia firecrackers.

Later on in the year we're going to come back, then we can compare these plants with those that we've sprayed

and those that are from the RHS plant list.

And we'll see how they're all getting on.

Look at that, fruit houses absolutely full of blossom at the moment.

This is the cherry, and middle of the day when the pollen is moving,

the bees will be in here working away.

If there are not enough bees, get your make-up brush and come round

and just brush these little flowers delicately.

When the pollen is flying in the middle of the day,

that's what you want to do, cos what we want is

as many of these flowers in the set to give us cherries.

Now that's going to be a huge crop, hopefully.

Anyway, in this other corner

is the fig.

What we're going to do this year is we're going tie a lot of these shoots down to the wires, like that,

so that we can space them out.

We're going to take out one or two of the crossing shoots.

I mean, there's a shoot there that's going away the back way, look at that there.

So I'm just going to take that right back into there.

And I'll go right round the whole plant doing that sort of thing,

where I'm thinning out the shoots,

tying them to the wire in order to space out the plant,

let plenty of light and air in around about them

so that the figs then start to develop,

cos there's figs there, and these will grow.

But what I want to do now is to air layer this. I got something special in my Christmas stocking.

Look! Little red balls, as they say,

and what we're going to do with that is

we're going to take this, because this is for air layering,

and we're going to make a cut in the stem there,

and I'll do the same on the other side.

In the literature it says you can make a cut right the way round, but I think that's a wee bit savage,

so what I'm going to do is just a cut on both sides

and then I'm going to dust that...

..with a little bit of hormone rooting powder.

I've got a mixture of moss and soil,

and what I do with that is I make sure that that

goes into that side of the container like that.

I'm going to stuff that full, right, just like that.

Lots and lots of compost going in there,

making sure it's in contact with the cut surface and it's nice and moist, this, so it's a good idea.

It's a wonderful environment in there now for rooting.

Then that gets clipped on to the top... Like that, there.

Now that's going to sit there

for eight weeks.

And they say at the end of eight weeks I'll have a new plant.

So we'll come back then and see if they're right.

I'll bet you it will be.

-Isn't that a splendid display?

-Fabulous, Jim, isn't it?

-It is indeed.

Well, it's over to the propagation again in the little eight by six,

or shall we say just outside the eight by six?

And I'm going to start off with tuberous begonias.

You can propagate them as soon as they start to sprout.

You see there's a little sprout here and one here,

you can half that, as I have just done,

and then pop it into a bit of chalk,

just to help dry it up, to prevent any rot, right, and in it, the right way up into a pot.

A little bit of extra compost round them.

And away, away they go.

Now, if you've still got room for

more delias, you can still take delia cuttings at this time,

and they're not going to go out till much later.

Here's a tuber here.

And that's the sort of size of cutting I would be looking for,

and I'm going right down to where it joins on to the tuber itself

to cut it out. There we go.

And look, ha-ha! I'm lucky! It's got a wee bit of root on it, isn't that superb?

And, um...

A bit of rooting powder, and then pop it into the rooting medium, which is a peat-sand mix.

Quarter it in, label it.

And, hopefully, that's another one. And I shall do these geraniums.

Here we are, four of the same variety in the same pot.

Just gently squeeze, because the roots are quite tender at this stage.

And then out they come.

Look at that.

But be very, very careful with them.

And you'll notice the rooting medium here was heavily laced with vermiculite,

and they are ready to be into a pot.

Some fresh potting compost, like so.

Pop them in there.

Really well lifted.

And go back into the same environment they've been in sitting on the bench in the greenhouse.

And because you have actually

disturbed the roots in this process,

they should be watered in straight away

using a rose on the can.

So there we have it, geraniums potted, and as Carole was saying last week,

it's vital to have really good stock plants.

And I spotted this fella last year, look at that.

This was a seed geranium last year,

and it was due for the dustbin.

I couldn't believe it,

so I half-inched it, as they say,

potted it on and there it is. And not only is it a stunning variety,

not only has it got some gorgeous flowers on,

but there's also some very healthy cutting material.

So we can multiply this lot.

And if you do do that, you have to sacrifice the buds, take the bud off before you take the cuttings.

-Now, then, it's over to her over the wall.

-Jim, I'll have a cutting of that.

It's beautiful! Absolutely stunning. Well, before I get on with a little bit of business

I'd like you to come into the greenhouse,

because I've actually been spending a bit of money.

I know I do a lot about gardening on a budget,

but we have got some really nice, new wooden benching.

And it came in a flat-pack. The gardeners told me

it was really quite easy to put together.

And because I want this greenhouse to be pretty ornamental,

we've got another shelf. That does move. You can see that that moves.

And we've discovered that having that shelving all the way round,

we can actually put that underneath.

And that's great at this time of year,

because these little begonia plug plants at the moment

really don't want the bright sunshine,

they want a little bit of shading, so that's perfect at the moment.

And then eventually that shelf will come up on to here.

As for the business, well, year after year

we tend to grow this oxalis.

It's a purple-leafed oxalis.

What's happened over the winter time is we've stopped watering it.

Totally dry it off, lay it on its side,

and now is the time to pot it on again.

And if you break this up

it's incredible how it multiplies.

This is what we're looking for.

These little tubercles.

And so just from three pots alone I've ended up with all of these.

You want to select probably the best ones, half a dozen.

Lay them on the top of the compost.

I would then put just a little bit of compost on the top of that.

Get that watered in and they will sprout again.

Some of the other things that I'm going to grow this year,

torenia, which is the wishbone flower.

That's going to give a nice bit of colour.

And something slightly different is I've got the eucalyptus lemon bush,

never tried that before,

and some of that is already germinating in the greenhouse.

When it comes to flower arranging, I'm no shrinking violet.

And when I put daffodils into a show

I have to arrange them in quite a special way.

But do you know, I am not above gaining new hints and tips and wrinkles about flower arranging,

so I'm going back to school - flower school, that is.

I've come to Narcissus Flower School in Edinburgh.

It is one of the growing number

of flower schools popping up across Scotland,

where budding florists from all walks of life

come to learn their craft.

Sharon Nugent is the headmistress.

-Morning, Sharon.

-Good morning, George. How are you?

-I'm fine. How are you?

-Good. Lovely to see you.

-What are we doing today? Full class?

-Yeah, we've got

nine students here today. We're very busy,

and we're going to be making a spring wreath

-using living bulbs...

-Oh!

-..incorporated into the wreath with branches and moss.

And it'll grow over time and it'll last longer, which will be

nice to enjoy it for a longer length of time.

Normally, people just use daffodils or narcissi in a vase.

-Yeah.

-And that's it, isn't it?

-Well, we're also going to show you how to

make a lovely little table arrangement.

-I'll go and get my pinnie on.

-Yes.

-And we'll get started.

-Lovely.

Florist Emilia Robledo is running today's class,

and she's showing us the first steps in making a living spring wreath.

We've got three different types of branches. It's nice to have different textures.

We've got some birch, some bog myrtle, and some cherry blossom.

We've also got a good pair of floristry scissors and some reel wire.

I'm going to just start by taking some of this, these branches, just a little cluster of them,

and I'm going to extend it to make one long branch.

So I'll just place those there and I'll take one of my little pieces of wire

and I'm just going to go round a couple of times and attach it really tightly.

And then I'll just compress these down

and do it again.

Keep repeating the action until you can join your birch twigs together

to form a circle.

Add bog myrtle to strengthen the shape

and compress it all with wire.

Finally, attach the cherry blossom to three quarters of the wreath

and the frame is complete.

Now it's our turn.

Oh! It's nearly all there.

Hey, George, how's it going?

-I'm not sure, what do you think?

-Looking good!

-It's looking good, yeah.

-It's all.. This is all new to me.

I used to make holly wreathes and things like that,

and that was easy because you just had one job to do,

you know, you either moss the rings or you

put your holly into it.

That's it, but we're making it from scratch, so this is just from natural materials.

Could I use anything, though?

Almost anything. As long as you can manipulate it then you can use it.

-Right.

-So something like dogwood would be ideal.

-Willow.

-I've got willow, so I could use that.

You've got willow, yeah. Perfect.

Now I can bend this into shape now,

but it's always going to spring back,

-so how do I get it to keep its shape?

-It has a little bit of sort of give at this point

-because there's still a lot of water in the branches.

-Uh-huh.

But if you leave it as it is, lying on a table for a couple of days in a warm, dry place,

-then it'll...

-Just to set?

-Just to set it, yeah.

And then when you add the bulbs and the soil and the moss

and all these things, then it'll be much stronger.

With the frames finished, it's time to add the bulbs.

I've got the flatter part of my wreath here

and so I'll be sort of putting it around here.

I'll start with the bigger, sort of chunkier of the bulbs.

And I'm just going to soften the soil just a little bit, I don't want to do it too much

otherwise a lot of the soil would fall.

I just wanted to take off those edges around it.

And now I'm going to take some of the moss,

and it just rips off nicely,

and I'm just going to wrap the bulb with a little but of the moss.

And at the point I'm just going to just place it on to the wreath

and I'm going to take some of the reel wire

and I'm just going to attach it on to it with just the wire.

And then I can start, just as I did before,

winding it around, just like this.

Emilia builds the volume by adding more bulbs, moss

and then the succulents until the finished product evolves.

Normally, when I'm dealing with bulbs, I want to keep as much soil on them as possible,

but here they are going on to the wreath like that and I'm wiring them on.

Now what's important with this is that

because there's no soil, I have to keep this well watered,

so it will need to be sprayed over every...

Every day, perhaps, just to make sure that the moss is kept moist

and the soil underneath and the roots are kept in contact with water.

-So there you go, what do you think of that?

-It looks great! Really good.

Now, is there anything else I need to do to this?

Obviously, the flowers will grow, and as they grow

it would be quite nice for them to have a little but of support.

Um, so if you just get some twigs and just

put them into the moss, like that.

-Just anywhere at all?

-Just anywhere at all,

and then you can just imagine that they will

-be supporting the blooms that will come.

-Right.

Our final task is to make a low table arrangement,

which is supported by a raft of criss-crossed branches, tied together with string.

A natural alternative to florist's foam.

To our raft, we add pistachio, skimmia, rosemary and eucalyptus foliage

for different scents and textures,

and then top it off with my favourite flowers, narcisseae.

I tell you, that raft in the middle makes it so easy just to push the flowers in.

You fill the centre with foliage, you've got lots of different foliage in here,

and then we're going to put daffs in, or narcisseae.

And the thing about narcisseae is that they don't really like to be mixed with any other flowers,

because if you do, they tend to excrete a sap which

blocks the vessels on other flowers

and they don't take up the water quite as quickly and whither and die.

Now, what we've done here is we cut the stems at an angle.

And that gives a greater surface area for the water to be up-taken.

And then its just a case of putting them in where you think.

You're never sure if the last one you add is just too much, but there it is,

-one going in the middle there.

-That looks great. There we are.

-You've done a great job, well done.

-You've given me great confidence, you really have.

-Good.

I'm glad you've had fun.

And the living wreath, what a fabulous idea.

Well, that is very nice for bringing the bulbs into the house

and using them in a different way from what you would normally see.

-I've amazed myself, really.

-Yeah, well done!

-HORN

-I've just got to get home on a bus now!

-Home on a bus, that's the challenge!

-That's the challenge!

Earlier in the programme, you saw me making a living wreath

when I was down at the flower school.

Well, here, four weeks on, it's in full flower.

Fabulous, isn't it?

Well, here we have the drumstick primula, or Primula denticulata,

in the white form and the purple form,

looking absolutely gorgeous.

And the thing to remember is once the flowers have finished,

you can cut those right back

and each of these individual rosettes, you can lift the plant, divide it up

and spread it around the garden.

Right, here's your salad for this week.

What we've got is sorrel, Welsh onion and some primrose.

-Right.

-OK, I'll have a go at that big leaf there.

OK, while you're trying that, if you'd like any more information

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

and the easiest way to access that is online.

And of course it will have all those rabbit-proof plants.

Brilliant. I don't know what other people are doing, but I shall be planting tattie!

-Until next week, bye-bye.

-Goodbye!

-Bye!