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00:00Hello, welcome to an Easter gardener's world.
00:19And here in the orchard, the daffodils are at their very best.
00:23These are delicate, small, wild daffodils, the Pseudonarcissus.
00:28And we planted the first batch, I guess, about 20 years ago.
00:32They're very slow to get going, they're just in dribs and drabs year on year,
00:36and now they're really taking off.
00:38In fact, all over the garden, despite the sort of erratic,
00:43sometimes quite wild weather that we've had over the last month,
00:47the signs of spring, some a little coy, some with enthusiasm,
00:53are peeping up and popping out all over the place.
00:57And do you know, one of the best signs of spring
01:02is when the weeds start to grow.
01:04If you've got vigorous weeds popping up all over the place,
01:08that means the soil is warming up and things are growing.
01:11And if weeds can grow, it means the plants you want can grow too.
01:16So if you see the weeds, a really good reason to get out there
01:20and make the most of spring.
01:23On tonight's programme, we visit a garden
01:26that's not only full of bright summer colour,
01:29it's also a bit of an experiment.
01:33And Carol is enjoying one of the stars of the spring border,
01:38Hellebores.
01:41And I shall be planting my potatoes
01:44and also potting up some lilies
01:47for glorious summer colour and fragrance.
01:50Come on.
02:06Normal cold weather, and I call normal down to about minus five or six,
02:11generally the garden can cope with it.
02:13But we had one night in December when it went down to minus 14.
02:19And that was much too cold for a few plants.
02:22And none showed that more dramatically than these bay trees.
02:27This is Loris nobilis, the sweet bay, which, of course, we use in cooking,
02:31which is why it's here in the Herb Garden.
02:33But it's also a decorative plant.
02:36They're not decorative any longer.
02:38Overnight, all the leaves turn brown.
02:40Now, they look stone dead, but before you give up on them,
02:44there's a little test you can do.
02:46Get a knife and just scrape along a branch or the stem.
02:54And there you can see it's green.
02:58And if it's green, it's alive.
03:00So it's not killed, it's been badly damaged.
03:05So the next step is, how can I repair that damage?
03:08Well, in the case of bay, a dead leaf is a dead leaf.
03:12There's nothing you can do about that. You can't bring a leaf back to life.
03:15So anything that is clearly dead must come off.
03:18The problem you have, if they're decorative like this,
03:21clip all those leaves off, and all you're going to be left is bare branches.
03:25They're going to look not great.
03:27And in the case of these cones,
03:30it's quite likely, if you've got a bare branch, that's just going to look silly.
03:34So what I'm going to do in this case is dig them all up,
03:37put them into recycled pots,
03:40and then grow them on and observe how they recover.
03:43If I have to cut them right back, so be it.
03:46And next winter, if they are good, I will move them undercover.
03:52The crucial thing with these plants, any plant really, is the roots.
03:57If the roots are healthy and good, then they will regrow.
04:03I've also mixed up a very free-draining mix.
04:07And by free-draining, all that means is I've added plenty of grit.
04:10These are Mediterranean plants, and drainage is really important.
04:16It should sprout new leaves,
04:18and they may well look good enough to bring back here
04:21into the herb garden by the end of summer.
04:26Now, whilst these really don't like extreme cold,
04:31there are plants that have adapted to it.
04:34In fact, some plants are at their very best
04:37when the weather is potentially at its worst.
04:40And Carol has been to the West Midlands
04:43to celebrate one of the most glorious of those winter flowers.
04:53As winter turns gradually into spring,
04:56the garden can be a gloomy place.
04:59But there's one plant that illuminates everywhere,
05:03near and far.
05:05It's the hellebore.
05:15Hellebores belong to the broad family of Ranunculaceae, the buttercups.
05:20And when you glimpse at a hellebore,
05:22you can immediately see the resemblance.
05:25These lovely rounded buds opening to chalice-like flowers.
05:29And the flowers themselves, you'd think these were petals, but they're not.
05:32They last much longer than petals,
05:34and they protect all the inner workings of the flower.
05:37When you look inside, there's a ring of nectaries,
05:41and above those are stamens with anthers covered in pollen.
05:46So these plants are rich in both nectar and pollen,
05:49and they're an absolute feast for pollinating insects.
06:02Hellebores are amongst the most accommodating and offerable plants,
06:07providing you ensure that the soil they're growing in is rich in organic matter.
06:12And even if you haven't got a garden, you can still grow them in pots.
06:17Look at these beautiful examples.
06:19Just remember, big pots because they need ample room for those big thrusting roots.
06:25And make sure, since you are limiting their growing space,
06:29that you grow them in loam-based compost and that you give them an occasional feed.
06:34A good liquid organic feed is ideal.
06:37And top up the pots every so often,
06:39because you want to maintain that spectacular performance.
06:54There are several different species of hellebores.
06:57Most of them come from Central Europe.
07:00But there are two native to the British Isles.
07:03This is one of them. This is Helleborus foetidus.
07:06It's called the stinking hellebore in common parlance.
07:10I actually quite like the smell. It's a bit roast beefy.
07:14And that's coming from a vegetarian.
07:16But I adore the plant with these great stems of lots of small, rounded flowers.
07:23Each one of them is rimmed in scarlet.
07:26There's another native hellebore too, which is called viridis.
07:30But it's a dinky, dainty little thing.
07:33A complete contrast to this, which is big, bold and beautiful.
07:46Enterprising plant breeders saw the potential of crossing some of these different species from different places.
07:53And they've come up with some brilliant results.
07:57The most popular are forms of Helleborus hybridus.
08:01There seems to be no end to the infinite variety of colours and forms, patterns and textures of these beautiful flowers.
08:11They can be almost any colour, from glowing yellow, virginal white or dark and dramatic.
08:19Lots of them have beautiful markings, sometimes delicately veined, some with pickety edges.
08:27Many of them have anemone centres and some fully double with multiple sepals, frilly, frou-frou and tremendously pretty.
08:38Well, you can be a plant breeder yourself.
08:41All you need to do is choose two that you think might make a good match.
08:46So this is the one I'm going to put the pollen onto.
08:49And you want a bud that's just beginning to open.
08:53That means that its own anthers inside are not producing any pollen yet.
08:59And then you want something that's got loads and loads of anthers, rich in pollen.
09:06And then you need very simple equipment, a pen with a black lid.
09:10And you just rub it on your jeans to create a bit of static.
09:15And it doesn't matter which of these flowers you choose, as long as they're loaded with pollen.
09:21You gently rub this lid over those anthers.
09:24And then move back, peel these petals or sepals back a little bit,
09:29and just gently rub the end of your pen with this pollen onto the stigma, the female bit.
09:36And then so you remember which one it is, just cut a bit of the end of your pen.
09:42And then just gently rub the end of your pen with this pollen onto the stigma, the female bit.
09:49Just cut a bit of embroidery thread or anything like that.
09:53And tie it round the flower that you've pollinated.
09:56And make a little note of what the parents were.
10:00And all you do then is wait.
10:02At the end of May, the beginning of June, collect your seed and then sow it straight away.
10:08It'll take a couple of years before you actually see the new flowers.
10:12But when you do, what excitement!
10:19It's not only that hellebores bridge that gap between the winter and the spring.
10:25They seem to be saying, this is our season, this is our time.
10:30Come on, let's get into the garden.
10:49Some of you may know that a few weeks ago,
10:53Carol was awarded the Royal Horticultural Society's highest accolade.
10:59And that is the Victoria Medal of Honour.
11:02Very, very few people ever receive that.
11:05And it's richly deserved, and Carol, we're all very proud of you.
11:10Now, Carol did talk about it.
11:13We've got a whole mass of purple hellebores.
11:16And within this one plant, most of the flowers are the same burgundy-purple colour.
11:21But there, in amongst them, is one stem with a pure white flower.
11:27And if I cross that with another white flower,
11:30it's going to be the same purple hellebore.
11:33And it's going to be the same purple hellebore.
11:37And if I cross that with another white flower,
11:40it wouldn't necessarily result in white.
11:42It could be purple, it could be a whole mixture.
11:45Hellebores tend to get worse every time they hybridise, every time they cross.
11:51And the way round it is to regularly buy new plants,
11:55plant them in amongst the old ones,
11:57so you're reinvigorating the gene pool.
12:00And that way, you just keep them going.
12:02And they will go on and on and on.
12:04They will go on and on and on.
12:06And they will flower for years to come.
12:10BIRDS CHIRP
12:32Easter time is traditionally when people planted their potatoes.
12:36It's the first holiday since Christmas and you can get out.
12:38Normally, the weather is not too bad.
12:40It depends when Easter falls.
12:41But this year, we've all shared a tumultuous winter and early spring
12:46and the ground can be a little bit cold.
12:49However, if you can't plant in the ground,
12:52or even if you don't have a garden or space to plant,
12:55you still can grow some spuds and start this weekend.
13:00The answer is to grow your potatoes in a container.
13:04I've got three different types of container,
13:07which should work perfectly well.
13:09The first is the simplest of the lot, which is a recycled bag.
13:13This is a bag that had a wood chip mulch in,
13:16but a compost bag is the obvious one.
13:18If you've got a large pot,
13:21and this is a pot which actually a small tree came in,
13:24keep it, use it.
13:26Really ideal for growing potatoes.
13:28The important thing for both of them, remember,
13:30you do need holes, drainage holes in the bottom.
13:33Whatever you're using must drain freely.
13:36And finally, I've come across this.
13:38This is a fairly new introduction.
13:40This is recycled polypropylene.
13:43It looks like felt, but actually, again, it is plastic.
13:46But the fact that someone is recycling it
13:48seems to me like a good idea and good news.
13:51It claims that the roots get air pruned.
13:54In other words, they start to grow through the sides of the bag,
13:58they heat the air, they stop growing, therefore they're pruned,
14:02and they put their energy into becoming more fibrous.
14:05And the more fibrous the roots are,
14:07the more moisture they'll take up and the more nutrients.
14:10Therefore, it should result in a better crop of potatoes.
14:13Well, the only way to test it is to try all three.
14:16So that's what I'm going to do.
14:18With all of them, put some compost in there.
14:22Put four scoops in each of them.
14:26Potatoes come in three types.
14:28First earlies, second earlies, and main crop.
14:31First earlies are your classic new potato.
14:34Most people harvest them mid to late summer.
14:37Second earlies you put in a little bit later,
14:40and they can sort of double up as new potatoes and main crop.
14:43And the main crop are your standard potato that you can store all winter.
14:47They tend to be larger,
14:49and you harvest those sort of September and October.
14:53This is a new type I'm going to try called Casablanca.
14:56A first early, so a new potato that will be sweet and delicious in early summer.
15:02Slightly waxy, so a good all-round potato.
15:06It is important not to put too many in each sack.
15:09If you put four or five in a container,
15:11you're going to end up with potatoes the size of marbles.
15:14So what I'm going to do is put two seed potatoes in each of these containers.
15:20We just cover that up.
15:26And as long as the light is excluded,
15:28that's all we have to worry about at the moment.
15:31Give them a little bit of water.
15:33You don't want to let them dry out, but they shouldn't be sodden.
15:37They shouldn't really be exposed to hard frost.
15:41So if it's going to drop below minus two or three,
15:44it's worth protecting them somehow, either with fleece,
15:47or even lifting the bags up and bringing them indoors.
15:51And if you're thinking, well, why potatoes?
15:54It means you've never eaten a new potato
15:58harvested from your own patch of ground,
16:01even if that is in an old recycled sack.
16:04They taste better than anything you've eaten before.
16:10Now, the beauty of these containers is that you can grow potatoes,
16:13even if you live in the middle of a city.
16:15And city life is immeasurably improved by plants of all kinds,
16:20and particularly flowers, and there's been a lot of research done on this.
16:23And Professor James Hitchmore of Sheffield University
16:26has been in the vanguard of both planting schemes
16:30and also researching what we plant in our urban areas.
16:34And last summer, we went to see him in his own garden.
16:38BIRDS CHIRP
16:44I've been interested in plants for a long time,
16:47and I've been experimenting with it for a long time.
16:50I think I've always had a very curious mind.
16:53I try to work out how we can design and manage plantings in cities more effectively.
17:00I work with environmental psychology approaches
17:04to understand what ordinary people might actually think
17:07of the appearance of that sort of vegetation,
17:09whether they like it, whether they don't, and what are the important factors.
17:15The garden's a laboratory in some ways, not in a serious scientific sense,
17:20but it's a laboratory that allows me to test new plants,
17:24new combinations of plants, and then potentially apply those
17:27to some other aspects of my professional work.
17:31I also just want to create a place which is enjoyable to be in.
17:39So what makes me a little bit different, perhaps,
17:42from other people who design plantings in urban areas
17:46is that I've wanted to utilise the plants in the wild as a sort of inspiration.
17:54I'm currently experimenting with a wide range of South African plants.
17:58I've been growing lots of species from seed over the last ten years,
18:02and I've visited South Africa a lot to look at actually these plants
18:06and their wild habitats.
18:08And the reason I'm interested in South African plants
18:10is that they're one of the groups of plants
18:12which are going to become much more useful in the future
18:14in a sort of climate-change world.
18:16So as British cities warm, as the winters become less cold,
18:20many of these species will be really useful to us.
18:25South African plants that I'm particularly interested in,
18:27firstly, some of the succulents.
18:29There's a whole range of small succulents
18:31which you find at high altitude in South Africa,
18:34and some of them, these grow on my green roof,
18:37and they could be grown in lots of gardens in the UK.
18:43Gladiolus are another genus I'm really, really interested in.
18:46Gladiolus are another genus I'm really, really interested in.
18:49They've got a lot of potential in gardens.
18:52Historically, we think of them as these really large, flowered ones
18:56which you buy in flower shops, which aren't really winter-hardy,
19:00and you just use them as a summer bulb.
19:03However, there's a whole range of species
19:05which are increasingly cold-tolerant in Britain,
19:08and quite a few of those plants I've experimented with in this garden
19:12and found out that really, in Sheffield,
19:14there's quite a number of species which are completely reliable
19:17and really, really successful.
19:21In total, there's about 700 species in this garden,
19:26and I've tried to organise them in ways
19:29to create sort of perhaps dramatic effects
19:32which are, again, not so common in other gardens.
19:35With me, I tend to use plants as sort of repeating elements
19:40right across the garden,
19:42so they, like, go back and forth, a bit like shoelaces,
19:45they stitch across,
19:47and nearly everything in the garden does that.
19:50And that just creates a different visual
19:53because when that one thing flowers,
19:55there's normally quite a few of them,
19:57and they are present across the whole space,
20:00and that tends to generate much more of a dramatic effect
20:03than you would otherwise get.
20:09I'd really like the garden to have
20:11as long a flowering season as possible,
20:13and so one of the ways in which I've achieved that
20:16is by using layers of planting.
20:21So this is an example of the mid-layer species.
20:24It's an Aster, Aster sedifolius.
20:26It comes from southern Europe.
20:28They form these nice domey sort of shapes,
20:31and then what we have coming out of that in this one little spot,
20:34we have some of the emergent layer, the upper layer,
20:37and this is a Gladiolus.
20:39This is Gladiolus ruby.
20:41Next to that, you have a dwarf form of Parothschia,
20:44which is also coming out of this layer.
20:46So you can see here you've got this sort of flat top layer,
20:50and then these things punching through.
20:52I really like these tall sort of naked stems.
20:55This is a Nagapanthus.
20:57What I like about these top layer species
20:59is many of them are very, very architectural,
21:02and this is something you see a lot in the wild
21:05in a lot of plant communities,
21:07these naked stems punching through,
21:09and if you look sort of behind me,
21:11I think you can see the effect in the rest of the garden
21:14of how all those stems create
21:16a really interesting sort of visual rhythm.
21:20It's a way of trying to produce plantings
21:23which are perhaps manageable
21:25and highly attractive to people,
21:27but they're also very useful
21:29for supporting biodiversity and wildlife in cities.
21:32The challenges in the 21st century
21:34as we come perhaps more urban, more dense,
21:37is how do we produce landscapes
21:39which can do all three of those things?
21:42And so this is one of many possibilities
21:45in which how these things could come to pass.
21:58Come on.
22:08Of course, what is so impressive
22:11about the work of James Hitchmore
22:14and others working in the same field
22:17is maximising the effect and the beauty
22:20in quite limited situations, particularly in inner city.
22:24But that's the challenge that every garden faces,
22:27and particularly here in the Jewel Garden at Longmeadow,
22:30getting these plants to work
22:32so you can celebrate what's happening now
22:34but very quickly replace it with more.
22:37And as they die back,
22:39they're not in any way diminishing the flowers that follow them,
22:42they're not suppressing them, and that can be a problem.
22:44To get that balance right with colour and shape
22:47and time and season
22:49is the endless fascination of gardening.
22:51And all the jobs that we do,
22:53the pruning back and the clipping and the planting and what have you,
22:56they are the means to the end.
22:58The end is always the performance.
23:05Good boy. Come on.
23:14One of the things that we really enjoy doing here at Longmeadow
23:18is setting this table out with spring bulbs.
23:22We start off at the end of January, early February with irises,
23:25and we're working through it.
23:27Now the glory is that fritillary. It's fritillary persica.
23:30We have the other little snakeshead fritillaries coming through
23:33and obviously these muscari, daffodils, as many as we can.
23:38And they add light and life to the harshest moments of spring.
23:43If you want spring bulbs, you have to plan ahead.
23:47There are bulbs that you can plant now,
23:50either in a border or in a container, that are spectacular.
23:54Ones like gladioli, like cardiocrinums,
23:57or one of my favourites, lilies.
24:00Now, lily bulbs look very different from others
24:04because they don't have a protective outer layer.
24:06So if you think of an onion with all its layers,
24:08in this case they're scales that look like an artichoke.
24:11And when you're buying them, you want to look for nice plump bulbs
24:15and be quite careful because you can break them off.
24:18So that is very typically a lily.
24:21And this is my favourite lily of all.
24:23This is Lilium regali, the regal lily,
24:26which has six-foot-tall stems topped by a glorious white trumpet of flower.
24:33Its fragrance will run right across the garden.
24:37Now, when you're growing them in pots,
24:40it is important to choose the right type of compost.
24:44I've got here a mix that I've made up of coir, leaf mould, a bit of grit.
24:51So what you want is a nice, loose, friable compost
24:54because then the roots get out and they do best under those circumstances.
25:01So you can see that that is actually less than half full.
25:06And I'm going to put three in a pot this size.
25:10They need to be covered over by about four or five inches of compost.
25:14Now, I have had letters from people saying that lilies are poisonous to cats.
25:23And if you're a cat lover, you may not want to grow lilies.
25:26Well, I'm a cat lover.
25:28I've grown lilies all my adult life and I've had cats all my adult life
25:33and the two have never come to any problems between them.
25:37So maybe it's something you want to look out for,
25:39but I wouldn't get too anxious about it.
25:46Now, unlike some of the spring bulbs, lilies are a bit more temperate.
25:51They don't need protecting from the cold,
25:53but they need sheltering as they start to grow from wind and too much rain.
25:59And then they can be put where you want to enjoy them at their best
26:03round about the end of May, beginning of June,
26:06and they will flower at the end of June and July.
26:10Well, that's a very simple job done,
26:12whose benefits will be magnificently apparent in high summer.
26:17And here are a few other jobs you can do this weekend.
26:26If you sow early salad crops like rocket, they'll be ready to prick out
26:31and the principle applies to any seed that you sow.
26:35Wait until the seedlings have got two true leaves.
26:38That's leaves that look like the parent plant
26:41and holding them by the leaf, not the stem,
26:44carefully ease them out of the compost with as much root as possible.
26:48They then need to go into an individual container.
26:51It could be a pot or a plug, but I'm using egg boxes to save plastic.
26:56Water them, put them somewhere protected to grow into sturdy plants
27:01that are big enough to plant outside.
27:06A couple of weeks ago, I planted some summer fruiting raspberries,
27:10but if you grow the autumn fruiting type and you haven't yet pruned them,
27:14this is something to get on with this weekend.
27:17Remove all last year's top growth right down to the ground
27:21and the new shoots will carry this year's harvest between late July and October.
27:28Most garden centres are selling tender bedding plants as plugs.
27:33But in many parts of the country, it's too cold to plant them out.
27:38But if you buy them now, pot them on and keep them protected
27:42and a windowsill will do fine.
27:44And then plant them out when you're ready,
27:46you'll have nice big plants that have been very cheap to buy.
27:58Well, I'm afraid we've run out of time today.
28:01But whatever you're doing, try and get outside
28:05and enjoy the Easter weekend, at least partly, in the garden.
28:09And I won't try and predict the weather,
28:11cos I've got it very wrong so far this year.
28:13But I do know that whether it be rain, sun, ice or snow, spring is unstoppable.
28:19These daffodils were poking out of the snow just a few days ago.
28:24We are off air next week, I'm afraid.
28:27But when we come back in a fortnight's time, at eight o'clock, by the way,
28:31we are on for a full hour
28:33and we will remain at a 60-minute programme for the rest of the year.
28:38So I'll see you back here at Longmeadow in a couple of weeks.
28:41Till then, bye-bye.
28:53.