Gardeners World S52e12 31-05-19
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00Hello, welcome to Gardener's World. I'm in the grass borders because I'm planting
00:15out tree dahlias. These differ from your average dahlia because they very rarely flower, and
00:26I have to say I've been growing them for about 15 years and I've yet to have one flower
00:30here at Longmiddle. But it doesn't matter because they make these stupendously tall
00:35plants. Ten, twelve foot tall, fabulous foliage, and they work really well with the grasses
00:42in the grass garden. There we are. And that can be planted deep down. I'll give that a
00:56mulch when I've finished because I've got a couple more to plant first. On today's programme,
01:04Nick has got the ultimate guide to early flowering clematis. Arit takes an exclusive
01:12look at a brand new rooftop garden with spectacular views over the city of London. We pay a visit
01:21to Chatsworth's superb cutting garden. And I shall be starting an exciting new development
01:28on the mound because I've created two brand new beds and now is the time to start planting.
01:54Now we've come to the end of May, it's time to make a real change in the vegetable garden.
01:58Crops like the purple sprouting broccoli, which I sowed last May, are coming to the end. There
02:05are a few left on this plant but you can see an awful lot of it now is flowering and going to
02:11seed. They've had their run, we've had a fabulous harvest all through spring, and it's time to clear
02:16space to put out tender vegetables. So the first thing to do is just pull them up. And let's pull
02:22this one up. Come on. There we go. We'll take these guys out. It is one of the facts of life
02:44that if you dig through a potato patch for hours and take out every last potato, you'll then go
02:52back and put your hand in and pull out one as big as a melon. They always escape. There we are,
03:05I'll rest my case. How did that slip through the net? Now that is what I call a tickle. It's not
03:16proper digging but it's absolutely fine. Next thing to do is to refresh the soil by adding a
03:22layer of compost. You don't need to dig it in, the worms will do that for you. But if you do that
03:34every time, and it only needs to be about half an inch thick, whatever you've got to spare really,
03:39because it will all do good. Right. Okay, next stage. I've got courgettes here. And courgettes
03:51are the most amenable of all the tender vegetables. And the great thing about them,
03:58unlike most of the squash family, is if we get some cool nights, they will go on growing. Whereas
04:04if you planted out a pumpkin or a squash or cucumber, and it turns cold for a few nights,
04:10they just sit frozen. I've got two types here. I've got a yellow one, Gold Rush, and a dark green
04:16Nero de Milano. And the temptation would be to plant them all out. The truth is that probably
04:25you don't need more than a maximum of one courgette plant per person. And that will last you all
04:30summer. A good rule of thumb with courgettes is to give them a meter square space each. And
04:36traditionally you plant them in a saucer. And the reason for that is so that you can give them
04:42plenty of water. So just pull the soil around to create a little dish. And then you just simply
04:49plant them into the base of that and leave the saucer there like that. This is one of the dark
04:57green Nero de Milano. I'll take that out. That goes in there. Pop that down. The one thing that
05:08they need to keep growing and grow well is plenty of water. So I will water them in and at the very
05:16least they'll have a weekly really good soak. And the one tip about picking courgettes is don't let
05:28them get too big. I always think somewhere between a fat finger and a sausage is the perfect size for
05:33a courgette. These should be small and just pick them off and you'll have courgettes all summer
05:38long. Now here we are planning for the rest of summer and that's fantastic. But we have just
05:44finished the most glorious spring. It's been absolutely lovely. And a plant that always
05:51enhances any spring has been particularly good this year are the early flowering clematis. And
05:55Nick has been up to Darlington to see a really good selection of them. British gardeners have
06:11a long-term love affair with climbing plants and one of the most popular of the lot is clematis.
06:17This genus comes in an incredible range of shapes and forms and of course repeat flowers year after
06:25year producing prolific ranges of beautifully coloured blooms. The word clematis is derived
06:34from the Greek word clema meaning vine branch. The first clematis to be introduced into England
06:42was the viticella. It arrived in the 16th century and was brought back by plant hunters from Spain.
06:48But it was the large flowered species later discovered in Japan and China that really
06:56caught the attention of the Victorians. It's remained a firm favourite in British gardens
07:00ever since. Clematis can be a bit confusing when it comes down to how and when to prune them. And
07:07for this reason they're broken into three distinct groups. Today I'm going to be looking
07:13at the group one clematis and they are the plants that start flowering in early spring.
07:18Of all the early flowering clematis Montana has to be one of the most popular and one of
07:30the largest and this is a great example of it. This one's called Grandiflora with these beautiful
07:36white flowers and then on the back you've got this beautiful suffused burgundy tone which runs
07:42all the way down into the petal. Now the Montanas get to seven or eight meters so it's really a
07:47case of picking a spot where you can allow them to rampage. They're not particularly keen on
07:52pruning but they are great at covering nasty old buildings or walls or similar. Now this plant has
07:59been rejuvenated and that's the way to treat Montanas if they start to get out of hand and
08:04Christopher Lloyd brilliantly described an out-of-hand clematis as looking like a disemboweled
08:09mattress and these guys can do that after five or six years. So this has been chopped back literally
08:15to about three feet off the ground and it's rejuvenated beautifully. It's self-twining so
08:21it need a little bit of help to start with but we'll smother this wall over the next two or three years.
08:31Another classic is the Macropetala which produces wonderful ornamental flowers that appear in spring.
08:38This little cutie beside me is a new cultivar of the Clematis Macropetala and it's called
08:50Spiky and you can see why. It's got these beautiful spiked petals ranged in a double
08:55rosette and what's lovely about them is that they start the season nodding and then slowly
09:00lifts and opens them up to the sun as they mature. Now it's a relatively small plant so it'll go to
09:06two or three meters so it can work well on a single wall and it's self clinging so it will
09:12slowly work its way up wires or a trellis. The best thing is it never needs pruning. One of the
09:18earliest Clematis interflower and one of my absolute favorites is Clematis Armandii Apple
09:24Blossom. It has beautiful clusters of pink and white flowers and they're shrouded by beautiful
09:30tropical looking evergreen leaves. I've been growing Clematis Alpina since I was a child and
09:43I find it utterly beguiling as a plant. Now this particular cultivar is called Blue Dancer and it
09:50exhibits those typical qualities for petals and as you can see they hang out from the plant and
09:56have these fabulous pendulous nodding heads. It's also got an RHS award of garden merit which means
10:03it's tried tested and a good reliable plant. It only reaches about two or three meters so it works
10:10well in a small space. You can also grow it on a tripod or on a piece of trellis. If you are going
10:16to grow an Alpina Clematis or any other Clematis in fact against a wall the positioning is really
10:22important. You need to make sure that it's 30 or 40 centimeters away from the wall and that's
10:27because of a phenomenon known as rain shadow. So directly next to a house or a wall like this you
10:33get a strip of soil which gets very little rain which is the exact opposite of what a Clematis
10:38wants. So by placing it just a bit further away it's going to be in more moist soil. The other
10:43thing you can do to keep it really happy cool and moist at the base is to heavily mulch it that way
10:49you'll have a very happy plant that's absolutely flanked with flowers. Forming part of the Atrogean
10:57group of Clematis, Alpinas are incredibly hardy. They come from mountainous regions so it means
11:03they're tolerant of strong harsh winds and they can also take amazingly down to minus 40. And
11:10a plant which have very fine root systems therefore they're happier in poorer soils.
11:16Now this particular cultivar behind me here is called Willy and it has some really lovely
11:24qualities to it. Of course the typical four petals and these have got a lavender pink tone
11:29to them. If you flip them over on the back they've got this beautiful darker streaking
11:35and venation with this lovely white trim all the way around the edge. What a gorgeous plant.
11:41Many of the spring flowering Clematis produce abundant growth which can look grey and possibly
11:50dead towards the end of winter. But before you take any pruning action just scratch the surface
11:56and see if there's life there or not. These plants generally flower on old wood so take
12:01care before you remove any stems. Two of the best early flowering Clematis are Coriana and
12:11Macropatla. Now if the two of them are crossed together you get a phenomenon known as hybrid
12:17vigour and that has resulted in this beautiful plant just here which is called Broughton Bride.
12:22It takes the best of both parents. It in theory starts the season as a single and then becomes
12:28double as it progresses along. It's got these beautiful pendulous teples in a cream and then
12:34they're speckled across their backs with these lilac spots. Very very pretty. Something else
12:39that makes it incredibly useful as a plant is it's quite light of foliage and tendrils so you
12:45can grow it up through other shrubs without compromising it at all. And what's particularly
12:49lovely with this holly combination is that the buds of the holly have got this sort of pale
12:54burgundy tone which is picked out on the back of the petals here. And the final thing that makes
13:00it I think one of the most useful early flowering Clematis is it's arguably one of the longest
13:05flowering so it goes from early spring potentially all the way into June. Thanks to the hardiness of
13:16most of the early flowering Clematis, no matter whether you're growing in a wind tunnel or on a
13:21really cold site, they're a sure-fire way to bring vibrant colour into your garden in spring.
13:26Nick will be paying another couple of visits to look at different types of Clematis. Next up will
13:50be the Group 2, the large flower types, and then later on Group 3, the small flower Clematis such
13:57as Viticella, which will last right through into autumn. Now I'm planting one of those Group 3
14:04late flowering Clematis here. This is Clematis Rederiana and it's got wonderful primrose coloured
14:11almost cowslip type flowers that are deliciously fragrant, brilliant for butterflies and bees which
14:17is why I'm putting it here in the wildlife garden and I'm also going to scramble it up through this
14:22hawthorn. I'm going to plant in here well away from the base of the tree because trees and shrubs suck
14:29up a huge amount of water. Oh gosh I've hit root there. When you're planting any Clematis you want
14:38to make sure you've got room for plenty of moisture retaining material underneath the plant so it can
14:47go down and find it and there's a big root there. I don't know if I'll be able to chop through it. I'm
14:54feeling slightly hysterical because as well as sucking great tree roots I've now hit an enormous
15:01stone. That is a pretty deep hole. When you plant any Clematis it's a good idea to plant it so the
15:13junction with the plant and the top of the soil in the pot is at least an inch below the ground
15:19for any Clematis. What they love are cool roots and sunny flowers and this means that if it's below
15:27the ground the roots will be cool and that will help more than anything else. But before I plant
15:33that at all I'm going to add some compost. So we'll put that in the bottom like that.
15:40It goes down in there. These are a couple of bean sticks and the idea is it provides a support to
15:55get it up into the branches and then that as it grows can be tied onto it. Now before I backfill
16:03with more soil I'm going to soak that with water. Now this will become a really large plant. It will
16:20climb easily to the top of this hawthorn but it is slow to establish so don't worry if there doesn't
16:27seem to be an awful lot of activity in the first year. In fact I'll be very happy if it reaches the
16:31top of these bean sticks by the end of this summer. Now creating a woodland wildlife garden
16:40in the countryside is a fairly obvious thing to do. It sits naturally but more and more of us are
16:47living in towns and cities and Arrott has been to the heart of the City of London to have an
16:53exclusive view of a brand new and extraordinary roof garden. More and more of us are living in
17:05cities. Housing developments and businesses are encroaching on our green spaces. The world is
17:13becoming more urbanised. As it does so our green spaces, our havens for wildlife and us are shrinking.
17:20Here in the UK it's estimated that over 92% of us will live in urban areas by 2030.
17:29It's absolutely crucial that we continually strive to stay in touch with nature. It has
17:38to come from urban development. We need to create gardens and green spaces that
17:44allow plants and wildlife and us to be able to thrive. A new nationwide government initiative
17:53called the City Plan 2036 is challenging councils to think again about urban development as
17:59something which should include green spaces. There are already 60 green roofs in the city's
18:07square mile but I've come to see the latest and the largest of them at 120 Fenchurch Street up there.
18:15Seeing the cityscape at height is always so breathtaking but to be able to do it
18:38within a garden like this, it's so special. This garden of three quarters of an acre is
18:46divided into different areas. As you turn each corner you see something new. Herbaceous beds,
18:54a terrace and a promenade which looks onto the London cityscape.
19:01The building and the rooftop concept were conceived by architect Eric Parry.
19:08Eric, what did you set out to create 15 floors up in the middle of the city?
19:14A pocket garden that was publicly accessible where anyone could arrive and take time out
19:22from the busyness of the city because it's really compressed down there on the street.
19:27So this is a commercial building with this civic space on the top. What was it about this space
19:35in particular that you wanted the visitors to feel and experience? As it was, if you look down
19:42from this level, the 15th floor, all you saw was a really rather awful roofscape of plant
19:51rooms and air conditioning and it is very demoralizing. But now as the buildings are
19:56getting higher, this roof becomes incredibly important for those around it to enjoy.
20:03But most importantly is the fact that you can walk right around this. So I think nature is about
20:11movement, it's about not being contained. It's quite clear that good light, good air
20:18and more than anything else connection with nature is the great restorative.
20:24That sort of sense of removal from the city has always been seen traditionally as related to
20:31well-being. If you haven't got green spaces, if you haven't got nature, you know, you're missing
20:38a very vital part of life.
20:44In rethinking our urban development to include green spaces, I think it's vital that they are
20:51designed to connect with people. Landscape architect for the project was Tilman Latt
20:56of Latt's and Partner, who has designed many roofscapes. How do you manage to instill London
21:02up to the 15th floor? One is the hard landscape architecture. So it is what you see over here,
21:08the Yorkstone everywhere, which brings up the city of London. Besides that, of course,
21:12the plants bring in the typical garden world, the hedges, the spaliers, all the flowers,
21:18which pushes you into another world. What is lovely is that it is a very spacious feel up here.
21:26Yeah, that's right. We had the idea of a mixture of a garden with a square, with a public square,
21:32where many people can get together. The Wisteria is clearly the star of the show.
21:38What made you choose Wisteria? Well, in the first place, we designed a structure,
21:45which was able to cope with the wind turbulence, which are caused by the environment over here
21:50with the skyscrapers. And then we found the perfect plant, and that was the Wisteria,
21:54which is very robust. It's just perfect also because it withstands extreme temperatures and climates.
22:01There's a lot of boxes to tick, isn't it? In terms of keeping the people happy,
22:05keeping biodiversity happy, and keeping the environment happy, I guess, as well.
22:10You feel yourself in an environment which we could call an urban nature, where everything
22:15mixes together, where you have the two sides, the natural stuff, but especially the typical garden
22:21plants, which can be invaded by birds and insects and others. Tell me, what are your thoughts about
22:28the future of green spaces in cities? Roof gardens are a perfect alternative for people to find a
22:35place to walk to, to relax, and it is something which can allow for a different city in the future.
22:45What I'm loving is seeing people come up, take this space in, have a sit down, a chat, and I think
22:51you really get to see the value of having these spaces, so that you can just pause for a moment
22:57and just enjoy the place that you're in.
23:12I have seen really good rooftop gardens in the middle of Tokyo, New York, LA,
23:20London, and I do think that this is a truly exciting area of gardening, and it's going to
23:25get bigger and bigger. Anyway, it's time to go to my own high-rise garden.
23:41I started to make big changes here on the mound the other week, and now I'm ready for planting.
23:48If you remember, this was paved, and the idea was it would be somewhere to sit, but the truth was we
23:54never sat here very much, so what we thought was to dig up the paving and turn them into two small
24:01borders and continue the planting. Keep the same color theme, which is predominantly pale yellows,
24:09pale blues, and a little bit of white. Now, I've got a range of plants, very exciting,
24:14and the first thing I've got is a rose. This is called Vanessa Bell, and it flowers with a lovely
24:22primrose yellow flower, and will keep flowering for most of the summer. I'll put this pretty much
24:28in the center. This is Echinops retro. It's a globe-headed thistle. It looks like a medieval
24:38mace, but the spikes are a wonderful icy blue. Now, I've got three, so I'm going to put one on this side
24:46and two on that. Now, a little bit more height. I've got some daylilies. This is Hemerocallis corky,
25:00really good yellow flowers, and of course, like all daylilies, they'll only last for 24 hours,
25:05but more will come back, and the great thing about daylilies is that once they're set,
25:11they'll grow in most soils. They are very accommodating.
25:16Now, last, certainly in this batch, and I will be adding to it, I've got an Orangium, and this is
25:23Joss Eiking. I think that's how you pronounce it, and I've not grown this before, but I've read about
25:30it, and I like the idea of these tall spires with ghostly icy blue flowers. This really does do best
25:39in poor, well-drained soil with maximum sun, so certainly one of them wants to go near the back
25:48there and there, I think, but at this point, before I start planting, I'm going to look down
25:55because I don't want to move things after I've planted.
25:57Right, what I can see from up here are distinct spaces, and there's a temptation to shift things
26:12around so that it's more balanced and the gaps aren't so pronounced, but I'm going to resist that
26:18because I want to leave gaps so that when I get more plants, I can fill them. You want to allow
26:25room to add and spread, so I think the next thing to do is just pop these in the ground.
26:45Most of the time, when you create new borders like these, you're looking for a sense of
26:50rightness, of permanence, but occasionally you make gardens as a harvest, particularly to grow
26:57flowers if you want to make wonderful arrangements for indoors, and we went to Chatsworth, where
27:03Becky Crowley has created a stunning cut flower garden as part of the walled kitchen garden.
27:11I used to come here to Chatsworth with my family. I remember once just seeing this female gardener
27:18and just thinking, oh, I'd love that job, and I got the chance to come here to Chatsworth
27:24as a student in 2012 and managed to get this job growing cut flowers.
27:30The cutting garden is a one acre site within a three acre kitchen garden at Chatsworth.
27:35I work with a team of florists, so the florists come here and cut all the flowers
27:39and they take them down to the private side of the house where the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire live.
27:47I'm a gardener, so I'm a gardener, so I'm a gardener, so I'm a gardener, so I'm a gardener.
27:51I'm a gardener, so I'm a gardener, so I'm a gardener, so I'm a gardener, so I'm a gardener.
27:55I'm a gardener, so I'm a gardener, so I'm a gardener, so I'm a gardener, so I'm a gardener.
27:59What the Duke and Duchess love is seasonality, so getting something that is really at its peak
28:07at that moment in time and having that to appreciate up close in the house is really special.
28:16To get as long a season as possible, it's really important to use
28:19lots of plants from lots of different plant groups.
28:23So I'll be using bulbs, including corms as well, hardy annuals, half hardy annuals,
28:30biennials, perennials, shrubs.
28:38Annuals are fantastic for cutting because with many of them you can cut a stem and it re-flowers.
28:44So if you've got a garden at home where you want flowers in the garden to look nice,
28:49but also want to cut them for your house, I always recommend
28:52annuals because that's a great way of getting as many flowers in as small a space as possible.
29:03As a cut flower grower, I grow tulips as annuals. So when we're harvesting them,
29:08what we do is we pull them from the bottom and hopefully the bulb comes out as well,
29:12and that gives you a really long stem.
29:15I've tried in the past to grow tulips as perennials, and what I've found
29:19is that the vast majority don't perform as well in second, third, fourth years.
29:27By far the most fashionable tulip at the moment is Labella Poc.
29:32There's also a really beautiful one called Brownie that's a lovely double.
29:38And I'm trying a new one this year, another double called Amazing Grace,
29:43which I'm really happy with.
29:45To go with them, we've also got things like Ribes, Sanguinium, and Camassias come in as well.
30:00So the glasshouses are really important to get a long season.
30:04So we start with the Anemones and then we go on to the Ranunculus.
30:09The Ranunculus Asiaticus that we've got here are one of my absolute favourites.
30:13We plant them in the autumn and they flower really early in the year,
30:17and they give us these really long stems as well.
30:21Once these are finished flowering, we'll take these out, store the corms,
30:25and then replace them with Chrysanthemums, which will flower right up until Christmas.
30:30These Icelandic Poppies look really delicate, but by searing the ends of the stems in boiling
30:35water for about 20 seconds, they make a really good cut flower and last for ages.
30:48For people who want to grow their own cut flowers at home,
30:52things that I would recommend are the Anemones, which are really easy to grow,
30:56and you can grow those from just a packet of seeds or buy
30:59plug plants from the garden centre, and they'll still flower this year and look fantastic.
31:06Other things that are great are things like Sweet Peas as well, because again,
31:09you can just cut lots and lots of stems, and you can train them up a trellis or a fence.
31:14So if you don't have many flowers, you can just cut them up and plant them in a garden centre.
31:19And if you have a lot of flowers, you can just cut them up and plant them in a garden centre.
31:24Late spring is a really busy time in the garden, so sowing the last of the half-hardy
31:39annuals. I'll even start sowing a few biennials. I've been taking lots of cuttings of Dahlias.
31:48The Dahlias are a perfect example of a cut-and-come-again flower, so they'll keep
31:53going right up until the frosts. I feel really fortunate to have this job. I absolutely love it.
32:03It's fabulous having the chance to work in this one-acre space.
32:09I feel like it's getting to a stage now where it's really coming into its own.
32:14I'm always trying to achieve this seamless kind of succession of flowers,
32:18and each year it feels like I get a little bit closer to that.
32:24I know that in the glass houses, in the cold frames, you've got all those
32:27plants just waiting in the wings to be planted out, and that will take us right up until the
32:32frosts. And that's really exciting as well, to know what's coming next.
32:49Chatsworth is an extraordinary place to visit, and it's open daily. And if you're going,
32:55do go and visit Becky's Garden. I've been a couple of times, and it's absolutely wonderful.
33:02Now, I was interested to see that when Becky was picking tulips for cut flowers,
33:07she was taking it bulb and all. And that may seem very extravagant, but the fact is that tulips are
33:14at their very best in the first year. And they make a new bulb thereafter, and the new bulb is
33:19going to be much smaller, and the resulting flowers, if there are any, and quite often there
33:23aren't, will also be smaller. And if you're growing them in pots, the best bet is not to
33:30leave them in the pot. So what I do is use these either in borders or in long grass,
33:36and then buy new bulbs for display next year. Now, the first thing to do is to break off the flower
33:44heads, and that will stop energy going into forming seed, so that what bulbs there will be,
33:50will be as good as possible. So I need to extract them from the pot.
34:03There we go, they're coming.
34:06So if you take this and just put it straight in the pot like that,
34:11this now needs to go somewhere sunny, so the foliage and the stems can absorb as much light
34:16as possible, and put the energy back into the bulb, and leave them until it's died right back.
34:23And then when it's completely died down, it can go somewhere dark and be stored until it's
34:28Now this leaves me with a really nice pot, free to use for something else. And in fact, I shall be
34:36planting up my dahlias into the pots I had tulips, and once they're planted into the terracotta pot,
34:42it leaves me with a plastic pot to put the tulips in. So the whole thing has a nice circularity.
34:49Joe visits the wonderful woodland garden at Leonard's Lea, which has been closed for the last
34:55nine years, but has now reopened its doors. And I shall be having a look at my Nigel and Nell
35:02topiary, and giving them a bit of a tweak, but first I'm going to have a look at the
35:06garden itself, and then I'm going to have a look at the garden itself, and then I'm going to have a
35:10look at the garden itself, and then I'm going to have a look at the garden itself, and then I'm
35:14shall be having a look at my Nigel and Nell topiary, and giving them a bit of a tweak,
35:18but first we go to Arundel Castle in Sussex, where Carol is celebrating their glorious alliums.
35:31Alliums offer a blaze of colour in late spring. Most of them are renowned for the architecture
35:38that they bring to the garden, these straight stems and great big spherical heads. Others though
35:44are dainty and delicate, and of course you can eat some of them too. They're a welcome
35:51prelude to the riot of colour we expect by midsummer. Alliums are part of the onion family,
36:00a huge bulbous genus with around 700 species, and they're nearly all found in the northern hemisphere
36:08in dry rocky habitats across the Mediterranean and temperate regions.
36:16In recent years, alliums have really gained in popularity, and it's hardly surprising because
36:22they fit in beautifully with more naturalistic plantings. The flowers in these kind of alliums
36:28have six petals. The ones on the outside open first, and eventually others follow suit until
36:36the whole thing is this wonderful globe of tiny starry flowers. But this is how they start life,
36:44they're tunicate bulbs. You've only to think of your own onions to know exactly what the structure
36:50is, but although it's interesting to see how they grow, this is the reason we grow them,
36:56for the splendour of their gorgeous flowers.
36:59Not all alliums are big and bold. Chives, familiar from our herb gardens,
37:06have the same spherical heads as their bigger cousins, but on a much reduced scale.
37:13Allium oocene, and better known as wild garlic, is a handsome plant in its own right,
37:19with flat heads of white starry flowers.
37:21Although alliums have the most glorious of flowers, as they come into flower, their leaves start to
37:27fade and fizzle, so it's a great idea to plant your alliums amongst other herbaceous perennials.
37:34And this is a brilliant example of just how to combine them. I love it with these big
37:40bangs of centauria. It's providing colour from its flower at the moment, later it will just be
37:47its foliage. And then there are the little pale pink spikes of persicaria bestorta,
37:53a good clumper, and therefore ideal to go with these alliums. Later, as the alliums turn to seed,
38:01the clematis will really burst into flower, and the delphiniums in the background will come to the fore.
38:17One of the greatest assets that alliums have is their ability to mix and mingle with other plants.
38:28They just add this touch of drama and panache to a border. This one is one called purple rain,
38:35with these great globose flowers, and very, very starry too. But look at it alongside that red tulip.
38:42This is king's blood, and quite soon those petals will fall to the ground, but the allium will
38:50continue. When that geranium comes into flower, there it will be, holding its own. And look at
38:56this lovely little pentaglottis, which kind of rambles through. But it's alliums, alliums that
39:02are the forefront at the moment. Lots of us use alliums in an almost cottagey garden setting
39:17to create lovely pastel-y pictures, but here they're combined in the most creative way,
39:23with all sorts of tropicals, really exotic looking plants. It works wonderfully well.
39:32The most striking example is this rheum, this is rheum falmatum, and it's even putting the alliums
39:38to shame with these towering flower spikes. The whole thing combines together, it creates this
39:45really magical, quite dramatic effect. When you're using alliums in your garden,
40:02it's not just a question of plonking them in amongst other things. Here, they're used in this
40:07most marvellous way. The design that's created with them is really wonderful. It establishes
40:13this lovely rhythm, right from the front of this bed, through the trees, and over to the other side.
40:20It lends a real feeling of distance, and used amongst very simple foliage,
40:26these echium seedlings, which repeat that kind of pattern right into the background. It's brilliant.
40:41This planting proves you can keep it simple and still make a really effective picture.
40:48Here, in this formal cutting garden, you've got lines of alliums. Here's Mont Blanc,
40:54at its feet is Allium christophii, with these starry purple and silver flowers, and then amongst
41:02them, bursting forwards, is Round and Purple, its tight buds yet to open. You can really appreciate
41:10the deportment, the structure, and the colour of these beautiful plants. It's inspired.
41:16Most alliums bloom in late spring and early summer, helping to bridge the gap between spring flowering bulbs and summer perennials.
41:30What's more, they're one of the few flowers that die gracefully. So both in flower and in seed,
41:36their elegance adds an architectural quality to the border, right the way through to early autumn.
41:44Alliums are incredibly rewarding plants. All you've got to remember is to plant them in full sun,
41:50although they will take a bit of dappled shade. Make sure you plant your bulbs really, really deep,
41:56six inches isn't too much, and then make sure that the soil is very, very well-drained.
42:03For so little effort, for so little expense, you get this marvellous scintillating,
42:11marvellous scintillating show. They absolutely dazzle,
42:16and they introduce the beginning of the summer garden party.
42:30Of course, Carol is absolutely right. You should plant alliums deep, with lots of drainage,
42:35and they'll be happy. But here in the jewel garden, the allium purple sensation
42:41is really happy, and we planted it shallowly on heavy clay soil with poor drainage,
42:48which goes to show that sometimes you can break every rule in the book and get away with it.
42:55Well, he's not in amongst alliums, but Topri Nigel is gambling through the flowers with the
43:01red campion and the poppies coming through, and the forget-me-nots still looking good,
43:06and he seems very happy. So I'm going to leave him be for the moment, but if you're creating
43:10Topri and starting out, now is a really good time to train it and get it into shape, and that
43:16is the case with alliums. So I'm going to leave him be for the moment, but if you're creating
43:22it and starting out, now is a really good time to train it and get it into shape, and that is the
43:24case with Topri Nell. Now, there is Nell. I know, you have to look quite hard to see her.
43:41It's early days, and if you're creating Topri, if you want to get it established,
43:46you need light, because maximum light means maximum growth. And in fact, I've deliberately
43:51planted the yew for Nell on a north-south axis, because the weakness of Nigel is on an east-west
43:57one. So one side gets much more light than the other, whereas you want the whole thing to grow
44:02nice and solid all over. You want light all over. So I'm going to be destructive to the flowers,
44:08I'm afraid. So this poppy will have to go, and these forget-me-nots like that. Now we can begin
44:20to see the yew that will become an astonishing likeness of Nell, with a little bit of faith.
44:30But at this stage, I just want to give the shape and the form. I planted one for each leg, and you
44:40can see, so there are four, but the intention is that one of these will form a head as well as a
44:46leg, and actually that and that one both have the makings of a good Nelly head. So we've got the raw
44:52material, the plants are there, and the next thing to do is to form a framework that I can start to
44:58tie them into. Now I have some bamboos here, so the first one we can put in here, and then the
45:06second one, we need a short one for this leg, and then that angle there. Now what I will need
45:20is one to form her back, and if you think of that bamboo as being her back,
45:25that's the sort of shape a head I want. So we'll tie that in.
45:28Right, the key thing to remember is that vertical growth is always going to be stronger than
45:38horizontal growth. So if you want a nice strong shoot to evolve, let it be as upright as possible
45:46before bending it, and that will happen quicker. The second thing is if you do have truly horizontal
45:51growth, you will get vertical shoots coming from it, and you can use that to create depth
45:58and thickness. Although some skill is needed to make good topiary, probably the most important
46:05thing is patience, and everything does grow. Gardens are constantly changing, and Leonard's
46:12Lee garden in Sussex, which was famous for its fabulous woodlands, closed its doors nine years
46:19ago. But a new owner has restored the gardens, and now after nearly a decade,
46:26it is open to viewing again, and Joe went along to have a look.
46:38Leonard's Lee was one of the UK's foremost woodland gardens, with an amazing range of
46:43azaleas and rhododendrons, many of which were gathered on historical plant hunting expeditions.
46:50Now some of these plants are really quite rare in the wild, so it's fabulous that they've been saved
46:55here for us all to see. Just under two years ago, this grade one listed garden was rescued
47:04and lovingly restored by entrepreneur Penny Streeter. Penny, what was it about Leonard's
47:10Lee that first appealed to you? Well, it's quite an interesting story. I'd been with my son looking
47:17at a house, and I was following him on our way back, and literally I saw a for sale sign, and
47:24you know, screeched to a halt, and looked at this, and called up the agent, and you know, managed to
47:30get my way into the property to have a look. And can you remember when you first saw it? Well, it
47:35was a real sleeping beauty. I mean, as you hacked back literally this overgrown forest of sort of
47:41flowers, weeds, everything, there was this magnificent, beautiful, beautiful garden. Did you know then
47:50how iconic and how important Leonard's Lee was? No, I actually had never heard of Leonard's Lee at all,
47:57so it was only via talking to local people that I understood the significance of it locally.
48:04Was that daunting though? I mean, did you feel a real responsibility to get it right here?
48:08You have to tread really carefully, because like I say, people knew this place inside out. They knew
48:13what was in every cupboard effectively. Was the intention to always, you know, have visitors here,
48:18let them see the house, and let them see the garden? There was such a love for the whole place,
48:25and people really wanting to help and do everything they can to get the place open again,
48:29to belong to the local people, and that's how they felt. They felt that these were public gardens,
48:34not private gardens. I mean, I think it would be an absolute crime to have it for, I don't know,
48:40five or six of my friends, and we would be enjoying this beautiful space. It's actually ridiculous.
48:44This has got to be open to the public, and the visitors have got to enjoy it.
48:51Clearing and preserving a garden of this size and importance has been an epic task. Now home to so
48:57many rare species, head gardener Ray Abraham has been working around the clock since last summer
49:03to salvage as much as he can. Such a stunning landscape, isn't it? It is beautiful. 240 acres of
49:13botanic gardens. So what was it like taking on such a challenge, but knowing there were some
49:19real gems and rare plants here? You've got so many plants, and the preservation of the plants is most
49:26important. I was just very frightened of making the wrong cut on a plant, and then it disappearing
49:33forever. And what was your biggest challenge, would you say? The Dell area was the hardest to
49:39tackle, because there are so many plants there that are on the endangered list. They're crushing
49:45each other in a sense, and they're tangled into each other. It's an effort to try and see which
49:50one goes where, so that you don't cut the top out of the wrong one. Ray, you must feel like a bit of
49:57a guardian with this garden, and all the plants in it too. Well yes, I do. The responsibility of
50:04looking after this garden is huge, but by creating a seed bank and sharing that seed bank with Kew
50:11and other gardens, it'll keep the place alive. This garden alone is home to 450 species of
50:25rhododendron. Now to put that in context, that's about half the world's population of rhododendrons
50:32alone. It shows you how rich the horticulture is here, and this one is one of the rare ones here.
50:39This is rhododendron hossonii. It's absolutely beautiful. Blousy, large flowers, and when you
50:46look through the petals when they're backlit by the light, you can see all the detailing and the
50:50veining in there, and it's got a lovely peeling trunk too. Now this plant is really rare because
50:57in its natural habitat in China, the valleys where they grow have been flooded. They've been dammed,
51:03and about 200 plants were distributed around the world in various gardens, and a lot of those will
51:08have been lost too. So the work they're doing here at Leonard's Lee is really important. Plants like this
51:14are being saved.
51:25This area was a mass of impenetrable plants, and Ray and his team cut their way in here to release
51:33this fantastic rhododendron, and you can smell it from a long distance away, and when you're
51:38underneath it like this, you really can get a waft of its sweet fragrance, and these flowers
51:45are absolutely stunning. Now there was actually another plant growing through it that has pretty
51:50much died out, and they had to cut that out and selectively prune this plant as well, and turn it
51:55into the most majestic of forms with this multi-stemmed trunk shape here. So it looks very naturalistic,
52:02but actually there's a lot of work that's gone in here, and you can see that actually it's fused
52:06together a couple of branches in the middle, which creates this beautiful airy canopy and somewhere
52:12to stand underneath. They've just done a fantastic job, and throughout this whole garden they've had
52:17to edit plants like this, find out what's dying out, find out what needs taking out, and find the really
52:23good ones they want to keep.
52:37Now although this garden is home to the most fabulous collection of plants, it's also beautifully
52:42landscaped too, and landscaped on a vast scale. There are paths that lead you off into the woodland
52:48and around these beautiful lakes, and the lakes themselves, they weren't designed into this space,
52:54actually they're a result of iron ore being dug out and used for cannonballs in Cromwell's army,
53:01they take back that far, but as a result they just make the most beautiful feature here.
53:07Stunning vistas one way and then the other, and the planting around them is beautifully balanced.
53:13We've got the pine trees on one side, and the eye is drawn to that willow, and then you've got the
53:19wonderful reflection in the water too, so they do so much to this space. It works beautifully.
53:32This garden has blown me away, it's steeped in horticultural history, and packed full of
53:38incredible plants, and just to think it was so close to being lost forever, but thanks to this
53:45ambitious restoration, and Penny, Ray, and the team, I feel that it's in safe hands for many years to come.
54:02Now a plant that is about as far removed from woodland planting as can be imagined is the
54:08bearded iris, and here at Longmeadow I've tried to grow them over the years with not much success,
54:15because inevitably they get fed up with our wet heavy soil and our high rainfall, and also it's
54:22hard to grow them to be exposed to the sun, which they need, because the surrounding plants block
54:28it out. So two years ago, in the summer of 2017, I made this little strip of a bed, put masses of drainage in,
54:39it's a south-facing wall, it gets lots of sunshine, and of course with last summer's heat wave they
54:45loved it, and they're starting to repay that heat with a really good display. So this one, the lovely
54:51caramel colours, it's called Carnival Time, and I've got other reds and deep plum colours ready
54:59just about to come through, and the purple ones I moved from the jewel garden. We've had these for
55:05at least 10-12 years, I can't remember what variety they are now, but they've never looked as good
55:11as they do now, so at last I found somewhere where bearded irises are happy at Longmeadow.
55:21Come on in, come on.
55:42This is not hedge cutting, what I'm doing is trimming the vertical inside edges of the hedges.
55:51And I certainly don't want to do a serious hedge cut, no one should at this time of year, because
55:55that would disturb nesting birds. If you just neaten it up, and that could be just removing
56:01half a leaf to get a straight line, is incredibly effective at tightening up the whole vista.
56:10It's extraordinary how the eye latches on to a perpendicular line and everything else falls
56:15into place. This is a really good job to do at this time of year. And here are some more
56:20for this weekend.
56:36As we go into June, it's time for the Chelsea chop. This doesn't mean cutting back those plants that
56:42have finished, but reducing the height by about a third to a half of perennials that have not yet
56:48flowered. This will produce stronger, shorter plants with lots of side shoots, and therefore
56:55lots more flowers. At this time of year, the soft, fleshy growth of broad beans coincides
57:07with the life cycle of the black bean aphid. So to reduce the aphid, remove their food by taking
57:15out the top few inches of your broad beans. And this will also concentrate energy into the growing
57:21bean pods below. Fill the gaps left by spring flowers as they come to an end with annuals,
57:33both tender and hardy. If you haven't sown them yourself, you can buy them by the tray.
57:39Put them in the ground now while the soil is warm and they will grow and flower very quickly.
57:45Come on.
58:00It doesn't matter how long I garden, I'm still really excited when you start a new project.
58:07And it is a big thing. This is not something that I do every day. To create two new borders
58:13and start planting them up is a big deal and I love it. But that's it for today. I'll be back
58:21here at Long Meadow at the same time next week, but the team will be at Chatsworth getting a
58:27preview of the show there. And that will be followed by a special one-hour program at 6.30
58:34on BBC Two on Saturday night. So, see you here next week. Until then, bye-bye.
59:04you