Gardeners World 2024 Eps 22 Full

Hello, welcome to Gardener's World. This lavender has now finished flowering, so I'm cutting it back to allow a little bit of regrowth before winter comes, because if you leave it too late, the regrowth is soft and more prone to being damaged by frost. When you're pruning lavender, if you cut back to old wood, it may not regenerate. So even if it's very overgrown, just make sure there's some growth beneath the cut. And that's a very good reason to cut regularly, because if you leave it and then only cut it back every few years, you're going to get a lot of dead stems at the base of the plant. So I'm just trimming this back like this. There's a little bit of a hole in there, which looks like a dog, Ned, has chased a ball in there and rolled about a bit. Okay, so be it. Now, coming up on today's programme. Harriet visits a small London garden, which has been designed to create a stylish green oasis. There's a strong sense of structure in this garden, but what I love is that the planting has been used to soften the edges and to bring a different atmosphere into this space. We meet a gardener who's overcome many challenges to create a true haven from scratch. A lot of the garden is on a slope and isn't really accessible, but it's about working out how you can actually garden in the most comfortable and sort of easy way. Rachel drills down into the fascinating science used by plants to attract pollinators that are essential for their survival. The temperature acts both as a reward, but it also acts as a guide. Extraordinary that the flower's doing all that work to draw the pollinators in. And I'll be using a biological control to try and rescue my fuchsias from the depredations of the gallmite. Now the grass borders really start to shine and come into their own. It's a combination of flowers, like the helleniums and the nephophia and the fennel and the rebecchia and the eupatoriums, but also the grasses. And as September develops, those grasses start to change colour. They adopt a slightly more tawny colour, with bronzes and golds and brass and silver. All those metallic sheens, which reach their peak round about the first or second week of October. So I love seeing that development throughout the border. And I have to say the grass borders give us very little trouble. We clear them all in spring, and sort of give them a good going over, which might take a day or two, and then more or less, other than a bit of weeding here and there, that's it. Whereas the jaw garden, just the other side of the path, takes hours of work every week to look good. So in terms of cutting back on labour, this is the way to go, there's no question about it. But, I do like to tinker a little bit. Take some plants out, add some more in. And what I've done here in the front of the border, is take out some phyllicrum, and that's made a space which is an opportunity. Now what I have here, is one of the more unusual forms of plant you're ever going to see. This is an Eremurus. It's got these fleshy roots, that look like a sort of starfish. And the bud is in there, in the top. This is a variety called Cleopatra, probably the most common. Which is a sort of orange-y colour, apricot-y, orange-y, will flower in June and July, and then die back. But this must have good drainage, hence the bucket of grit. So what I'm going to do, is dig a hole, and put some grit in there. Do really quite a lot. Stick that on there like that. You want the bud in the centre, just below the surface, and then I will fill in around it. Now, put that in there. Right, that's safe in there. The stick tells me not to plant too close, and that really is quite important. Don't go rummaging around with a trowel, putting in other plants, because all you'll do is damage the roots. They do need a bit of space. And they also need water. Just because they like good drainage, doesn't mean to say that they'd survive without a good drink. So I'll water that in well. Then to protect it in winter, I will mulch it. And it's the bud that you need to protect, you don't need to worry too much about the roots. But the bud rotting is the biggest problem if it gets too wet. You'll see new growth come through in April, and then in late May and in June, these glorious flowers. And they'll be right up here. And I'm going to enjoy planting more along here, and also some in the jaw garden to flank this path. Now, Arit has been to visit a garden in Earls Court in London, which makes a virtue out of its limitations of size, to create a space that is both beautiful and useful. Creating a small urban garden can bring challenges. They're often noisy, rectangular, and with views of only the neighbours. But this is a great example of clever design. And there are also some simple classic design principles that can be used in any garden. Tara Moss and her partner came to London from Australia. They were on a short visit, but 17 years later, they have now created a garden for the whole family. It's six metres wide by 14 long, and in shade for most of the day. The garden looks great, Tara. What did it look like before? Before, it was a very traditional garden, had two garden beds running on either side that were curved, actually. And then we had a lawn that never grew, or if it grew, it was very patchy, and bumpy and muddy, and yeah, not very nice. Down the back, we had a shed that was in the sunniest part of the lawn. That's not a good idea. No, not a good idea. So then, what did you decide that you wanted? What was the brief? So the brief was to create an oasis and a garden that we could spend time in. We loved to barbecue, we're Australian, and we loved to dine in the garden. We also wanted an area to be able to relax and read, or for the kids to chill out, enjoy the sun. It's so atmospheric, and it really does give you a sense of being quite cocooned. We are a little bit overlooked in certain areas, so we wanted privacy. The Tasmanian ferns that you see have created a different feeling and, you know, softness to the garden. I grew up with them in my garden, so I really, you know, was so surprised that they have worked so well in this garden. Yeah, they're great. The garden and the tree ferns were created by designer Harry Holding, and it works well for lots of reasons. Tara wanted two zones in this garden, somewhere to be able to eat, but also to take advantage of the last splash of sun that comes into the garden at the end of the day. And how that's been achieved is very clever. The designer has taken advantage of using rectilinear layout, that's using layout that is straight lines, which in an urban setting can work very well because you're referencing the house, taking lines from the windows, the doors as well. So let's look at what's here. We've got paving that's all squares. We've got rectangles for this pathway that's cutting through the space. What that means is, is that there's a strong sense of structure and definition within this garden. But what I love is that the planting has been used to soften the edges and to bring a different atmosphere into this space. Most of the planting sits in these quarter end steel raised borders, spilling over the hard edges and softening the lines of the pathway. But it absolutely ensures that all the planting in this garden is celebrating the light levels. There's not many flowers, there can't be, there isn't full sun, but that's fine because what you do in a more shaded garden is ensure that all of the plants that you choose have different textures. So there's broader leaves, there's strappy ferns, there's really delicate grasses, and all of that adds to a richness to the garden, which is something that I really enjoy. One of Tara's main requests was to have privacy from the many buildings that overlooked her garden. This design has resolved that issue by using the vertical plane within this garden. And by that, that's ensuring that the canopy, the trees, the tree fern, this Acer have now been brought to create a ceiling so that the garden can no longer be overlooked. And I really like that canopy because it creates a sense of enclosure, which also enables there to be another atmosphere within this space, one of an oasis and sanctuary, really feeling like it's a safe space to be in. The beams of the pergola use the same principle of lowering the garden ceiling to create a cosy space, and by growing this Tractlus spurnum jaspernoides on one end, it lets in the last splash of sunshine. It's a tiny, thoughtful detail, but a great garden like this is full of them. And the designer here has used a repetition of the straight lines and slats within the space by emphasising it using the table, brought it up to the detail of the slatted panels on the wall. Also here on the deck chair, there's even lines, and it's this repetition that brings real cohesion into a space. There's repetition in the planting too, both on the slatted walls and in the beds. So seeing the asters and the veronicastrums, the spleniums that are dotted around, little hints of the hack and the clover, you're seeing that throughout the space. But what I really like is how these pittosporums at the front of the garden, this one in the middle beside me going through the space, they're drawing your eye through the garden. They're like punctuation points, and of course because they're evergreen, in the wintertime they're going to be giving structure and form. Thanks to the raised beds of differing heights, the pittosporums sit in a multi-layered planting, giving height and variety to the edges of the garden, and setting off this big bold water feature which helps reflect precious light in this shady space. It's so easy to want to add more and more into a garden, but one of the key principles for good design is simplicity. The materials are simple, lots of wood, quarter-inch steel, gravel and paving, and the colour palette is simple too, with black, brown and green. And that is why this garden really works, and is an absolute joy to be in. I love the confidence of that garden, just keep things simple, you know, those straight lines being used again, and also creating privacy. Now my fuchsias are in big trouble, because the problem, you can see, is that the foliage and to a certain extent the flowers are contorting and developing growths and browning off and dying, and that is a result of fuchsia gore mite. This mite is native to South America and was first reported in Britain in 2007, and it's microscopic, you can't see it with the naked eye, but it's a sap sucker, and it releases a chemical which causes the plant to react by distorting and causing these gores. However, there is a biological control that you can use. Now this is naturally occurring, it is native to Britain, and what it does, it predates upon the gore mite. So sequence of events is to first of all cut off any affected parts below where it's affected. So here, for example, we go back, and we'll go right back to there, and don't put it on the compost heap, burn it. And it may mean being quite radical, so you've got, oh you see I'm going to cut to cut, right look at that, what a pity. The idea is what you're left with is a plant with no visible sign of attack, and I stress the word visible because the truth is, it probably is harbouring the mites, even if you can't see the effect of them. So the next phase is to get the biological control. I've got two versions of it here. This one is in a sachet, which has got pollen inside, these are living creatures inside there, and there are small holes, tiny little slots, and you hang it up on the plant like that, they will come out of the little holes, find the gall mite and predate them, eat them. This one you fold over the branch, it's not a thing of beauty, but if it does the job then that's good. These biological controls don't work overnight, you're not going to suddenly see everything get better, it won't in any way repair the damage that's already done, but it will start the process, maybe, of overcoming it over the weeks and months and even seasons ahead. Just finally, if you do get these, remember these are living creatures, so you need to use them, apply them, as soon as possible, because they need feeding, and they want to feed on the mite. Last month we went to visit a garden in Ross-on-Wye, which is in the south of Hertfordshire, about 20 miles south of Longman, which has been made from scratch, despite having to overcome some quite tricky odds. My name is Chris-Aunders Stowe, and I started gardening when I was 5 years old. I moved here 14 years ago, and there was no garden at all, it was just full of weeds, so I did a very basic garden, just to keep me going, and then 3 years ago it was a case of I want to revamp this, I want to make it into a really nice garden, a nice space. All the creativity started, and then, oh, I can take a path down here, and so the ramp came in, and it was where do I go from here, and then everything just unfolded from there. The garden I've divided up into three main areas, so we have the top garden, which is flat, and that's the gravel and pot area, and then we've got the main garden, which is with a meandering pass, the heavy sort of cottage planting, and then to the side of that is our wild area, where we've got fruit trees and we plant meadow plants. Things changed for me when I just turned 30, because I was diagnosed with osteoarthritis. The years have gone by, it's become more and more severe through my knees, ankles and hips, so walking is very, very painful. Dean is my husband, we've been married for 13 years. If Dean wasn't here, then I wouldn't be doing half the things I do. Can I have my next one, please? So here I'm just putting in some echinops, which I really love because they're very architectural with their foliage, and the flower spikes are just really tall and elegant. Our soil is quite light here, which makes planting a lot easier, and I've got my seat stick to try and counterbalance my weight. It's quite hard trying to sort of balance, fortunately I'm quite strong upper body, mainly from where I've had to adapt, but you just take it out, especially on your core. But of course with Dean helping as well, he's saving me going backwards and forwards, carrying all the stuff. In a way I'm quite lucky because I've got a Dean, which I recommend everybody having. I'm quite impressed with what Chris has managed to create in the garden. I can see the hard work that he puts in, and sometimes I kind of wish that he'd stop a little bit and take a rest, because he does put a lot of effort in. Getting around the garden and gardening in general is very frustrating, because you can't do things in the way you normally do them, and as freely actually as you want to do them. This is generally the way I have to garden, either counterbalancing, pre-empting everything that could possibly go wrong, making sure I've got as many tools as I need in order to get into some of the awkward spaces. A lot of the garden is on a slope and isn't really accessible, and that's my own design, but it's about working out how you can actually garden in the most comfortable and easy way. The plant in the garden is a mixture of shrubs, perennials, predominantly perennials, and trees, just to give that mixture of height and texture and depth to the garden. One of my favourite trees actually just behind me is the paulownia, the foxglove tree, and that just grows phenomenally well. It will grow around about six to eight foot per year, so that tree actually behind me has only been in here for two years. If you cut it back quite hard, then you'll get much, much bigger leaves. We're leaving it to grow as a full-sized tree, so you've got that nice architecture of the leaves, but they're on a smaller scale. My favourite plants of all are lilies. I love lilies, but my most favourite is the cardiocrinum giganteum, which is a Himalayan lily. It's a stunning, stunning lily. The scent of it is just beautiful. It's like the oriental lilies, but slightly smoother, slightly more rounded. It's monocarpic, so it dies after it flowers, and it takes seven years to flower, but when it does, even though it only lasts about a week, depending on the weather, it's so worth that weight. Where do you want them? Just put them on the deck if you want. So here I'm planting this achillea, and this achillea is a vintage violet, and it's a really nice, rich, strong pink, and I've got what I call a temporary gap where I'm waiting for other plants to grow. I've got a really nice arum here, which is the giant white arum. So that will grow and get established, provide shade to this fern, and this fern in particular is quite prone to being scorched. So by putting in the achilleas temporarily, a couple of years, they will grow up, provide a little bit of protection and shade. He does have the patience of a saint, actually, to put up with me. Can you bring me the secateurs, the long ones? The really long ones? No, the long, extendable ones, please? Take that top one off at the left that you touched before, Dan. I am a perfectionist, and I find it difficult not to have everything exactly as I want it in the garden. Yeah, and we've bought stuff that we don't like because there are places where we need something and it would go, like the virginia under the... Yeah, neither of us like virginias, and it seemed really weird being in the garden centre. Well, I hate this plant, well, so do I, so shall we buy it? Because it's going somewhere where we won't see it. But it was a perfect plant for the space we were putting in, which was actually under a bench. At the moment, the main things I've got that I love that are in flower are the roses. I've become quite obsessed with roses. I thought I had about 10 or 12. I'm now actually just up to 67, which is a big increase. The other things I love are ligularias. They're a little bit temperamental here with the sun because they don't like being in the sun. Originally, when they were planted, we had lots of tree cover and most of the garden was in shade, but they put on such a show and such a long flowering period as well that they're really, really stunning. Nice tall spikes of flowers, very, very attractive to the bees. The garden is really densely planted for the benefit that that can bring, which for me is about supporting plants with plants. Something like Miscanthus is a very, very strong supportive plant. So if you mix that in with a bean of veneriansis, which actually is very sort of unstable, the two can support each other and also look really nice together. Without this garden, I'd probably go insane. It's nice to have a place to come out of the house and be away from regular life, I suppose. I think it's such an important space for us that we couldn't really be without it. It's our place where we enjoy life together, isn't it? And keeps us in touch with the rhythm of nature. Chris's garden does show that above all else, where there is a will, there is a way. Now this is something I'm genuinely proud of. A lovely peach, that beautiful fragrant smell. And also what I love about peaches is the way that the slightly fuzzy skin is just so delicate and yet evocative, that strong fragrance and that sense of growing and then biting into juicy summer, sun and pleasure and indulgence, joy. It's a lovely thing. And peaches are not that difficult to grow. I'm growing this in the greenhouse, not so much to give it extra heat in the summer, but to protect it from late frost. And once the fruit is set, they can take all the sunshine and all the heat that you can give them. So if you haven't got a greenhouse, grow peaches on a south-facing fence or wall where the heat will get reflected. And the other thing about peaches is that they need good drainage, but they like rich growing conditions. And those two things can seem mutually exclusive, but all it means is just add plenty of compost to the soil. And if it's very heavy, some grit. And I've done that here, where I've taken up a slab, planted them in here. I water it every other day, give it a good soak, and I'm training it to be fan-shaped. Now that doesn't want to come off there. So I've started to train it up these bamboo canes. I'll grow the leader on up, train it up here, so we get a fan spanning across the greenhouse. And it's a really good way to train them, because in two-dimension, it means that the fruit get maximum sun so they can ripen. Ned bought me four this morning, which I think he hadn't picked, but had all come from the ground, didn't you? And you thought they were the most delicious ball you'd ever seen in your life. And you're a good boy, because you didn't eat it. But how wonderful is this? A big basket of peaches from the garden. And actually, if you have a glut, if you have a lot of peaches, they're delicious cooked. Peaches and cream. It's a good combination. Now, still to come on today's programme. Rachel looks at how plants have evolved a whole selection of strategies to attract pollinators. That is extraordinary. This idea that the actual physical shape of those tiny things we can't even see are helping the insect to negotiate its way around the flower. It's so clever. And we meet two growers who are completely devoted to daylilies. A garden without daylilies is a garden without sunshine, isn't it? Yeah. It's like, you know. Yeah, it is. Yeah, you just need something in there that just reminds you that today is the day. This self-sown giant here in the vegetable garden is purple oryx. And it's actually delicious when eaten in spring. But I'm growing this for the seed. This is the harvest I'm going to take from this. Because we used to have it as an ever-present decorative annual in the jewel garden. And the chocolatey, purply colour of the foliage set off all the jewel colours around it. But it has a habit of being there by the score, if not the hundreds, and then disappearing. Because it doesn't like mulching. The seeds need light to germinate. So I'm growing this and then when the seeds are ready, and they turn a lovely tawny colour when they're ready, I'll collect them and next spring I'll sow the seed in the jewel garden. And we'll get back to having this rhythm of this purple running through it, which makes the oranges and the blues and the deeper purples of the flowers look all the better for it. We're off now to Newcastle to visit one of your gardens. And this belongs to Dan Clark. Arid, welcome to my allotment. During lockdown, I needed a place away from the pixels and screens. A place to pause and reflect. I was chuffed when I got a call saying that there was a spare allotment waiting. The whole plot was covered in every weed imaginable. Grasses and brambles, and even some cheeky potatoes. After a few weeks of clearing the weeds, buried carpets and saving any plants that I wanted to keep, I decided to take a no-dig, permaculture approach. In this small corner of Newcastle, everything works together. If there's an aphid problem, get some excitable ladybirds. Make sure there's water so predators and insects can survive, and in return they help control the pests and increase pollination. If the system's well-balanced, it should allow for a successful harvest, weather depending. It is amazing what you can grow, even up here in the nippy north. Aubergines, crystal lemon cucumbers, and sweet baby melons. Start by growing one thing, and soon you'll be growing a plethora of delicious food, incomparable in flavour and colour, to shop or produce. Cardboard isn't the only waste material you can use in an allotment. I used heat-treated pallets to make a cold frame with conservatory windows from the marketplace. I used a broken hose to then make an irrigation system to self-water. So if you're wanting a green space to disconnect, start small on your balcony or in your yard if an allotment isn't possible. It's a journey well worth taking, no matter the size. See you later. The thing that struck me about Dan's allotment, apart from the fact that he's made a really good job of it, is the variety of crops and the range that he was able to grow. So it does show you, give it a go, it will probably work. Sometimes it works too well though, because here we've got courgettes and squashes, which given rich soil, given a fairly mild climate and plenty of water, have gone bonkers. Look at this. Look at this here. Now that's rooted in the ground, but that is just one tendril growing off, and of course it's laden with fruit. Too many. Now if I take that off, and that off there, and this is tromboncino, and they're meant to be curved like this, and when they're ripe they're yellow, but they're perfectly edible green, as with all courgettes. They can be eaten small, but at this stage of the year you don't want masses of new fruit, you want the existing fruit to do well. So I'm going to cut back, how about that, tromboncino, and because they're hanging of course they're straight, they are extraordinary, absolutely extraordinary, but delicious I might say. These are courgettes, and you eat them like you'd eat any other courgette, they're just very big and quite odd. I've got three rows here of pumpkins and squashes, and what they need more than anything is exposure to light. This is a squash called musque de Provence, and you can see it's beginning to form ribs. These ribs will develop much more, they'll be almost like segments of an orange, and the final colour, if it's fully ripe, will be almost a kind of rusty brown, with a touch of blue coming through, and the flesh is a rich, deep orange. It's absolutely delicious, it looks fantastic, and it's far better to put the energy of the plant and the energy of the sunlight into producing one decent fruit than half a dozen small ones that don't fully ripen. So be ruthless. There's an enormous amount of growth, and here's a good example, you've got flowers appearing, and flowers will go on appearing for the next month or so, but that will not make a fruit, it's too late. Focus your attention on what you've got, which has a chance to grow and ripen, keep them well watered, get them as much sunshine as you possibly can, which means cutting off any shading foliage, and then we'll think about harvesting them as we go into October. Of course, for every flower to produce a fruit or a seed, it needs a pollinator, and most of them, that involves insects. But it's not just the insect going to the plant and taking what it needs. To quite a surprising extent, the plant entices and controls the insect on how it operates. Rachel went to Bristol to find out more. Flowers. We pack our borders with them and revel in their shapes and colours. As gardeners, we know that plants aren't really flowering for us. They're doing it to attract insects, get pollinated and ensure the next generation of plants. But we can't help loving them anyway. And we could love them more. Because thanks to science, we're learning more about the incredible adaptations that plants have made in order to draw those pollinators in. They include anti-slip petals, heat mats and turbo-boosted nectar. And that's just for starters. Flowering plants and bees have a long history. They've evolved alongside each other for more than 70 million years, ensuring they both get what they need. For bees, the main priority is food, finding nectar to fuel them and pollen to feed their young. For flowering plants, that means guaranteeing pollination, whether it's sunny, shady or there's a wind blowing, and that their pollen is carried to flowers of the same species rather than some far-flung tree. Professor Jane Memmott is a director here at Bristol Botanic Gardens and a pollinator expert at the university. Although there's a huge range of pollinators, most research is on how clever flowers and clever bees work together. Look here, Jane, at this tucreum, absolutely smothered in bees. It most certainly is, isn't it? How important is memory for bees in terms of finding forage? It's really important. These are fairly short-lived individuals, so they come out of the nest as blank slates, basically. So they have to learn really fast what plants are out, how much rewards they are, where they are and things like that. And so they learn both from their nest mates and other bees. And also the plants will train them to a certain extent as well. They're smart bees, they really are. They're very good at being bees, which is quite simple but a sophisticated little insect, basically. Some of the plants that train bees are very familiar. For this foxglove, for example, what exactly is going on there? Well, if you stand next to a foxglove and watch what bees are doing, they will nearly always start at the bottom of this column of flowers. And that bee knows there's more rewards, there's more nectar in that bottom flower than at the top. So it'll start at the bottom and work its way up. And the reason the plant is offering that differential reward is that it wants the bee to come in from another plant with pollen, because these are ready for pollination at the bottom. Whereas at the top they're producing pollen, it wants that pollen to be taken somewhere else. So it gives it the big reward at the bottom, it works its way up, it's got all its calories and then it leaves to cross-pollinate another plant. It really is kind of training those pollinators. But how do you know that there's more nectar at the bottom of the flowers to the top? There's a really fun experiment to do in the garden with your kids or with friends or whatever. You can just use your coffee filter papers for this, and if you cut into a little wedge-shaped section, and if you poke that into the flowers at the bottom, the nectar gets absorbed by that wick. And you can kind of, with a pen, mark how far the nectar's gone down. If you do that at the top, you'll find there's much less nectar up there. You can see that it works, because here, lower down, you've got all these nicely developing seed pods. Up here, still got to be pollinated. Training bees with extra nectar is just one adaptation that plants have made. Some flowers, like lemon, have caffeine in theirs to help the bees remember them more clearly. And then there's petal power. Although bees see colours differently, flowers use bright petals to make themselves visible. And some have added ways to make the blooms more bee-friendly. And they do that using colour, texture, and more surprisingly, heat. Associate Professor Heather Whitney is a plant scientist at Bristol University, specialising in pollination. Tell me about plants and temperature. Well, the flowers are often warmer than the leaves, and we think we might know why that is. Flowers need to be at the right temperature to help their pollen and their ovules develop, but being slightly warmer also acts as an extra reward for their pollinators. So most of those pollinators, like bees, are not warm-blooded like us. So usually, for a bee to fly, it needs to warm itself up. It can do this by basically vibrating its wing muscles a bit, which will, like, generates a bit of heat. But that uses energy. So if it can get that heat from a warm flower, that actually acts as an extra reward for the bee, and can give it the extra energy to fly off to the next flower. So clever. And thanks to camera technology, we can not only see the heat, but how the flower positions it. You can see, first of all, that the flowers are a different temperature to the surrounding leaves. So they're a paler yellow. So that shows that they're warmer. But what you can also see is that there are patterns of temperature. So towards the centre of each of these flowers are more of a glowing, white-hot yellow, and that shows that the centre of the flower is a lot warmer than the rest of the flower. There's a dramatic difference, isn't there, between the outer part of the petals and where it converges towards the centre of the flower. That's exactly right. So the temperature acts both as a reward, somewhere warm to sit, the nectar gets warmer, like having a nice hot cup of tea on a cold day, but it also acts as a guide. Going towards the warm centre helps provide the bee with information about where the reward is. Extraordinary that we can't see that, but the flower's doing all that work to draw the pollinators in. Absolutely. There's this hidden world of communication between flowers and their pollinators, and this hidden world is all around us. It's thought flowers create heat in several ways. Some use their shape to focus the sun into their centres, and some, because darker colours absorb more light and get warmer, become darker, using special tiny cells on their petals. For example, this velvety texture on a rose petal is caused by the cells on the petal surface which are sort of this cone shape, and that cone shape actually helps focus the light of the sun into the middle of the cell where you have the vacuole containing all the pigments. More of the light is then absorbed by the pigments, you get a deeper colour as well, and also that temperature effect. It's extraordinary. And up close, in colour, those cones shine like jewels. But these cones aren't just making flowers more colourful and warm. What we found is that having conical cells on a flower really helps the insect grip onto the flower. So if you think about a climbing wall, you've got sort of hand-sized grips. That conical-shaped cell is actually about the same size as an insect foot, so it's almost like a climbing wall on flowers. That is extraordinary. This idea that the actual physical shape of those tiny things we can't even see are helping the insect to negotiate its way around the flower, it's so clever. Looking at the plants in this beautiful border, I feel I have gained a whole new level of respect. I'm already so inspired by the plants, the pollinators in my own garden, but having seen the science, I know that those plants are imbued with an innate cleverness that is really mind-blowing. I have to say that in my time, over the last 20, 30, 40 years, it's been fascinating the way that we've moved from a whole set of assumptions about the way that plants work and interact with wildlife and nature and each other, to a world that we're just beginning to explore. It's absolutely riveting. Here in the orchard, I've created a meadow based upon bulbs such as narcissi, alliums, tulips and camassias, which look really good from March through till May. But I do have a problem. We've got rich soil. That means lots of grass, which means that the wildflowers get crowded out. So what I need to do is reduce the grass, and this is what you do it with. This is a packet of yellow rattle. Now, yellow rattle is a yellow flower whose seeds rattle when they dry out, hence the name. It's very pretty, but more importantly than being pretty, it's semi-parasitic on the roots of grass. So where you have yellow rattle, the grass grows less strongly, and where the grass grows less strongly, wildflowers grow better. You have to sow it fresh, and it won't germinate unless it's had a winter's cold, so it won't germinate until next spring, and it needs bare soil to germinate. So I'm going to sow this. Now I'm going to scatter this thinly, but obviously put more where there's bare soil. And like anything else, it's just a question of sowing it like this. Now although this is a perennial meadow, yellow rattle is an annual, but it does seed prolifically. So once it's established, you don't have to add to it. This will seed itself, and it will come back year on year. Last little bit here. Right, there you go. What was that? So I can leave that now, as long as it's got contact with the soil. Let the grass grow. I'll keep cutting the grass, I'll let it grow another inch or so, and then keep it short, and actually the process of walking over it and mowing it will push the seed into contact with the soil, and then the plant should appear next spring. And of course I'll do more bulb planting over the next month or two. Now we're going a few miles north of here to Shropshire, to the village of Colbatch, where Liz Colebrook and Fiona Piddock indulge their passion for daylilies. There are so many of them, and they're so different. They all have kind of personalities. They do. How do you remember all these names? If you had 20 children, you'd remember all their names. We just extrapolated to 300. When I first started working here, I thought there's no way I'm ever going to remember where they are in the ground, and actually, I can remember most of them now. Yeah, that's really good. There's tall and short and blousy and serene and... And wispy. Yeah, got a whole spectrum of colour. They're so easy to look after as well. They're incredibly hardy perennials. So once you've got them, they're in your garden forever, really. It's very difficult to kill a daylily. I'm Fi, I've been in business with Liz at New Hope Daylilies for a couple of years now. There was a lovely gentleman who'd been running the daylily nursery for many years and had created a lovely collection, and he wanted to retire and put his feet up. So Liz and I have been friends, we've known each other for many years, we both live locally, and we thought we'd give it a go, actually. This is a typical daylily called Man on Fire. It's got beautiful fans. Daylilies are very identifiable by the fans, so even when they're not in bloom, you can normally tell if you've got daylilies in your garden. And then from the fans, you've got these lovely tall scapes that are really sturdy, actually. We don't have to cane them, we don't have to prop them up, they just look after themselves. And then at the top, we've got this beautiful, typical lily bloom, but we've also got one spent bloom from yesterday, and then we've got another one emerging for tomorrow, and we've still got more buds to come, too. The perception is that it only blooms for a day, because it's called a daylily, but we have clumps of daylilies that can bloom for five, six, seven weeks. It's just one bloom that only lasts for a day. The fact that it's called a daylily comes from the Greek hemero, which is day, and kallos, which is beauty, so it's beauty for a day. And because they only bloom for a day, it's very special. It is, very special. There's over 100,000 different daylilies registered in the world. We've got 327 now, here. We've got Pink Dazzler that's just starting to emerge now. There's loads of buds to come, and it is magnificent. And then Sunday Gloves is, oh, so popular because it's near white. Bella Lugosi was an actor from the 40s, I think. And I quite like the way that they drip, sort of very dark juices. James Marsh, which is just such a deep colour, and the scapes on it are unbelievable. They're really strong. One scape, which is what the flower is on, can have up to 15 buds, and then they tend to bloom one at a time or two at a time. So in the first year, you might have three fans, which might put up two or three scapes. Next year, when it comes back up, it's probably going to have four fans, and then you've got even more scapes. So they clump up brilliantly, and you're going to enjoy more and more flowers, to the point at which you're going to have to divide it at some point and make more. The daylily is incredibly easy to grow. It needs about six hours of sunshine a day. They are incredibly good at coping with all sorts of weathers, so it can be full-on rain for days and weeks. It can be weeks of sun where you don't see a drop of rain, and the daylily will cope in both scenarios, so it's actually an ideal drought plant. Look at the foliage. It sort of like springs up like a fountain. It's fantastic. I think it really sort of gives an upbeat and a lovely accent in the garden. It's pleased to see you, you know. So this is noughtonite seedling, and what we're going to do here is we are going to deadhead this one like so, because if I take this off, it gives more room for these buds to open up, and the deadhead doesn't flop over the other buds and stop them from opening. A lot of people say, if I deadhead, will that mean more blooms will come? And the answer is no. You do it really for practical reasons and aesthetic reasons. From May, the earliest emerge, and then if you're clever with your planting, you can plant so that you get blooms from May all the way through, probably until October, November, really. Well, this is one of our new ones called Nefertiti, and I love it because it's a nice tall one again. It stands above the foliage, but it's just, look at that eye there. It's lovely. Great markings. I'm going to say it in the style of Kenneth Williams. Daily Liz have got some really weird names, haven't they, Liz? There's a lot of American hybridisers, and we think that's partly the reason. Yeah, we've got Lucille Lennington. We've got Wayne Johnson. We've got Paxatawney Phil. Yeah, and we've even got a little bugger. There we are. Which we think the hybridiser may have had trouble propagating. It's a really popular daylily. People love the name, and a lot of people want them in their borders to have a little chuckle. And would like to give them to friends. Yeah. They're all incredibly different. It makes it very, very difficult to choose your favourite daylily. Well, I've chosen Shady Lady, and I've chosen it because I really love the name, and I think it goes with me a little bit. It's a very striking daylily, and it really does pop out at you. And what have you got? I've got Decatur Captivation. I think there's something about the colour of that. It's really textured. It's got a little bit of a ruffle. It's got some recurved petals going on. Yeah, there's a lot going on. And I think that's a lovely splash of colour. You're right. Love it. Yeah, real eye candy, literally. A garden without daylilies is a garden without sunshine, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah, it is. Yeah, you just need something in there that just reminds you that, you know, today is the day. I get the feeling, reading between the lines, that Liz and Fiona quite like daylilies. Well, they're not alone, because I do too. They're fantastic. This yew hedge was grown from cuttings, and I took the cuttings when I realised that the box hedges here at Longmeadow, sooner or later, were going to have to be taken out, because the blight just wasn't going away, and it was getting worse and worse. We used to have box hedges lining all the beds here, in the jaw garden and the cottage garden and the grass borders, and gradually they've all come out. So I've replaced a lot of them, so far, with yew. But, of course, yew grows quite slowly, especially from cuttings, and I planted these out a few years ago, and they were just individual, quite weedy plants. This spring I topped them, because they had reached the height that I wanted, and now I'm cutting the side off. And what you have to do with a new hedge is take all the side growth off, so that you concentrate the growth running down the length of the hedge, so it thickens up where you want it. So don't worry if by cutting back the sides at this stage it looks a bit skimpy. You're doing the right thing. Get it nice and thick along the length, and then gradually you can let it get fatter and fatter if you want to. This is not really hedge cutting. It's really just giving it a trim to prune it, to train it. I've still got to do down here, and then all the way back up there, so while I'm doing that, here are your jobs for the weekend. Now is a good time to sow mixed winter salad leaves, and you can broadcast these directly onto the soil, and that will work fine. But if, like me, you sowed them into plugs a few weeks ago, you'll find that they've germinated, so you can plant them out in a grid. And the reason I'm doing this is because I think this will give me a better and more even distribution of the plants. Alchemilla mollis has flowered longer than normal this year, but now it's time to cut it back. And don't just take off the flower heads, but cut the whole plant, leaves and all, right back to the ground. This will let light and air in, and new growth will reappear very quickly. Ami, both Ami majus and Visnaga, does much better if sown now rather than in spring. I'm sprinkling the seed on a seed tray of compost, covering them over lightly with vermiculite, and then I'll put them somewhere warm to germinate. When the seedlings are ready, I'll prick them out and store them over winter in a cold frame, so that they can be planted out into their final position in March or April. I think that's OK. Having done the hedges in there, I'm just giving the topiary balls that I put in in spring here in the cottage garden, as part of the revamping of the cottage garden, a light trim, just to keep that circle. What you'll find is if you buy topiary rather than make it, as I did with these balls, you buy them in the shape that they're to come in, perfectly round, but inevitably as they grow, they're going to grow out of that shape, because plants want to grow vertically. In time, a topiary ball will become a yew tree, just as much as any type of yew that you plant. The top will get denser, and you'll have to cut it more and more, and the side will always be a bit loose. The side that's deepest in shade will be the loosest of the lot, so just bear that in mind when you're positioning and when you're cutting. When you're cutting hedges, topiary, there's always that duality. You've got to think of making it look good today, and for the rest of this year, but also planning ahead. Think, what do I want it to look like next year, in five years' time? Where am I going with this, and what do I need to do now to make that happen? But I'm afraid I haven't got time for any more today. But I'll be back here at Longmeadow at nine o'clock, an hour later than normal, next Friday. So until then, bye-bye.