Gardeners World 2021 Episode 03 ~Easter Special

Hello, welcome to Gardener's World. And it's Easter, which is probably the most important time in the whole of the gardening calendar. The key thing about Easter is not just the extra time we've got in the garden, it's the time of year. This is spring, so we've got months and months of glorious garden and sun ahead of us, so let's make the most of it. What I'm doing at the moment seems like a mundane job, but actually it's the beginning of something quite big, because this is a fern called Dryopteris felix mass, and over winter they give really good colour and structure. But as you go into the new year and the beginnings of spring, the ferns start to brown and collapse, but more importantly, the new growth is just about to unfurl. So I'm cutting these all right back to allow light and air in, and revealing a tight knuckle of new growth that unfurls like a spring. Now, coming up on today's Easter programme. Carol visits RHS Rosemore and gives us a guided tour of the very best of their spring flowers. This great river of blue leech are down to what has to be the most special of plants, and it's absolutely magical. And the presenter and ex-Royal Marine J.J. Chalmers tells us how Pittencreef Park has played such an important role in his life. It's amazing how a park, a green space, can just be the answer to any number of problems at whatever stage of your life you're at. And I will be giving you a masterclass in mulch. Easter is early this year, so I'm going to do something a bit earlier than I normally do, which is plant out sweet peas. Up till now, I've more or less always left them until after the last frost, but I think there's no need. I think sweet peas are hardier than I've been giving them credit for. By planting them out now, I should get earlier flowering, and these are plants that I sowed last October. If you haven't sown any sweet peas yet, it's not too late, but it is something you want to get on with. And if you sow now, you should be able to plant them out round about the middle to the end of May. I grow lots of sweet peas, but this is the oldest variety of them all, which is called Kupani, and perhaps the best fragrance of all the sweet peas. You can see that in the pot, there are three plants, and I always sow three seeds to a pot this size. And I will plant the whole thing, I won't break it up, at the base of each of these supports. Now the soil does need to be rich, so if you've got sandy soil or chalky soil, add plenty of compost or manure. So we just knock that out the pot, you can see a good root system, and then we'll put that in. And you almost can't feed them too much, these are very hungry plants. If you've got a very leggy sweet pea, you can just pinch it up, just take out the top third or so, above a side shoot. And that will produce more side branching and a bushier plant, and in turn that will give you more flowers. Now always plant on the inside of a support, it means that you can focus your watering, and these are plants that mustn't dry out. Make sure that they have a soil that will retain moisture, maybe a mulch that will stop evaporation, and give them a good soap once a week. Now I may have a while to wait before these are flowering, but Carol has been down to RHS Rosemore in Devon, where the garden is already in magnificent blue. Who doesn't love spring? The thought of better things around the corner. New beginnings, and our gardens springing into life. And nothing announces a spring better than these glorious daffodils. This is Narcissus Pseudonarcissus, it's our own native lent lily. But you know, spring planting is not all about daffodils. I'm going to introduce you to some plants, from the magnificent to the minute, that tell us all that spring has well and truly arrived. Could you imagine anything announcing the spring in a more spectacular fashion? Camellias are one of the most glamorous plants of the spring. This is their time, and so many to choose from. Look at these big red flowers of mercury, magnificent. And here, these pretty pink flowers, on this which is Camellia williamsii, sent to you. And the williamsii camellias are the hardest of the lot, so look out for one of those. But you might say, well, I've only got a little garden. I can't possibly grow something like this. But there are loads of varieties that have been specially developed, which are much, much smaller. Camellias are really straightforward to grow. But they do demand either acid or neutral soil, anywhere in between. So don't worry if you've got limey soil. Just grow your camellia in a pot. They're perfect subjects, really, for container growing. And you can put them into ericaceous compost. That way, they're going to thrive and reward you every spring. And when you come down a level from these camellias, there are a whole wealth of shrubs that you can utilise to bring spring into your garden. Look at this glorious flowering currant. This is Ribes sanguineum, Elkington's White. This one would stop you in your tracks because of its grace and elegance. It has these long panicles of white flowers. And they open from the top gradually, so they'll last for quite a long time. It's almost indestructible. And there are a whole range of these different Ribes available. And you can get them right now, put them into your garden, and they'll last for years and years. Of a similar stature, an evergreen shrub that comes into its own in spring is the Pieris, with its delicate pale pink flowers adorning the branches. For me, in spring, the place to look is in between the trees and shrubs. What could be more perfect than this huge carpet of Anemone namarosa, our own native wood anemone? Like all wildflowers, this plant has evolved to live where it does. With its habitat. So it has these little rhizomes that can cope with all the tree roots. It'll just move itself around everywhere. And you can buy it as rhizomes in the autumn. Plant them out directly into the garden. But don't bury them, because this is a plant that lives just below the surface of the soil. Add lots of leaf mold if you've got it, or any organic material before planting. And then just leave it alone. Alternatively, if you just can't wait, you'll be able to buy it in garden centres and specialist nurseries all over the show. But come the summer, it will have disappeared completely. It's what I call a Cinderella plant. It has to get everything done before the clock strikes 12. I'm surrounded here by this beautiful buzzing. These pulmonarias are full of bees. Now these have to be one of the very, very best plants for carpeting the ground. It'll grow in full sun, but it's happiest in dappled shade. They're nearly all evergreens too. So you've got these glorious leaves right the way through. And the flowers, although they're not huge, are very distinctive and very, very pretty. And they have this quality which is shared by lots of other members of the borage family. And that is that blue flowers eventually become pink. And although there's a vast range of these plants, this one is Diana Clare, each one of them has its own individual personality. Easy to grow, very straightforward, just choose which one or grow a whole range of them. So this great river of blue leads you down to what has to be the most special of plants. It's called Trillium curubaiaceae and it's from North America. And it's absolutely magical. It looks almost kind of dark and dangerous. Now all Trilliums, as you'd expect from their name, have everything in threes. Three petals, three sepals, and the leaves themselves are in threes too. You very seldom see these for sale, although you can buy them growing in pots. The reason for that is that they're nearly all grown from seed. And those seeds take seven years to produce a flowering plant. So they're a bit on the expensive side, but what an investment. Year after year they're going to increase and increase. You know, money's no object when it comes to a plant like this. Smaller still, there are some spring plants that are perfect for the tiniest of spaces. Now this is a proper alpine house, but there's absolutely nothing here that with a bit of care you couldn't grow anywhere. On your terrace, even in a window box. But if you're growing them in pots, it means that you can carry them when they're at their very best. They're very most beautiful to wherever you like and enjoy them. But how about something like this? This is a saxifrage. If you look at it closely, it's composed of a whole mat of these little crunchy rosettes. From each one sparkles this glorious pale lemon flower. As easy as anything to grow. This one needs full sun, but this is a mossy saxifrage. So even if all you've got is a dark, dark corner, then this is the plant for you. As easy as can be. You can split it, divide it, make more and it will reward you with this lovely show. It's a picture in a pot. It's an absolute delight. And these are things that we can all grow. And what do they do? They tell us that spring is well and truly here. I haven't been to Rosemore for a few years and seeing that makes me want to rush down and visit. And I'm sure the same is true for you. But hold on, because the RHS are only allowing visitors by prior bookings, which you need to go to their website to make. Now, for all the 30-odd years that I have been gardening, one of the same topics comes back again and again. How to control invasive bamboos. And of course, some bamboos, like, for example, the sassas, can be very invasive. And they cover ground with runners and they pop up. And those are a problem. And certainly shouldn't be planted if your space is at all restricted. But there are many, particularly some of the stillostachys bamboos, that in this climate are clumpers. Their growth tends to be much more upward rather than outward. And some, like the fargesias, can be grown in pots perfectly well. But to keep it looking really good, you do need to thin it out, which is what I'm going to do. And you can see that some of these canes are much bigger than the others. And the reason for cutting it is to remove the larger canes, which, of course, then you can use, and also to let light and air in so the other canes can form uniformly. The secret is to get right down to the ground. Make all your cuts at the base of the plant. Don't be tempted to chop it anywhere higher than an inch or two off the ground. Now, look at that. How about that? Absolutely fantastic. This is actually the first bamboo harvest that I've made here at Longmeadow. And I won't waste it. I'll strip the side shoots off and I will use these in the garden. Now, we're making our first visit to one of your gardens this week. And it's taking us down to Cornwall, where Sophie Painter shares her garden with us. And its inspiration is drawn from an unlikely source. Welcome to our dinosaur garden. If you heard us right, this is a dinosaur-themed garden. It's not very big. It's only about eight by six metres. Coming down the garden, we chose lots of plants like ferns. We've got tree ferns in there. We've got kukri fern there, royal fern over here. Lots and lots of different types. But I like sitting here because it's round about the whole garden. You can see everything. When we can have the stream on, it's really nice. It kind of flows under the boardwalk here. At the moment, we've got a little bird box up behind me. We've got some blue tips nesting. So you see little blue tips going in and out all day with little caterpillars. You can hear the babies chirping most of the time. It's a really nice place to sit. The summer house, we built out of all the leftover materials we had when we built the garden. We've got some strawberries in a belfast, I think, up there. Just odds and ends that we've got planted up. We've also got a few more vegetables kind of just tucked around the side of the building as well. And it's really nice. This little spot gets a very last bit of the evening sun. So we must sit here and look out over the field that's next to our house. So it's been a really lovely place to spend our time. I confess that I have never understood the attraction of dinosaurs. But I love the fact that Sophie has made a garden from a passion. And as a result, it's full of love, full of interest. And that's the secret of great gardening. Now, if you want the number one gardening tip at this time of year, it is to mulch. Mulch refers to a layer of material that you put over the surface of bare soil for three reasons. It suppresses weeds by blocking out light. It keeps moisture in, but lets rain through. And the third reason is if you use an organic material, it improves the soil structure and nutrition. And really, if you do nothing else to your borders, if you mulch them every year, that will make a huge difference. The best is garden compost. This here is longmeadow compost made from garden waste, kitchen waste, packaging, which is broken down and ends up like this. And that is the best of all because it's full of bacteria and fungi. And that life goes back into the soil. However, there is a hitch. Because no garden on this planet can ever generate enough compost to mulch the whole of the garden. So what I do is restrict my garden compost to everything edible. The second material I've got here is leaf mold. Now, you can see it looks a bit similar, but actually when you feel it, it's much softer and more crumbly, entirely composed of leaves that we've gathered up last year and have broken down and is perfect for woodland plants. And also, it's a really good addition to a potting mix. I also use bark. This is pine bark and bark has a number of advantages. The first is with pine bark is that it's slightly acidic. It's ericaceous. My soil is neutral, so if you're growing plants that like acidity, then pine bark will slightly change your soil. It also breaks down much more slowly than either leaf mold or compost. So in terms of a barrier, it works for longer. You don't have to use organic material. You can use grit as mulch or even you can lay gravel and stones. And grit is really useful if you've got an alpine bed or you're looking for really sharp drainage. The only downside to using it is that, of course, it doesn't add any fertility to the soil. If you haven't got your own compost or leaf mold, and I would urge you to make it because it's so easy and so useful, but if you haven't got it, you can buy soil improver. Now that might be composted farmyard manure. It might be council compost. It comes in various guises and comes in a bag. Now, it doesn't matter what you use, there is one key thing that matters and that's to mulch thickly enough. And I've got this just to show you the minimum thickness that I would recommend. If I treat it as though I'm mulching it, you want a layer that is at least that thick over the surface of the ground and far better to mulch half a border properly than the whole thing too thinly. And if it's thick enough, that will stop the light getting through, it will keep the moisture in and improve the soil, and then you can do the other half the next year. So mulching, whatever you use, is the best and kindest thing you can possibly do to make your garden look fantastic. Now the plant that is looking most fantastic in the garden at the moment is the daffodil. This is their moment and they are an absolute glory. So it seems a good time to visit again the Daffodil Society at their meeting in Pershaw College, where daffodils are treated as rare and precious jewels. Once I discovered daffodils, well, that was it. It's in my blood. You think daffodils in the garden are beautiful, but when you start growing show-type daffodils, it just opens your eyes to what daffodils are. Well, the Daffodil Society hold one major show every year, and this year it's at Pershaw College. So this is the last final minute of everybody preparing to get ready. The biggest flowers will be there, medium, and then the smallest. So that when I stand back, I get that optical illusion that they're all the same size. I've been a member of the Daffodil Society for decades, and it's the oldest daffodil society in the world. It was started in 1898. With the multi-heads, you want them all to be in one clump, I suppose, rather than them all facing different directions. So it looks like one flower rather than having lots of gaps in it. Well, there are so many different daffodils. So what they did, they divided them up into 13 different divisions dependent on their characteristics. So whether they have a trumpet, say division one, or a double daffodil, that's another division, two, a small cup, and right at the other end of the spectrum, you've got the miniatures with the backward petals, the Sicilian's division six. So sweet and dainty in a world away from a big, brash, yellow trumpet. This one's having some cup treatment at the moment. So the cups have to be nice and round. So they've got cotton wool stuffed up them at the minute. As long as he remembers to take the cotton wool out before it's judged, we're all good. What we're aiming for is to get the head up. We do something called clocking. When the actual flower opens, it may be off centre like that. So you have to clock it just to try and get that top petal at 12 o'clock. Well, a cyclamenus has to point downwards. So in the heat of the room, they start to come off. So if they're tied down, it'll stay down. And the perianths have to sweep backwards. So that helps them sweep backwards as well. So it's a bit of bondage, as they call it in America. So this is a division eight. It's a terzetta. It's notorious for having lots of florets on the stem. I think this one's got about 14 or 15, but you can see them with sort of 20, 22, 24 heads. And it's true to its name. It's an avalanche, and it's an avalanche of colour off the stem. So the variety is called crowned ale. It's what we call a division four, which is a double daffodil. This is probably one of the best division fours that's ever been bred, partly because it's neat and it has colour. This is fairy chimes. It's a division five, triandrous daffodil. One of the really nice things about this is that it's got a lovely scent. It's one of my favourite daffodils. I've been going for about 25 years. I've never seen one that's got 10 out of 10. We are looking for the perfect daffodil. When you're marking them out of 10, you very rarely find one that you give more than nine to. Seven and a half. If a flower got a nine, it would probably get best bloom in the show. Never awarded a 10. Well, this is really top secret. In this room, judges at the moment have brought in 60 of the best blooms from out in the main show into this room for the top judges to decide which one will be the best bloom in show. We don't want that now. No, no, that can go. We've come down to just the three. This is the presentation of all the trophies and the prizes, so it's really good to see all the culmination of everyone's hard work. Really exciting. Pretty ecstatic today. Best bloom in show is basically whatever exhibitors are looking for when they come to a show. I'm pretty pleased, yeah. It got eight out of 10. We judges can always find some minor fault, but an eight point flower is very good. That won its division and also was champion bloom in the whole show. Well, despite that fascinating pursuit of perfection, I think it's impossible to beat the beauty of a sea of daffodils flowing through the grass. That's still to come on today's programme. We go to Scotland to join JJ Chalmers, who tells us about a park that has played a constant and important role throughout his life. This place most certainly healed and I needed a lot of healing at that stage in my life. But first we go to America to visit the garden of a viewer who has come up with an ingenious solution to the problem of raising plants outdoors in the harshest of conditions. Hi, my name is Bryony. I'm originally from Scotland, but I live here in Oregon in the USA now and I wanted to show you my winter sowing project. This year I decided to put some seeds into old milk jugs. I cut them in half and then I sowed the seed and taped them up and so these little milk jugs essentially act as little cold frames. I started the large spur in February. You can see we've got lots of action. Whoa, lots and lots of little babies. And so fairly soon here I'm going to open them up and they won't need hardened off or anything because of course they've lived outside all winter. Here's some Violas and some Lenoria. I have some Borage. They just look healthy and green and happy. So it's been a really fun way just to start some seeds this winter without needing the heat mats and the lights inside. Growing things in these little miniature cold frames is just a great inexpensive kind of low risk way to fill up those holes and brighten up the garden come spring and summer. I'm so excited about it. I think that's a very neat and useful tip. Not one I've seen before and if they survive the Oregon winters which are so much harsher than anywhere in the UK they certainly will work here. Now it's time to plant onion and shallot sets. Sets are if you like seed onion or seed shallot from which you will then get your harvestable bulb. But in the case of shallots you get lots of bulbs whereas with an onion you just get one. And I'm going to grow them both in the ground and in a container but the ones on the ground I'm going to grow on initially in plugs. But let's do the containers first. This is a variety of shallot called Red Sun and each of these small bulbs will produce up to a dozen small bulbs and the beauty of shallots is twofold. One they taste sweeter than onions and two they keep much better. You could do this in a window box or a container or directly into the soil. Just simply press them down so they're half covered and I think on here we can probably get two across. And if your ground is too wet to do this then wait a little bit. So in here we should get eight spaced out like that and that's all you need to do just label it and then we will harvest those round about the end of July into August. But the ones that I want to put out into the soil have a problem which I know is only too common which is that the birds do tend to come along and yank them out. But one way of getting around that which I do quite often is to put them into plugs first and it seems that the birds will only tug at them until they start to get green growth and once you get vigorous green growth they leave them alone. So that's when I'll plant them out. So I will put these in here like this and into this one I'm putting a different variety. This is called long gore and there's a clue in the name because you can see that they are a completely different shape they're a rugby ball shape and I can simply push that in one into each of the plugs like that and then if I put them in a cold frame or in the greenhouse they will root all the quicker but they don't have to they can stand outside and I can keep the birds off them and I've got enough here for a year's supply and as I say shallots keep very well. Perfect, exactly the right amount. I will water these, I won't let them dry out and then when I see healthy green shoots and maybe some roots poking out the bottom of the plug it'll be time to plant them out and the birds won't disrupt them. If you can't sow them in the plug and you do want to put them in the garden it's not a bad idea to cover them up either with fleece or some fine netting just to keep the birds off until you see those green shoots. Now many of us have discovered over the last year just how important our gardens and parks and green spaces are for our mental health and well-being and we now join JJ Chalmers near his home in Scotland to discover one particular spot that has great significance for him. My life has been filled with some pretty extreme ups and downs but my love of the natural world and the plants that fill it has always helped me through even the toughest of times. My name is JJ Chalmers and this place, Pittencreef Park near my home in Fife has a very special place in my heart. This park has been mine and my family's sanctuary throughout the last few months, throughout lockdown. This is where we came for our hours exercise every day. This was first of all for our physical health but actually what you realise is that's more about your mental health, your social health that idea of getting out, breathing fresh air, feeling better clearing your mind and just actually being in a nice quiet environment. This magnificent lime tree was our base as my daughter would call it. This was our staging point for all our adventures. It became our castle, it became our spaceship it became whatever we needed it to be for that day's adventure. I just think it's an absolute postcard tree. It looks like the picture that we all drew as children and my daughter draws now. It's big, it's bushy with beautiful green leaves. The trunk of it in particular is so magical because it conceals the nooks and the crooks and this is the first tree that my daughter learned to climb on and then these nooks here, these are perfect for hiding in, sitting in, resting in. Honestly, it's just a great tree. But this place hasn't just been special to me and my family during lockdown. This has been special to me since my family moved here 25 years ago. I grew up as a child here playing football, flying kites and just exploring it particularly the variety that's here. The variety of garden spaces from the formal to the informal to the glen itself to this wide open space. To have this pretty close to your doorstep is quite amazing and it's inspired my love of nature and plants. Now, this does remind me of coming here as a kid because this was like Alice in Wonderland painting the roses red and actually at home my grandfather kind of cut beds like this into our front lawn and grew his roses in it so maybe he drew some inspiration from this as well. I grew up in a very green-fingered house. My mum and dad and even my grandparents had given me a kind of love of plants and nature and I was allowed to come here because it's not far from my parents home and I could explore and learn more by myself. And I was fascinated by this formal garden in particular. It was kind of like nothing I'd ever seen in real life before and what was really great about it was that it changed throughout the seasons. I mean now we've got these beautiful wildflowers growing through here through late summer into autumn but you could come back every couple of months it had changed entirely. We always had a greenhouse growing up as kids but to me it was the place where my dad grew his tomatoes whereas the glass house here to be able to see cacti and plants that really don't belong in this climate was just amazing. Just by stepping through a door which is only a pane of glass it's like stepping into an entirely different world and I suppose the best thing about it is it's not just my intrigue now I begin to see it in my daughter and in my son as we go out and we experience the garden together. There's no greater gift or learning experience I can give my children than bringing them to a place like this. When I was 17 I joined the Royal Marines and I was very fortunate to get to travel the world and see loads of different places into the jungles of Belize and to Afghanistan as well and that was one of the most formative parts of my journey I suppose. So when I was in Afghanistan in 2011 unfortunately I was I was wounded by an improvised explosive device and I was on patrol we were searching a suspected bomb making factory when one of these devices was triggered and the explosion tore my body to pieces. Fortunately my life was saved, my limbs were saved and the next thing I knew I was waking up in a hospital in Birmingham and that's where I would spend the next nine weeks of my life not even really getting out of one room let alone a hospital building in an entirely new environment that was completely clinical. Hospital was never an environment I'd ever really experienced before you know that environment where everything wipes clean and everything is man-made even plants are considered a contaminant risk and the idea of coming home was with me from the moment I was picked up by a helicopter in Afghanistan and actually one of the things that reminded me of home was this burn. Being in this burn as a little kid you know with my wellies on exploring the undergrowth looking for minnows or whatever it was with my friends and so when I finally was out of hospital and I returned to my parents home this place was the first part of my rehab. There is no better tool for gauging your ability than the real world to actually go out and see if you can walk over the bridges that you used to and climb up the stairs that you used to be able to and in the early stages I struggled with it. I would come to the glen each day and I would make my way up the burn side and the first day you wouldn't get very far and the next day you get a little further and a little further and the sound of the water running, the animals, the leaves blowing in the wind it just feels magical and it is healing and I needed a lot of healing at that stage in my life and this place most certainly healed me and once I conquered this place it began to make me realise that I could go on to conquer other things other places and that I could have hope and ambition really. It's such a beautiful time of year these Regercia leaves are just starting to show their autumn colours, stunning. So once the worst of my recovery was behind me I'd spent my time in rehab and I had some sort of normality in my life I was looking for something to sort of be my mission again in life essentially and Prince Harry created the Invictus Games it's a multi-sports competition for wounded, injured and sick service personnel I discovered recumbent cycling so that is an adult tricycle for want of a better word and I took part in the first games back in 2014 which was so important because I wasn't a soldier anymore I wasn't a marine anymore I wasn't wounded anymore now I was a sports person and the beauty of recumbent cycling was the fact that I could get out into the great outdoors again and so I found myself back in the park and this became my training ground and so every single inch of this every road I have gone along climbed up hills gone back down to the bottom done it again and again and again and once again its use its adaptability came through and it not just helped me survive but it helped me thrive and well it resulted in a gold medal at the Invictus Games so it must have helped the amazing thing about this place is that with all the challenges I've faced in life the good times and the bad that I've had this place has been here it was the cornerstone of the Invictus Games it was the cornerstone of the early parts of my recovery and actually now I face the biggest challenge I ever have of being a parent and this is the place that my daughter learned to ride her bike in it isn't just helping me it's helping my family as well and so it's amazing how a park a green space can just be the answer to any number of problems it provides for you at whatever stage of your life you're at while few of us have had experiences as extreme as JJ's I think all of us can share the sentiment that an outdoor space whether it's our own back garden or a park or a piece of countryside that we've had access to feeds back into us it's very powerful magic now I have a bunch of plants here which are certainly in need of some kind of healing treatment we have a lot of pelargoniums here especially the scented leaf ones but at this time of year having overwintered them indoors the important thing is to be bold and cut them back hard if you leave a pelargonium to grow there's an awful lot of wood and not very much leaf and not very much flower and you're growing them for a scented leaf you want as much of that as possible and you can see on this this is Lady Plymouth that already there's quite a lot of new growth appearing on these very straggly stems and the key thing at this time of year is cut it back and I could go right back to the base in fact I'm going to take it off like that and like that and there's a nice one there and then the next thing to do after you cut them back is water them and start to feed them and you will get good new growth coming through there we go this cut material is good for cuttings so have a jar of water to hand and anything which I think is suitable for cuttings I put in the water and then that will stay good for another hour or so before I get back to the potting shed and they take very easily from cuttings now it's not just pelargoniums this is Salvia curviflora lovely flowers that flower for a long time but like the pelargoniums it's good to cut it back now go back to a good strong shoot knowing that there will be plenty of regrowth I'll water all these give them a feed of liquid seaweed and then gradually harden them off throughout May and that way they're in really good heart to grow well into summer and hopefully give us masses of flower now I know from my own experience that people assume that because you're on television or you're a garden designer that your own garden is a real showpiece but the truth is especially garden designers they're so busy with their clients' gardens they often don't have time to look after their own and that was the case for many years for Nick however the events of the last year meant that for the first time for ages he could turn his skills to his own garden I've been aching to get on with my garden ever since I moved into my flat three years ago my plot here in London isn't particularly big it's about 11 meters by 10 luckily I'm starting with a fairly blank canvas and I want to make the most of every single centimetre that I've got when I first moved here this place was a mess I added a garden office quite quickly but I haven't had time to do much more however over the last few weeks I've made my way through the garden dug out all the perennial weeds so now I'm ready to start thinking about how I'm going to lay out the garden the first thing to do when you're designing a garden is to assess your site what you want to leave and what can go in my case I'll be keeping the shed the fence and the terrace then work out which are the windy, sheltered or sunny spots and this will inform where you put your plants and where you can place things like a seating area unfortunately the property is north-facing so that really limits things but I do get a window of six hours of light which comes into this area of the garden in other words the place where I've chosen to put the veg in and anything that says it needs full sunshine doesn't mean a minimum of six hours of light as my garden's sloping I'll terrace it which will also help me to maximise growing space when it comes to laying out paths and terraces there are a certain few basic dimensions it's worth being aware of so if you're looking for a single path about 1.20m is an ideal width I've gone a little bit skinnier here because I want to maximise the growing space the next thing to consider is materials being London I've decided on a brick or a paving block that's got that sort of typical London clay look to it they're lovely, they're really variable I think they'll work together quite nicely the other material I've decided to go for are these new cedar sleepers and they're good in so many different ways they've got this lovely tan tone to them which makes a fantastic contrast to the black of the hut five months on and it has been transformed the hard graft has paid off the terracing, cedar edging, paving and structures fit neatly into the space and of course there's the planting I'm really pleased with it if you're putting together a border in a really small garden then every single plant has really got to count and you need to make sure you've got the right mix that's going to give you a succession of colour and interest over as many months as possible and I've got a bit of a recipe that can help you do that so to start with you need to put in the long flowering perennials now there's two right beside me here that are incredibly useful this geranium which flowers for six to seven months and then this perennial wallflower this erythema and again this flowers even more probably up to about nine months the second component you need to think about are successional plants in other words plants that you grow in association with each other so the salvia amistad is looking fabulous at the moment but about six weeks ago it wasn't even in bloom however at the start of the season I'd planted a mass of orange lilies underneath it so they were looking fantastic just as they finished of course the salvia came in to bloom I cut back the lilies and it kept the colour coming and then the third component for creating a great successional border is the slot-in plants they tend to be annuals and I've grown several in the glasshouse this year which I've slotted into the front of the border as earlier flowering species have finished so two examples of that are this syrinthe just here just pushing into flower I put this in about a month ago and then running all the way through the borders I've got this lovely tropiola it's got this fantastic variegated foliage and it just weaves its way through everything with these three simple planting strategies if you follow them you'll have months and months of colour in your garden from the glasshouse to the summer house the beds to the borders my new garden has taken on a life of its own and become a huge part of mine the extraordinary thing about gardens is you don't have to be an expert to know exactly what Nick is talking about to share that same rich reward that even the most basic gardening does give you and certainly at the moment the hellebores are at their very best and here in the wildlife garden these are oriental hybrids and hellebores are one of the easiest plants you can possibly grow other than cutting their leaves back the end of January, beginning of February I do nothing else at all I don't feed them I don't water them I just let them do all the work they demand almost nothing of me as a gardener but they give me as a person a huge amount now the emotion that flowers give and in fact any kind of garden gives us is universal you find it all over the globe as we can see from this film that we were sent from a viewer in Brazil hello my name is Carlos Laje I'm from Brazil and this is my garden since I was very young I'm a big plant lover and for almost a decade now I'm dedicated to conservancy and propagation of many Brazilian species such as orchids, bromeliads and many other plants a highlight of the season is this gorgeous bilbergia porteana which is a local bromeliad species although its flowers won't last that long for days it will paint the garden with its bright red sepals this garden is inspired by the rupestrian grasslands which is one of my favorite Brazilian habitats about 15% of all Brazilian species are concentrated in these areas that covers less than 1% of our continental territory these plants are extremely vulnerable so it's crucial that we understand them in cultivation in times like we're experiencing now everyone is invited to see the world through gardener's eyes and plant seeds for a better future and although it's quite different than the gardens you guys have in UK gardener's world is such a big inspiration for me so thank you you have a huge fan in Brazil it's very reassuring that despite having completely different plants completely different climate and weather and language we all share that bond of gardens and gardening now I'm going to plant these hyacinths that have been growing in a pot out into the garden and I do this every year with all kinds of bulbs you can see behind me there's some pink hyacinths that I planted out about four years ago and we have a rhythm we buy new bulbs every year to put into pots and that gives us a really superb display and then once they finish flowering plant them into the garden so we have our best display in pots but the garden is gradually filling up with lovely flowers and I'm going to put these into a gap here there we go and just take it out the pot and pop it in the ground like that and in fact I can cut back the flower heads which will mean that no energy will go into producing seeds and all the goodness will go down into the bulb so if we take the right down the bottom take the stalks off like that okay it's only a small job but it's good to get done and here are some jobs for you this Easter weekend Mediterranean herbs such as sage get very straggly after winter but if you cut them back hard just leaving a few signs of new growth they will quickly regenerate and look and taste good in order to ensure that we have a good supply of cabbages from autumn right through next winter now is the time to start sowing sprinkle the seed thinly on peat-free compost lightly cover them water them and put them somewhere warm to germinate if you're growing tender vegetables be they climbing beans or sweet corn or as in my case I've got some artichokes they can't be planted out until the winter