Monty Don Explores a Jungle Backyard

Hello, welcome back to a new series of Gardener's World. Well I guess we're still reeling a little after that terrible winter. Here at Longmeadow we've been underwater for weeks on end. We've been battered by the winds and at times it really has felt like the house is going to blow down and the garden will be washed away and disappear over the watery horizon. But we've come through it. It's been very mild despite the vile weather, so everything is growing well and we've got a whole year's gardening ahead of us. This year as usual I'm joined by Carol, Rachel and Joe. Carol will be meeting people and plants that have helped shape British gardening. Croakers are of course one of the gems of early spring and this week Carol is meeting one of the country's leading experts. Some people say they're rather blousy but they do make a spectacular show. They're bold, they're bold to be polite. It's a better word. Over the next few weeks Joe will be looking at gardens that thrive despite their extreme locations. He's starting in Pembrokeshire to get tips on how to garden in soil that is sodden all the year round. It's so dramatic. It's primal, bog is a very primal condition. And Rachel visits a fabulous rose garden home to over 5,000 different varieties and the perfect place to see how our taste in roses has changed over the years. In this garden I fell in love with the rose. In January and February it was impossible to do much gardening for weeks on end but before Christmas I did make one big change and that has opened up a whole new set of possibilities. For the last 20 years there's been a hornbeam hedge running down along the length of the spring garden turning it into a long narrow triangle. Now this has looked great in spring but it meant that by May and certainly June it was a very shaded dark part of the garden that more or less sat unvisited and certainly without anything to show right through the rest of summer. Now I've taken that hedge out and what this means is not only does the light pour in right away and the shape of the garden has changed but it also gives me a whole new range of planting opportunities because by taking the hedge out I've revealed a strip all along its lee which really had almost nothing in it at all. Now I've got some pulmonaria here. One of those modest spring plants that's never going to be a star but is always playing a really valuable supporting role. This is blue enzyme and you can see that's a rich good blue and blue is the rarest colour in the garden so you want to find it out and use it and what you'll find very commonly in pulmonaria and I've got some back here is you get pink and blue on the same plant. They will start a pinky colour and then turn blue but they hybridise all the time so that you can end up with rather muddy colours so by adding a really strong blue I'm adding a jolt of colour back in and getting some energy. It's one of the easiest plants you could possibly grow. It's not a native. It comes from central European woodland but has been grown in this country since medieval times as a medicinal plant called lungwort and it's called lungwort because if you look at the foliage it's mottled display. People thought it looked like lungs so they would boil it up and take it for asthma or bronchitis. I wouldn't try that myself and all it needs to thrive is a bit of shade and some reasonable moisture in the soil and although this is opened out there's still a little bit of shade here all year round and blue ensign as a variety is better adapted than some other pulmonary areas to being in full sun so there'll be no problem here at all. Just pop it in the ground there. There she goes. The most noticeable problem that you get with pulmonary areas is a white mould that covers the foliage if they get too dry. If they do get mouldy just cut off the foliage and I like to do that anyway round about the beginning of June cut them right back to the ground so you get fresh new foliage and that tends not to get mouldy at all and then I cut them back again in November so that they start their growth in spring absolutely from a basal point. Now this one doesn't come true from seed but you can divide it very easily so you can keep your stock by dividing the plants or occasionally buying new ones as I have done here and they're not an expensive plant but one of those ones that are no trouble. They just spread themselves around and you can rather take them for granted like so many other plants that appear at this time of year the crocus and the snowdrops and the pulmonary areas and euphorbias coming through. This series Carol is going to be visiting gardens and talking to gardeners where they don't take their plants for granted where they specialise in a plant and devote their lives to them. You know that winter's on its way out as the grass begins to sparkle with the joyous flowers of crocus. As the sun begins to shine they open their petals wide to embrace its warming rays. EA Bowles Gardens at Middleton House are the historic home for crocus in the British Isles. I'm meeting Brian Matthew here, devotee of these early spring delights and one of the world's if not the world's leading authorities. He published a seminal work on the plant named simply The Crocus which has since become a bible to gardeners and botanists alike. I suppose it took about 10 years in all of travelling around looking at them and putting the whole thing together and borrowing thousands of specimens from all the European herbaria. That's what you call a monumental task isn't it? Yes, I found one dried specimen in a herbarium which said on Mount Vermilion which is northern Greece by the last melting snow patch and so I thought I've got to go and see that so the car I had at the time was a mini traveller and so I drove in a few days from 1700 miles down to northern Greece and there it was. You found it? Around the edge of this last little snow patch. So what is it about something like this that you love so much? Well I'm a gardener as well and I mean there's nothing much more beautiful than that and graceful is there but of course botanically they've got so many different characters and that's what really fires me up. Another interesting thing about them is that the seed pod sits down underground and then it'll shoot up on a stalk and wave about in the air and distribute the seed. Because of Brian's work plant breeders have so much more information at their command and we gardeners have come to know so many crocus species and cultivars to help us choose plants that are just right for our gardens. I think one of the most enchanting magical things about crocus is that they all close up when it's dark and open up in the sunshine. Things like snowdrops dangle their flowers which means that when it's pouring with rain now pollen is preserved inside. Whereas crocuses facing upwards in a wine glass shape would just fill up with water so they've got to have a mechanism to open and close. Is it light that actually triggers that? Well it's not wholly light, light has warmth in it and it's warmth that does it. Right, how do you differentiate between them when it comes to growing them in your garden? Well for garden crocuses you would really pick out Thomasinianus if you want a really early one. That comes from the Balkans and it grows in semi-shade underneath deciduous trees and shrubs and so we treat it the same way in gardens, we plant it in the shade. So between shrubs under trees behind your wheelie bin? Perfect, yes. And then Vernus which comes later. Vernus is a plant of alpine meadows and so in gardens it's ideal for planting in grass which is why you see so much of it around in parks. Some people say they're rather blousy but they do make a spectacle in a show. They're bold, they're bold to be polite. It's a better word. But what differentiates Chrysanthus? They're plants of open stony hillsides, sunny places where they'll dry out in the summer. So that's really a third major group which are great for different situations in the garden. So you can fall in love with your favourite Chrysanthus and plant it in a sunny place? That's right. Many wonderful Chrysanthus hybrids are available. Two of my favourites can be seen here in the gardens. Cream Beauty is a delightful, delicate crocus and Snow Bunting is a hugely popular and robust flower that has markings on the outside that look hand-painted, almost like bird's feathers. Crocus come from such a vast area and they grow in all sorts of situations that we're all bound to be able to find something that suits our gardens perfectly. Whether we want to grow them in grass, mingle them with Spring Beauties or simply put them into pots where we can study their exquisite and intricate patterns and forms. And it's thanks to all that work and devotion over so many years that we're able to know so much about the genus and to grow them so successfully in our own gardens. This part of the garden is called the damp garden because it does often flood. But it's never flooded so much over so long as it did this winter. There were times when literally as far as the eye could see was just a sheet of water. The garden felt like a half-submerged island in a vast lake. Now I know for a lot of people this is a very distressing and alarming experience but because we've had it happen over the years, two or three or four times a year, it doesn't worry us. But there is a real danger if it stays too long that plants will suffer. Now in my experience, as long as the flood doesn't last for more than say 10 days, nothing suffers at all. You end up with everything looking rather saturated and a horrible slime everywhere but the rain washes that off. So what I would say is if you've been flooded, do nothing. Don't panic, take stock and see what grows back. And I think you'll find almost everything will. But also consider what you could plant that could use that opportunity. Plants that relish the flooding. So in here, for example, we've deliberately chosen plants like loosestrife which will really be happy in the wettest of conditions. Like the primulas, the candelabra primulas in particular, which don't seem to mind if they're permanently wet even though in fact they will grow quite well in relatively dry conditions too. So a very adaptable plant. The Lysimachia, this is Lysimachia chiliata here, which really grows strongly in wet conditions. So in other words, if our weather is going to get warmer and wetter in winters and these extreme events do seem likely, it's an opportunity to grow all those plants that need the wetness and will thrive in it. Now this year, Joe is visiting a series of gardens that have been made despite extreme conditions. And the first one he visits is a wet garden. The wild coastal valleys of West Wales are their verdant beauty to some of the wettest weather in Britain. In the shadow of the Preseli Hills here, you don't have to look too far for evidence of rain. This damp squelchy ground is hardly inspiring, but this garden shows just what can be achieved. Christina Shand came here 17 years ago and has been working on the garden ever since. Christina, exactly how wet is it here? The weather is extraordinarily changeable. I do describe this place as being between a bog and a hard rock. We get up a high rainfall, it's challenging, but that's what I love about gardening. You try things out and then you make horrendous mistakes, but you learn from it all the time. And that's the joy. I'm intrigued to find out more. Well, it certainly is changeable weather around here, that's for sure. It's absolutely chucking it down at the moment. This border is gorgeous. I love it. It's tropical, it's exotic. Is the soil damp under there too? That's pretty wet. That's what they call a surface well. There are quite a lot of them in Pembrokeshire. And when I first made the bed, I wanted to plant wisteria on the front here. I broke out the concrete and it kept filling up with water. So I thought, right, can't have my wisteria. So you went for this instead? So I went for boggy bed and put the downpipe into it as well. Right, OK. Which makes it even wetter when it rains like that. So all the water off the catchment is ending up in this planting area. So what stays in here permanently? I'm guessing the calacasia gets moved. Yes, that does. And the cannas and the dahlias the same. So what stays in here is the ferns, basically. There's a banana, which I wrap up a bit. So how do you find out about what grows best in those beds? Trial and error, really. Is that it? You put something in, if it does well, you'll grow more of it? And yeah, it tells me itself. Like the selectrum, various things are starting to seed themselves around. And I suddenly think, aha, I can grow things that a lot of other people can't grow because they haven't got enough moisture in the soil. And learn to try and take advantage of that. There's one section of the garden, Christina tells me, presented her with a particularly difficult challenge. But also an exciting opportunity. I've always wanted a sunken garden. I love sunken gardens. I like coming down. And as I come down, the plants get taller. So I'm getting enveloped and overwhelmed in them. I see what you mean. Yes, the plants do get taller. In fact, it's a jungle in here. Yes, yes. So I started a two-tier planting system. So I started bringing in rocks, first of all. Making planting pockets, filling them up with topsoil. Raising them up. So once I got the asilbis out of the immediate bog and the gunnera, they were happy. Yeah. Oh, interesting. So you're basically building a structure. You're raising them up above ground. They can get their roots down a bit. Permanently wet. Yes. But not too wet. Yes. And then other plants are straight into the bog, like the primulas. They struggled to begin with. But then the self-seeding ones were happy. Yeah. Plants find their own level. And how do you manage this area now? I mean, it's so densely planted. Do you manage it or do you just let them all battle it out? Well, I'm more and more inclined to let it have its own volition, this garden. I like the way it's taken on a life of its own. It's absolutely fantastic. It's so dramatic. It's primal. Bog is a very primal condition. And the plants reflect that enormously. A lot of gardens might get the fear when faced with boggy conditions. But you've turned it around. Everybody wants plants that grow in that classic pre-draining, moisture-retentive soil. Hey, what about trying other difficult conditions and finding out and getting to know the plants and what they will take and what they won't. I really like the way that Christina hasn't just managed to make a garden in a tricky spot, but has made a beautiful, inspiring garden. And it shows that although people like me will go on about making perfect soil, and that is an ideal, you don't have to have it. You can make a wonderful garden in almost any conditions. Whatever your conditions, here are some jobs you can get on with this weekend. Chillies and peppers are slow to germinate, so they should be one of the first seeds that you sow in spring. Scatter the seeds thinly on a seed tray of compost. Because they need a temperature of at least 20 degrees centigrade to germinate, put them somewhere warm. March is the ideal time to prune late-flowering clematis. And these are the ones, like clematis viticella, that produce their flowers in July, August and on into autumn. If you leave them unpruned, the flowers grow increasingly higher and higher up the plant. So cut hard, reducing it down to one or two buds above the ground. This will stimulate vigorous new growth, which will carry this year's flowers. It's a good idea to chit first and second early potatoes to give you that lovely harvest of new potatoes in summer. If you leave potatoes in a dark place, they'll produce long, translucent shoots. But chitting them means putting them in a bright, sunny position in an open tray. And as long as it's frost-free, the shoots will remain compact and green. So when you plant them, they grow with extra vigor. This is what gives you an earlier crop. Now is a really good time to plant roses. You can see, actually, they're starting to put shoots on because it's been so mild. But the idea is to get them in the ground before they start to grow, so the roots can get settled, get established, and they'll support the new growth a lot better. I planted these last autumn. They're all yellow. This one is called the pilgrim. It's got wonderful ruffled yellow petals, slight touch of pink, and a really good fragrance. And I do strongly recommend that after you plant any rose, really give it a hard prune. And the reason for that is to stimulate growth from the base of the plant. And that way, it starts out as it needs to continue a nice, well-structured plant. After that, with a shrub rose like this, you only need to prune to tidy it up. These are three roses that I planted a year ago, which grew really well last summer, but they've grown irregularly. And this is very normal when you first plant roses, no matter what kind. They never quite make the shape you want until you establish that. And you can see how that we've got some really strong growth, and yet very, very limited stems too. Now, the biggest mistake is to cut the strongest growth back hardest. Because when you prune in winter, that stimulates growth. So if we want to get a nice, even shape, then we have to cut the weakest growth hardest. The harder you cut, the stronger the regrowth. So we have a weak growth here next to a much more vigorous one. I just take about a third off this and cut that there, but reduce this one right down. And I would expect the stems to balance out, and by this time next year, to have a nice, evenly shaped shrub, which I can then just trim. There are lots of different types of roses, and man has relished them all across the centuries. And last summer, Rachel went to the Garden of the Rose in St. Albans to look at their long history. I've been coming to this garden probably all my life. In this garden, I fell in love with the rose. The sheer diversity of roses on display here is extraordinary. I think it's the perfect place to come to learn more about changing fashions in roses over the last 50 years or so. In the first half of the 20th century, most gardens would have had these old classic roses with divine names like damasks, albers, portlands, and, of course, these glorious gallicas. Now, most flower only once very fleetingly, so the hunt was on for new, repeat-flowering varieties that were better suited to modern gardens. We've always bred roses, even during the dark days of the Second World War. And towards the end of that period, there came a new rose named to express the optimism for the future. It's called peace, and probably the most famous rose in the world. It's a perfect example of a hybrid tea, tightly-coiled buds that then sprout, swirl open into an explosion of petals. They were bred to repeat flower and had a huge colour range. Many became garden celebrities in their own right, names like Blue Moon and Grandpa Dixon. Thanks to roses like these, there was a huge boom in the popularity of roses during the 1950s. In one single year, there were 40 to 50 million sold, which is extraordinary. And I think for many people of that generation, the hybrid tea is still their idea of what a rose should be. Alongside the hybrid teas, another dynasty of roses came to dominate our gardens, this time the floribundas. And it was all about floriferousness. Lots and lots of flowers here in clusters. But I have such affection for this particular rose because it was one of my dad's favourites. From the 50s, the hybrid teas and floribundas reigned supreme. But in the 1970s, roses took a bit of a knock with the advent of garden centres because people wanted something that just looked good straight away in a pot, and rose sales literally halved. But this was the answer. Patio rose. They're compact, healthy, and they repeat flower masses of blooms all summer long. For me, many patio roses lacked one key characteristic that makes a great rose, fragrance. But by the 1980s and 90s, tastes were changing, and people wanted roses that combined the romance, the form of old roses, with good disease resistance, a good shape, repeat flowering, and perfume. A great example and a rose I grow at home is Golden Celebration. Nowadays, roses are among the most diverse and versatile of all garden plants, and I'm sure we're never going to tire of trying to find the next big thing. So what does the future hold? Well, who knows? But watch this space. Seeing all those roses does make you yearn for summer, but it'll come. It'll come soon. And to make sure that your roses produce as many flowers as possible, the final process in preparing them is to give them a good mulch. When you prune a rose, you're taking away potential goodness for the roots until it grows more foliage. So give it a little boost, and the best thing you can possibly do is simply mulch it with any organic material. Now, garden compost is the very best of all, but you could use mushroom compost or even wood chips if you've got them, as long as they're well rotted down. And what this will do is protect the moisture in the soil, stop any weeds growing, which will compete and take nutrients, and also provide more feed for the plant. That's all you need to do for the rest of the year. That's it. And that's it for this week, too. See you then. Bye-bye. Hello. Welcome to Gardener's World and the most beautiful spring day here at Longmeadow. And these crocuses are not just looking really good, they're new. I've not seen them before. We planted them two years ago, and last spring we had that terrible cold weather, and then the rabbits came in and ate the lot. So this year, they've come as a gift. And there's always that thing with bulbs. You know what you want from them, but you plant them with a lot of hope. And by the time they grow, you've almost forgotten that they're there. Nige, come on. This week, Carol continues her look at our favourite garden plants and the people who devote their lives to them with a celebration of cyclamen. Do you love them? I don't know how I'd live without them. We shall also be visiting a plantsman in Yorkshire who has a passion for sweet peas to see how he breeds new varieties. Stick the stick billet into there and tap. Fold it all back together, and hey, presto, we've got a cross. Joe continues to explore gardens in the most challenging of locations with a trip to the rocky windswept coast of North Cornwall. If you were to take that hedge away, the garden would disappear in 12 months. It would just be covered with salt, it would turn black, and that would be the end of your garden. And I'm going to have to take drastic action and say goodbye to old friends that have shaped this garden over the last 15 years. But before we look at disasters, let's do something positive because it's time to sow sweet peas. Now you can sow them in tubes and root trainers and various different ways, but over the years, I've found that getting small pots, these are three-inch pots, and sowing a batch in each pot that gets planted out whole works ideal. And three is about right. These are hungry, thirsty plants, so not seed compost. The general purpose compost is fine, but if you can add a little bit of sieved soil or sieved garden compost, so much the better because the roots will start to engage with the bacteria and the fungi in the soil from the very beginning, and they'll grow better when you transplant them. Now, the sweet peas themselves. There are many, many different types of sweet peas to choose from, and you grow them all the same. I've got here Black Knight. Wonderful, rich, deep purple. There used to be a feeling that they had to be soaked, they had to be nicked with a pen knife. I found that there's no need to do any of that at all. They will germinate perfectly well. Just popped three per pot. Now, those four pots are going to make a wigwam. So we push them in there, lightly sprinkle a little bit of soil over the top, and now these go into a protected place to germinate. It doesn't have to have direct heat, but a windowsill is absolutely fine or a porch. And then as soon as the seedlings are established, put them outside in a sheltered place, and they will grow harder and stronger, and they'll adapt quicker when you plant them out. There we are, the first batch of this year's sweet peas. It's one of those plants that stirs some people to a lifetime of devotion. And I think Andrew Bean in Yorkshire would class himself as one of them. Not only does he grow sweet peas, but he breeds them. I've always been interested in hybridising I've got marble sweet peas, stripe sweet peas, flake sweet peas, and I've got one bicolour tucked away somewhere as well. So the whole aim is to get something different. When hybridising, what we want is a flower that's not pollinated. Well, this one here, pull this down. I think this one will be all right. Pollen sacs are intact, that's fine, that's okay. So we need to cut those off. So this is the hard bit. Right, we're going to go trim nicely. So we've exposed the stigma. Right, now what we need is something to put onto that. And we're aiming for a blue marble, so we want a marble flower or two. I'm going to have to go and get some flowers, won't be a minute. So we want something that's got pollen already. Shattered, right, usually about three quarters, that'll do nicely. So we're going to take that one. So we take the pollen from here, don't see any marriage valves. We're just going to pull the wings back on that, like that. And just stick the stigma into there and tap. We've got a little bit of pollen on there. Next, what we do is put it back together again. Bring it back. This is the hard bit. Right, and then fold it all back together like that. And hey, presto, we've got a cross. I'm the gardener of the family, right, so I do most of the gardening. I think my wife would have liked a more proper sort of garden with nice paths and things like that. We negotiated the patio and she's now got a top patio and I've got my sweet pea plot. It's a merging of the two. Right, well, one way of saving seed, especially in a hybridizer's garden, is you need to get the seed to dry off and we use tights, right. Tights are very good for drying off seed. I use different coloured ones as well so that I don't get the seed mixed up, right. So we just put the seed pods in here when they're ready for picking off. You then get a big amount of seed in here and as they dry out, right, you go along and you give them a little squeeze like this on all these tights, right. The pods explode, the seed ends up in the toe and then when you want it, you cut the toe off and drop it into a seed tray here and then we hand source the seed. The thing that really grabs me are the different colours that you can achieve. This is a flake. You very rarely get flakes on the market, right. There's stripes here. There's a mass of different colours that you can go at. You can go for red on cream, right. Nobody's got red on cream, right. The ultimate is the yellow but I'll leave that up to the genetic engineering to get that one, definitely. This sunshine has brought the frogs out and the pond is heaving with them. I counted about 30 in here and it does show that if you can bring a pond into a garden, it doesn't matter how small, it attracts wildlife better than anything else. Now, time to get on. Here's some jobs you can do in your garden this weekend. Epimediums are a charming but shy woodland flower and to enjoy them at their best, you cut away last year's foliage. This will let light and air in and reveal the flowers in all their glory. It's time to sow tomatoes and I like to sow another batch later in the month. You can either use a seed tray, scattering the seed thinly onto the compost or sow the seeds individually into plugs. The advantage of the seed tray, it's quick but you will need to transplant the seedlings as soon as they're big enough to handle, whereas those in the plugs need less handling and develop a better root system before they're potted on. Either way, put your seeds in a warm place to germinate. Broad beans can be delicious if picked young and are one of the easiest vegetables to grow. As soon as the ground can be worked, they can be sowed direct. Either in double rows about 9 to 12 inches apart, leaving 2 to 3 feet between the rows so you can walk down and harvest them. Or if you're growing them in a raised bed like I do, they can be planted in a grid with each seed 9 inches apart. And I'd expect to see those appear in about three weeks time. But I did sow some last October. These are aquadulce because aquadulce are by far the best for an autumn sowing. And you can see they've grown well. The advantage of sowing in autumn is that you establish strong plants for the beginning of spring so when the weather does warm up, they're ahead and you get an earlier crop. The disadvantage is that they're prone to mice, to slugs and to the vagaries of the weather. But it'd be interesting to see which gives us the best harvest. And to add to the mix, I did a sowing at the end of January and have grown these in the greenhouse. And when they're hardened off, which will be in about a week's time, I'll plant them where this kale is. So I'll have three lots and I can do a comparison between the three. The point, of course, is not so much the size of the harvest, but the timing, which is going to give me those first delicious baby beans at the end of spring. Now, one job that I must get on with here is to repair some wind damage to this RSU. You can see that it's leaning over and I need to straighten it up and then put a couple of stakes either side and then hold it nice and securely, probably with some old hose pipe because that strong wood won't damage the plant in any way and allow a little bit of movement. But it does need to be fairly rigid because you can see that the roots have been ripped up really quite close to the trunk. So hold it straight until the roots establish again and that will be three, four years. And we get lots of wind here at Longmeadow, but I know they are nothing compared to the winds that will batter the garden that Jo has been visiting on the North Cornish Coast. With its colourful, lush and very, very planting, it's hard to believe that this garden is perched on the top of a headland in North Cornwall. Now, it's a very still day today, but this spot would put the fear into the bravest of gardeners. Gardening here at the Mercy of the Elements is a real test. Gale force, salt-laden winds are not the gardener's friends. But it didn't discourage David Isles. First impressions make it clear. He's managed to create a space on the edge of the Atlantic which encompasses an amazing array of planting styles. You've got separate areas, you've got your pretty classic herbaceous borders, you've got your cottage garden, you've got a dry garden. Yeah, I don't like going into a garden and someone opening the door and saying, here is the garden and you can see the whole thing. I think a garden invites you to go in and see what's around the next corner. And if you restrict yourself to just one type of gardening, that's all you do. This is my dry garden, which in fact we call the Beth Chateau Garden because I read her book called The Dry Garden and it seemed to be the sort of thing that would suit our sort of conditions. A lot of people think of Cornwall as damp conditions. This is unbelievably dry up here. Well, if you stood here in the middle of November with the Cornish Gale, you would agree with the former. But in the summer, because it is so light and sandy, because it's blown onshore over eons of time, the rain just goes straight through it. I have to say, the combination of plants is great. I love the crocosmia with the achilleas over there and then the upright forms of the corded lines and the steeper over there. You've got a real eye for putting plants together. Well, I think the eye needs shape more than colour. And there's one crucial design element without which this entire garden would not be possible. Someone once told me that if you live on the north coast of Cornwall, you can either have a view or a garden. So we decided on the garden. And if you're going to a garden where we are, the first thing you've got to do is to provide yourself with some shelter. And I heard that, in fact, one thing you mustn't do is to put up a solid obstruction for the wind. We get winds anything up to 70, 80 miles an hour here in the wintertime. And if you put up a wall, the wind will vortex over it and create more problems. So you've got to filter the wind. That means you've got to find a hedge which will stand not only the strength of the wind, but also the salt. And so we did some research into various forms of hedging. And we ended up with olearia traversii, which is a New Zealand plant and which has become adapted to the salt environment. And that is tried and tested, the olearia, isn't it? Now, on a day like this, it's as if there's no wind through here. What are you talking about? Wind? Only three days without wind, and you've chosen one of them. But normally, the wind would just sweep right across here. None of these plants would... Well, if you were to take that hedge away, the garden would disappear in 12 months. It would just be covered with salt. It would turn black, and that would be the end of your garden. So it's not a luxury. It is absolutely essential. And as you say, it now creates a particular environment within to grow a much wider variety of plant, and that's what it's all about. It's quite amazing and a testament to David's ingenuity that even in a location as exposed as this, he's managed to create an exotic garden. David, this is incredible. And it shows what a microclimate you've created here, because you've got some really exotic plants growing. We started with the rockery. It's the only time we've actually done any designing. We laid out on a piece of paper the sort of shape we would like, and this is the result. And it's a joy. So David, a lot of people have tried and failed to create a garden in extreme conditions. What would your advice be to them? Well, the most important thing is to do research. You really do need to, A, first know what soil you've got. Then you need to know from which direction the weather is coming and indeed where the sun is, if it ever shines. The reason why most of the Cornish gardens are on the south coast is because they're sheltered from the Atlantic salt winds. I choose to live in a place where I've got the salt winds, so I then had to take the steps in order to create the right sort of environment. It didn't stop you. It didn't stop me. But then I'm an awkward bugger. David Arles' garden apparently withstood the ferocious storms that it was battered with earlier this year, so the hedge was obviously doing its work. I'm putting this down because I've got to perform some surgery. Here at Longmeadow, we have a really bad case of box blight. I mentioned this last year. In fact, we first noticed it two years ago, and I cut out the affected parts and hoped that it wouldn't reappear, but it has. The weather we've had is ideal for the spreading of blight, which is a fungus, and you can notice it on your box by these chocolate brown splodges that appear on the leaves, and it can hit the plant in days. You see bare patches, and you open it out, and there is all this musty dead foliage. The news is not good, I'm afraid. Box blight has no cure. There is nothing you can do short of cutting out the affected areas and hoping the regrowth doesn't get hit. Well, if I did that to these hedges, they would just look ridiculous. All these hedges that I've had here for 14, 15 years, which define the garden, which are the heart and soul of the garden, now have to go. So this is the end of an era. I'll put that on the top one. You can see all these leaves could have spores on them that was spread. It's got really bad here, and I think that we may well losing all the box in the garden, but I can't stress too highly the need for hygiene. So this saw is now infected with box blight, potentially. So before I use it on or near any other box, I should sterilize it. That goes for any cutting influence. Gather up as much of the fallen foliage as you possibly can. Try and resist brushing past it with clothes or with dogs. I mean, this is why it's so difficult in a garden. In the UK, box blight is on the increase, but there are things that you can do to minimize the risk of infection in your garden. Only trim box when you know there's a dry week ahead because spores can be carried by the rain and open wounds are more easily infected. Don't wet the leaves when watering. Point the water at the roots and always keep plants well ventilated. I clearly remember the day I planted this hedge and put in these little cuttings that I had grown. And of course, in that 15 years, my children have grown up, our lives have changed, and it's all bound up with this garden we've made. And so taking it out is not just removing a few plants, it's the end of a whole slice of my life. But you have to accept that everything changes. You can't hold things back. And good gardening means going with it. And as I'm doing this, I can see for a start, the grass borders opening out look better. They're going to love that light and air coming in. And I had planned to put in another hedge along here. I'm thinking it should probably be a good idea to leave it open. So immediately, something positive is coming out of it. Of course, I'm just cutting these off flush with the ground at the moment, but if I leave them, they'll regrow. And the chances of them being reinfected are about 99% because there'll be spores in the ground for up to five years. So the next stage will be to dig out the roots and then I can replant something if I want to. Well, this is all very sad, but at this time of year, there is so much to celebrate. And Carol is doing exactly that with cyclamen. Across the British Isles, there are dedicated plants people who've helped shape what we see and grow in our own gardens. People like Vic Asplen, who's a trustee of the Birmingham Botanical Gardens, home to the most wonderful collection of hardy cyclamen. With their propeller-like flowers, from deepest magenta to brightest white, it's easy to see how these plants evoke deep passion in gardeners. Vic has been devoted to them for over 40 years. It all began in 1972. I don't know why, but I ordered a couple of packets of cyclamen seed and the results were wonderful, so I started ordering more. And then in 1978, I heard that a cyclamen society had been formed and I immediately joined. And from there, well, shall we say it was all downhill. I was hooked. All uphill, wasn't it? With more and more cyclamen and so it's continued. And you're president now, aren't you, of the cyclamen society? I am president, yes. See, I'm always getting into trouble. As president of the society, Vic has helped promote cyclamen research worldwide, affording us a better understanding of this much-loved plant in our UK gardens. I have now been on five expeditions with the cyclamen society to study plants in the wild. If you'd see the conditions in which a plant actually grows, that gives you a really good handle on how to grow it. Cultivation in your own garden. Let's have a look at your pictures. This is a trip to Turkey in late February. Look at that! And the ground there is frozen and yet there are cyclamen coom growing perfectly well. You wouldn't think any plant could survive at all and yet remarkably they do. It's beautiful, isn't it? Although cyclamen do tend to grow in limestone areas in the wild, we found that in the garden the pH of your soil hardly matters at all. No. You give them soil, they'll grow in it. Do you love them? I don't know how I'd live without them. All those places that Vic visited, these cyclamen coom would sow themselves around and there'd be infinite variation in them. All cyclamen open their seed pods at the same stage and at that stage the starch in those seeds turns to sugar and it brings in ants from miles around. In they come and they carry off these seeds in every direction. It's a really good insurance policy to make sure that those seedlings come up way away from the mother plant so there's a wide distribution and everybody can survive. If you want to do it yourself, you don't want to wait for the ants. It's not reliable enough. But what you can do is get your own seed and you just get a pot of gritty compost and sow it onto the surface of that. Then put some grit over the top because this just helps the drainage and ensures that the seeds are in intimate contact with that compost. Water it well, stand it outside and then forget about it and eventually they'll come into flower and you'll see exactly what you've got. Look at the variety there, the variation in the leaf and the flower colour and that's the huge joy of sowing cyclamen from seed. You put your seed in but you have no idea what you're going to get until one day finally they flower. Nigel Hopes cares for the cyclamen collection here at Birmingham Botanical Gardens. Like Vic, he's been hit by cyclamania. He's championing a rare new hybrid that's just come onto the market. I hear you're the next generation of cyclamen fanciers. I suppose you could call me that, yeah. The thing I love about them is it's so nice to have something flowering in January, February, March when there's not a lot else happening. The flowers are like little nodding faces. They're just beautiful. But there've been lots of new developments, haven't there? Lots of new selections made. There have been. This one in particular is called Ashwood Snowflake. Pure white, dark stems. And that leaf is just out of this world. It's absolutely fantastic, isn't it? I mean, you can imagine how well that will show up in the garden. Yeah. So new, exciting. The love for cyclamen goes on and on. Well, this box is not going on forever because the best way to get rid of box blight is to burn it. Well, that's the end of the box and the end of the programme too. Bye-bye.