Monty Don s Expert Sustainable Gardening Tips Season 9 Episode 2 Gardeners World

Hello. Welcome to Gardener's World. I'm propping up this cardoon in the jewel garden before it needs it. And that's the secret of supporting any plant. So if you just gently pull the plant together. Now, as I'm doing this, I've just seen the foliage of a golden acanthus that lived here for years and then disappeared a couple of years ago. And blow me if it isn't there all the time. There's nothing much to see, but that's great. Lost and found. The secret is not to put any plant in a straitjacket, but bolster it up a little bit so the curves and the outline of the plant look absolutely natural with just a little bit of help. Coming up on today's programme, Aret heads to Faversham, where people are fighting to reduce the amount of plastic in their gardens. That can then be popped in the ground. Breaks down within a couple of days. That's brilliant. I love it. Nick is at Kew, enjoying their vast and varied collection of cacti and succulents. This is Echinocactus chrysonii. It comes from Mexico, but it grows just as well in the UK on a windowsill. We journey to Sussex for a masterclass in growing successful citrus. This is a beauty. It's a natural hybrid between a mandarin and a kumquat, and it fruits like mad. And I shall be looking at some of the common problems that afflict houseplants and looking at easy ways to solve them. This is the dry garden, and it's very different to the rest of Longmeadow because this is more or less sun-baked. The soil is practically non-existent. It was a yard when we came here, and it's based very close to the surface on old red sandstone, which is rather a porous rock. And these are mostly plants that have adapted to very dry conditions, and they find moisture in the soil, or they hold on to moisture. So, for example, last summer, when we had a really serious drought, this border was very happy. But it can look fabulous one year, and you don't change anything, and then it tails off. So I'm going to add some plants in here in order to keep exactly that sort of rather tall, elegant, free-flowing spirit that we have in these borders. Now, the first plant is a verbascum. I love verbascum. They tend to be biennial, but this verbascum is a perennial. So it'll come back year after year. It's called Christo's Yellow Lightning. It was discovered by the late, great Christopher Lloyd from Great Dixter, and has a great candelabra of soft, yellow flowers about three, four foot tall. Next, I've got Cephalaria. This is Cephalaria gigantea, and it's a whopper. Great, tall, scabious. And it's got very pale yellow flowers that will grow up about six foot tall. I'm going to put one next to the verbascum. I think another in front of the base of the rose, and then another over here. Right, let's start a little bit of planting. I've hit stone right underneath there. Can you hear that? It does always amaze me how lush this is and how well it grows, given how little soil there is. So if you've got a very stony garden, don't give up, don't despair. You can still have lots of lovely plants. This verbascum will be perfectly happy. Okay, modest at the moment, but that will grow strongly and well. Now, the Cephalaria, I'm going to plant next to it, and it will tower way above the verbascum. What will happen is this acanthus will grow forward and could shade out the Cephalaria before it gets going. The answer is just to keep cutting it back. It looks fabulous at the moment, these lovely glossy leaves, but I know what it's planning to do. It's planning world domination. And so I will cut it back just as aggressively as it plans to take over. I'm gonna systematically work my way through planting here, but you can see I've got some lovely plants and that's great, but I've already got three plastic plant pots, which is adding to the problem of what we do with all our waste plastic. And we use, apparently, over half a billion plastic flower pots a year. That's just in the UK alone. And we know that industry and government are looking at this, but there are no easy answers and it's going to take time. However, Arit has visited a community that is doing something now to try and come up with solutions for this problem of their own bad. Go to a garden centre, pick up your plant, and most of the time it will be sitting ready to go in one of these black or dark coloured plastic plant pots. Get your prized plant home, take it out of its pot, and then it gets complicated because it's really hard to put through our domestic recycling schemes. I was really excited when I heard about these new tote pots that are designed to be sorted and recycled in our household recycling. So great job. Not quite. If you put these tote pots in your plastic recycling bins, most councils around the UK won't take them away. This is because their current policy is not to accept plastic plant pots of any colour in your household recycling. If you don't go to the trouble of finding a recycling centre, they will end up in landfill or burned to capture their energy. With plastic pots stacking up in my garden, I want to know what we can do with this tidal wave of plastic until legislation is passed. I want to know if this legislation actually makes a change. I've come to Faversham, where people power is effecting change. The town has a plastic-free community status because of the action it's taken on single-use plastic across its businesses and the community, including in their gardens. One of these is local nursery Edible Culture. Chris runs the nursery with David and they grow most of their own plants on site. This is not what I expected at all. It very much looks like a traditional nursery to me. It is to some extent. We're growing in the conventional sense, that's using plastics, but it was our concern about plastic use and feeling very much that we were part of a plastic chain. So we were getting a lot of stuff from suppliers and then passing plastic on to our customers. So we were very worried about that. They are so passionate about reducing single-use plastics that they've imposed their own ban on any plastic leaving this site. We've kind of set ourselves a target and we've said that it's illegal to sell single-use plastics. It's kind of forced us to really think, where do the plastics go? Where do they end up? Maybe if we hold on to those pots, recycle them internally, the plastic then will become a tool rather than a disposable single-use item. If the pots can't leave the boundaries of the nursery, how do customers leave with their plants then? I can show you now if you like. I am loving the hardware shop. Really great. It's great. We've kind of set it up in that sense. It's a bit like a four candles shop. You've got the four candles over there. We've got the four candles. I think the two Ronnies would have been right at home here with this retro style of shopping and it really appeals to me too. So what happens? I'm a customer, I've chosen my gorgeous plants, what happens now then? So basically what we do, you can pop it into one of our posipots. So really, it's very ingenious. It's a redesigned noodle box. Who designed them? I did it myself actually. I mean, I used to teach. I used to teach graphics and we used to make boxes for the kids. And that's a coffee stirrer. Very ingenious. You can also write what you want on there, so what the plant name is. So that then takes away the fact that you need a plastic label, which is really good. And this is fully compostable. So it's kind of like a low grade brown paper, unbleached, that's been recycled. You then get your plant, you then tip the plant out. Gorgeous roots there. They're lovely roots. Pop that in there and then that can then be popped in the ground. So straight in. Straight in the ground. Brilliant. Yep. Breaks down within a couple of days and it's starting to root through it. So it's a really nice sort of process. Fantastic. And you know what? It's a great pot for natural material to go straight back into the earth. Yeah, yeah. That's brilliant. I love it. Why are they called posipots? It's a positive pot because it means that the customer is not having to take home plastic. Very good. I'm liking that. Bought my plants. What else can I buy in this way? Well, we do a lot of feeds and sprays. So we found a method there where we use a glass bottle. People can bring back the bottle and kind of reuse them again and again. And compost, David? Yearly, we distribute about 600 to 900 bags of compost. And of course, with each bag of compost, there's a single-use plastic bag. So you take home a bag of compost, you pay a set amount for it. When you bring the bag back to us for refilling, we take off the price of the bag. And it's been brilliant. I mean, I just already, I'm sold. That really, really works. Yeah. Okay. What else can I be doing? Well, we do seeds. And this is like stepping back a few years to when you used to do scoop and save. So we've kind of gone back to that concept. So it's just a sort of a lovely method of kind of getting products out there without using any more plastics, which we used to use. And the other thing about this, it's so engaging. You're really feeling that contact with your plants and choosing, you know, just the right amount of fertilizer that you need as well. So again, you're not wasting there as well. No, not exactly. I mean, for me, it is about referencing garden centers in the seventies, which I can just about remember. And it goes along with this concept about reduce, reuse and recycle. And it's a bit like a sweet shop as well, which I love. Very much so. I think David's been a little bit modest about those ideas that he's just shared because as simple as they are, they are ingenious at getting us thinking about single-use plastic. And I wonder if his customers think the same too. I'm a gardener locally. The amount of plastic that you get through in fertilizer bags and also in compost bags is just phenomenal. In a week, I could get through 30 or 40 of those bags. Here, I can reuse the same bag 30 or 40 times and I've not added any more plastic to the environment. I think it's fantastic. It just means I haven't got waste at home. But if I can get down to zero plastic waste, that's my aim really. That's what their goal is here too. At the moment, they send their end-of-life plastic to specialist recycling facilities. But they are hoping in the future that will change. They're working on a project with a local school on the same premises who also are keen to tackle the issue of single-use plastics. They have a machine here that shreds plastic. The plastic goes through, it's granulated down with the hope in the future to actually expand that into a machine that can repurpose the pots into something that can be used again here in the nursery. Wow, that's really forward-thinking. This will mean the plastic will never have to leave the premises. Working with the school is really nice because the students are really enthused by it. We're enthused by it. Students are coming up with ideas. It's really good. Yeah, that's a great synergy. I love their approach. They've given themselves a physical boundary. No plastic can leave this place. However, it's given them the freedom to have some innovative ideas on how to push forward using less plastic. I find that really inspirational to see people tackle a huge global problem with a local solution that has real meaning and contact with people and works. And the industry is tackling this plastic problem behind the scenes. And what is really good about these new pots is that they have the capacity to be recycled. For the moment, the best bet is certainly buy them over black plastic. Use it, wash it, and then keep it at home and reuse it and go on reusing it until such a time as it can be handled and go through the whole process of recycling. And of course, we will be watching that and informing you on all developments as they happen. Come on. I love this pear. It's one of the great glories of the garden in spring. And it all happened by mistake because I went to buy an eating pear, and this was sold to me as one called Black Worcester. In fact, it's not a Black Worcester, and it's not an eating pear. It's a peri-pear. Now, peri-pears make peri, which is the pear version of cider, and they're grown on pear rootstock, so they're very vigorous, which is why it's so big. And absolutely smothered with flowers. And more than that, every flower is being attended to by a bee, so the whole tree is humming. Now, whilst the feature of all our gardens at this time of year is there's a kind of growing softness of colour and form, Nick has been to Kew specifically to see a type of plant that could never be accused of being soft either in form or colour. In fact, they are distinctly spiky. They come in all shapes, sizes and forms and have a millennial fan base across the globe. Cacti and succulents have had a massive popularity spike lately. And it's easy to see why. Succulents really suit today's lifestyle. They're inexpensive and they're easy to grow. So even if you've only got a windowsill, they're the ideal plant to cultivate. Now, if you've got a little specimen like this with the right care, it can go on for decades. The word succulent is derived from the Latin word succus, meaning juice or sap. These plants have adapted to survive in their natural habitats in arid deserts and mountaintops around the world. Their defining feature is a unique ability to hold water in their leaves, stems or roots. This little baby and its mother behind me are both Crassula portulacea. It's very closely related to Crassula ovata. They both come from South Africa and they're commonly known, of course, as the money plant or as the jade plant. And they grow in a very hot, dry environment. So they've got thick succulent leaves and these quite tough stems. Now, in terms of caring for them, they want blazing sunshine. And in terms of their watering, they tend to be a bit more thirsty in spring and summer when they're in active growth, so maybe once a week. And then in winter, let them dry right down and maybe only every two or three weeks or so. Succulents are made up of around 60 different plant families, including Cactaceae. The cacti family are distinguished by their unique areoles, little growth centres which give rise to hundreds of spines. This is Echinocactus crassonii. It's commonly known as the barrel cactus or, more entertainingly, mother-in-law's cushion. Now, it comes from Mexico and grows in a very hot, dry environment. And it's one of the most popular landscaping cacti around the world. So from the Canary Islands to California, it's used outdoors. But it grows just as well in the UK on a windowsill. Apuntia microdacis is an evergreen cactus, also known as bunny ears, due to its flat and green stems. It's easy to grow indoors as long as you keep it in room temperatures of around 21 degrees. But in the winter, it needs a cooler climate, so keep it away from the central heating. My favourite cacti is Mammillaria gemini spina. It comes from South America and it has a beautiful architectural form which looks great year-round. Now, I think this plant really suits contemporary living. Can you imagine three identical plants in identical pots sat on a windowsill? I think they'd look beautiful. Although this may appear at first glance to be one of the Mexican cacti, this is in fact a succulent form of Euphorbia that comes from the Canary Islands, and it's called Euphorbia canariensis. But it shares many traits with cactaceous species in terms of how you can propagate it. In other words, you can remove quite a large stem, say, up to 18 inches or two foot, and then just allow it to dry out and that wound to callous over. Now, sometimes it will start to produce roots at that stage, or otherwise you can just put it into a very gritty mix and that giant cutting will grow away beautifully. In complete contrast is Lithops, a fascinating southern African succulent, also known as living stones. They're a real novelty and they've evolved to disguise themselves as rocks and pebbles. This extraordinary-looking plant is Discoria elephantipes, and you can see why it's got that name. This swollen stem base, known as a cordex, has got real elephant-looking qualities, but it's actually there as a water-retaining vessel. Now, it has all of this top growth on at the moment, but it can go into a dormancy state where it loses that. Years ago, when I was looking after one in a botanic garden, it sat for three years with no foliage, so we thought it had died, moved it into a classroom, and then suddenly, out of nowhere, it burst back into life. Aloe vera is one of the most popular succulent houseplants. Like lots of succulent plants, aloe vera is really easy to propagate. A mature specimen like this tends to start putting up these little side shoots, which are known as pups. You start out removing the aloe from its existing pot and then clearing away some of the soil from the roots, and you'll find that these pups are attached to the base of the stem already with their own set of roots on. Sometimes you can very easily tear them away or use a pair of secateurs to cut it, and what you'll wind up with is this perfect little plant. And so all you need to do is to give it a few days to callus and dry out. And once you've done that, you're ready to pot the plant up, and you can use 50% soil-based compost and then about 50% gravel or perlite. Once that's all settled in around the sides and your plant is well-centred, that can then be left on a windowsill or on a glass house for two or three days, and then you can start to water it. Now, watering is absolutely fundamental when it comes to cactaceous and succulent plants, and it's the thing most likely to kill them if you get it wrong. So the easiest way to test if your plant needs water is just to stick your finger in about an inch down the side of the pot. If there's any moisture in there at all, you don't need to water. The guiding principle really is wait until they've completely dried down, then thoroughly soak them, and wait until they're dry again before you water them, and that way you'll keep your plants fresh and healthy. One of the things that always fascinates me about cacti and any succulent is this need for them to form a callus, which goes against almost everything that we learn about taking cuttings or potting on. And actually that's all to do with the way that they use water. With most plants, you water the roots and they take up the water and use it, and then you need to water them again. With succulents, they take up the water and then store it and draw upon it when they need it, which of course is how they've evolved to cope with extreme heat and drought. But it's slightly counterintuitive, and you just need to remember that. Now, I've got an array of houseplants around me, and the Gardeners' World team have very bravely volunteered to put up their houseplants, including those that are not doing very well, so that we can have a look and see what common problems are. And the more senior people get in the Gardeners' World production team, the worse their houseplants are. I should stress, by the way, that the healthy ones are, of course, my own. No problems ever before the Don household. Now, this is a classic problem of a houseplant that is looking very sad indeed, and the problem is in my hand. Because if I take it out of this rather attractive grey pot, it's in a standard plastic pot, it's as light as a feather. But if I look at the pot, it's in no drainage holes of any kind. And what's been happening, I suspect, is they've watered it, and the water has sat inside what is effectively a jar, and it's got too wet. And it's showing classic symptoms of an over-watered plant, which are drooping leaves that are turning brown. And a lot of people will see that as an underwater plant, and that it needs more water, so they compound the problem. So never keep any houseplant in an undrained container, unless when you water it, you do so and let it drain completely. A lot of houseplants, particularly foliage ones, like the asperdistra, like dark, cool, damp conditions, and most houses are too hot and too dry. So this is an essential piece of kit, a mister. If you mist the leaves of houseplants, for an awful lot of them, that will make them happier than anything else. So just in the morning, give this cheese plant a mist like that, job done. Now we've got a plant here one of the team bought in, a spider plant, and it's really healthy. Spider plants don't need much water. They need watering every few weeks if need be, and no more. But, look at the bottom. This needs replanting, so I'm going to repot this for them. Now, what this needs is really good drainage. So, I've got some compost and some perlite, but vermiculite or grit will do the job just as well. And then mix that up, and we'll put a little bit in the bottom. There we go, new home for you. That needs watering, but you're looking at keeping it pretty dry, but misting it daily. Finally, there is the tricky question of feeding, and every plant that is grown in a container will sooner or later need a supplementary feed because it will exhaust the available nutrients inside the pot. But if you overfeed, it will result in overly lush, soft tissue and soft growth that is much more prone to disease and predation. The key to it is to feed when the plant is actively growing, and you can see this calthea, for example, has got lots of very healthy new shoots coming through, so it will need a feed. If you want to encourage lush growth and lots of greenery, then you give it a high amount of nitrogen. And if you want to promote flowering, then you need a feed that is higher in potassium. And a general-purpose tomato feed will do that perfectly well. I use liquid seaweed, but use it sparingly. I think there are two varieties of houseplants, really. There are those that always live indoors. However, there is another group, like these citrus here, that are houseplants in the winter, but very much outside plants in the summer. But in this country, there aren't many professional growers or experts on citrus. So we took the opportunity to visit Chris and Amanda Dennis, who have a specialised citrus nursery down in Poolborough, in Sussex. We've been here 23 years. We have over 140 varieties of citrus, and every day we're learning something new. We were both in jobs that, really, we felt were near the end of where we wanted to go with them, and we were looking for something better to do, so we thought citrus might be the key. There was no specialist, really, in the country. So we jumped in with both feet and headed down the citrus route. We've got over 150 varieties of citrus here. Some of my favourites are things like Buddha's Hand Citron, where every single segment is stretched out into a finger, hanging down. This is the Ugly Fruit. It's one of my favourites. It was discovered as a hybrid in Jamaica by a plantation owner. When he plonked it on his kitchen table, the maid said, Man, that's one ugly fruit, hence the name. Personally, I don't think it's ugly, and it's delicious. This huge citrus fruit is the Citrus Medica Citron. It's the fruit that all the lemons and limes have evolved from. In fact, if you've ever had lemon candied peel, more than likely it's this that you've eaten. Citrus are really easy to cultivate. They don't mind being outside in the summer, and they need a light and frosty position for the winter. The thing that most people worry about with citrus is the pruning. So I'm going to prune this lemon that's completely got out of hand. Now you can see, this is quite hard, and will take the plant back to virtually nothing. So the benefit of pruning quite hard like this is it rejuvenates the plant to produce a lot of nice new growth in the middle. Citrus will flower on new, old, very new tips of the growth, so they'll flower anywhere anyway. It will just produce a nice tight head, and the plant will look much better. And then you can keep it in the space that you want it in. So the hard pruning can only be done in the spring, whereas the light pruning, we can do that at any time of year. So you can either just pinch the ends out, and that will stop the plant from growing too tall too quickly, or you can just gently prune it, and take the ends off like that. The most important part of keeping any citrus is the watering and the feeding. The plant must be left to almost completely dry out between waterings, and then we give them a good, sour drowning when we do water, famine and feast. We also feed each time we do that with a high nitrogen fertilizer. There are several signs that the plant will show you that it needs watering. The fact that the leaves will curl or wilt, the pot is very light to pick up, and the soil is almost dry, to the point that it can be a little bit powdery. When you do water the plant, you really do need to give it a good, sour drowning. This is a two-gallon watering can, and we would put that amount of water through a pot this size. If you're new to citrus, the best varieties for beginners are a lemon, a lime, or a calamondin orange. This is a beauty. It fruits like mad. It's a natural hybrid between a mandarin and a kumquat, both of which flower once a year. This one flowers on every new growth flush, and it produces little bite-sized mandarin-shaped fruit, but they're actually like a lemon or a lime, so you can use them in cooking to make a delicious marmalade. The second one is the Four Seasons lemon. It can flower and fruit all year round. The third one we'd recommend is the Tahiti lime. It's a beautiful lime. It's a seedless, quite large. It fruits very well when it's young, so you can buy a small plant and expect fruit very early on. One of my favourite times of year with citrus is the spring. The flower scent just fills the air. You can smell it coming down the road, you can smell it from the house. I can come into the glasshouse in the morning, I can pick my own grapefruit, and there's all the lovely, lush, green, new, fresh foliage. It's just wonderful. We have introduced a number of varieties from seed. They can take many years before they first flower, and there's nothing quite like seeing the first flowers on the tip of that plant, knowing it will soon have some fruit to taste. It's a very good idea to get citrus plants outside, particularly if they're in a centrally heated environment, as soon as you can in spring. However, that's unlikely to be before the middle of April and maybe as late as the middle of May if you're in a particularly cold or northern area. Play it by ear. You'll know. It's when the risk of a really sharp frost has passed. They can take a little bit of frost, but better to wait. I plan to have all four of my big citrus across the front of these borders in the Paradise Garden. Of course, citrus, absolutely essential part of any Paradise Garden. Where they were grown, not so much to eat, but for the oil. When you put your citrus out, buy some chalks that sit underneath the pot, and that will improve the drainage and mean that they don't sit in any kind of puddle. Still to come on today's programme. Adam heads off to Lincolnshire to meet a woman who wants to change her front garden, so he sets out to make a real difference in a day. This all looks like a bit of a nightmare with all the hardcore and everything, but if I get some organic matter into that soil, it will become half-decent, and I think then it should all come together. But first, we're going back to Faversham in Kent to visit a garden that has been set up for the community to create a sense of well-being through both visiting it and working in the garden, and is actively doing as much as it can to use plastic as little as possible. The garden really is a gem in the middle of Faversham. When you walk through the door, there's just this sense of peace and tranquillity. I love it. I'm Suzanne Campbell. I'm the manager of the Abbey Physic Community Garden. It is the hub of the community for people to come and grow food, sit and have a coffee, listen to the birds, and learn and grow with everyone. About 10, 11 years ago, it was turned into a charity to support people with mental health issues and also reach the wider community. It isn't just plants we grow here. It's healthy people. So years ago, a physic garden would have produced herbs for medicinal purposes. So we don't necessarily do that now, but we garden for the garden and the earth itself. We garden for people. There's just something for everyone here. We're very mindful of being as sustainable as possible. We try and reuse anything that we can. There's just too much plastic. We do get lots of pots brought in to us. We do use them. That is our policy. But I don't think the plastic pots are okay. I think there are so many alternatives we can use. We just need to think about it in a different way. Here I have got my lovely bluish duck eggs. They've got a hole in the bottom for drainage. So I'm going to have a go at putting some little salad seedlings in. So these can be planted out or just grown on your windowsill. It's a lovely little example, isn't it, of recycling, reusing and not wasting anything. So there we've got a little lettuce in an eggshell. Let's try another one. What I'm going to do next is put some of our seeds that we've saved into these other ones. This is honeywort. These look better than I thought they would look, actually. So I'm really pleased with those. Lovely experiment. These here were also an experiment. We first started growing these a couple of years ago. So this is loofahs. And you can grow them indoors, you can grow them outdoors. You can eat them as well when they're smaller than this. But we grow them as cleaners to clean our pots and pans and to replace the horrible green scours that people buy. We get so many seeds in our pod. They're great for seed swaps. It just goes on. I think you need a bit more. Top it up a bit. Cardboard boxes are my favourite to grow in instead of the plastic. We will put the compost in there, then put chamomile seeds on the top. Get these in the warm. After you. We put it in the greenhouse and we'll keep it in there just to warm up and germinate. And you haven't got to prick them out, you're not touching them again. The whole thing goes on the ground where we want it to grow and grows into the ground, if you like. No plastic, no waste. Perfect results. I think the way we garden here, anybody can do. It is just the ethos of looking around and seeing what can we do with that or how can we change that, how can we do it better. We're going to make some of these pots, but they're made out of paper so that helps us with our using less plastic initiative. I think we all had ideas. We kind of spark off each other. So it just makes for an interesting garden all the time. So roll it to the end, basically, a bit like you're wrapping a Christmas present. Does it work? Yes. Yeah? Yes. Fabulous. I've got a wonky bottom. The garden makes me feel very privileged, being able to be somewhere that can encourage other people to think about their impact and what they're doing and things they can pass on to other people. It's like growing a new plant, except it isn't. You're just growing a new way. When it comes to plastic, it's great to see people trying different things and really making an effort and tackling the problem. And I've been reviewing all the different materials that we use here at Longmeadow. For example, this type of pot, which is made from recycled paper or wood. In principle, they're fine. The plants grow perfectly well. But it only lasts for about six weeks at most. Hopeless if you want to sow in February, say, and plant out in June or if you want to keep something over the winter. It disintegrates. The coir ones, made out of coconut fibre, last much longer. But the roots grow through, and I never know whether to take them out of the coir pot or to plant them. But if ever you dig up a plant that you've grown in these, the roots are still too tightly enmeshed inside them. If only this could be a looser weave, it would work better. So it's a good idea, but it's not quite working. We've got miscanthus pots. They work perfectly well as a pot, but they biodegrade really badly. And you go through a composting process, and there are great sharp shards of the pots inside. So, I've got three types of tender vegetable. I've got squash, sweet corn, and climbing beans. Squash or pumpkin are, to all intents and purposes, the same thing. And you certainly treat them in the same way. And this is a variety called uchiki kuri, which is a really good squash. Good taste. And I'm going to sow them in these three-inch pots. When talking about recycling, try not to buy new plastic. Keep the plastic you've got. These are now 20 years old. I got a batch in 1998 and have used them again and again and again. And if you want to make plastic last, the two things that are worth doing is one, at least once a year, give them a really good scrub so they go away for the winter clean and keep them dark. It's light that degrades them more than anything else. I'm using a mix that is actually a potting mix rather than a seed-sowing mix because these are greedy plants and they're going to stay in these pots for a few weeks. Now, it always used to be told that you must put these flat seeds sideways in. In fact, there have been tests done. They germinate just as well if you lay them flat. The reason for putting them sideways in, I think, is because they're easy to push down in. Simple as that. So two to each pot. Cover them over. Give them a label. Give me some glasses. Squash. And there we go. I will water those, and the crucial thing is they do need heat to germinate. Right, next thing I'm going to sow are sweet corn. And I'm going to use plugs. And by the way, of course, you can buy biodegradable plugs, but they biodegrade too fast for me. One thing about sweet corn that you do need to remember is don't sow them into a seed tray because they have a fairly deep root and they don't like being disturbed. So if you sow them into a plug or a small pot, you can then lift the whole thing out without disturbing it and go into the ground. Now, I will give these some heat and water and, like the squash, grow them on nice and quickly. The next up will be some climbing beans. But while I'm doing that, let's join Adam in Lincolnshire, where he is going to make a real difference to a front garden in a day. When it comes to front gardens, I think they can be undervalued and even forgotten places. Socially, do you know what? I remember my old nan out on that front step cleaning it and talking to her neighbours, and we've lost some of that. But I think, with a little bit of thought, they can be cracking places not only to look at but also to socialise in. Phoebe, her husband and two children, have fallen out of love with their sparse north-facing front garden. Left to its own devices, this bit of land at the front of the house has become a real no-grow zone. Phoebe, tell me a little bit about the space and what you like in it and what you don't like in it. Quite a lot of it's very green and there's not very much colour there, and the greener and the buddlier, it blocks quite a lot of light and it taps on the window in the wind and it's pretty annoying. It probably wants to get in. How keen a gardener are you? I'm very enthusiastic, but I'm disabled, I'm an amputee, so I get tired very quickly because I'm effectively just doing it on one leg. So if I need to do anything on the ground, I generally sit down on the ground. Thinking about it, it might be an idea to keep a good amount of gravel because actually you can move around on it as well. Yeah. So what is your ideal for the space? Just some colour and some texture, somewhere nice to sit if the kids are playing out the front on their bikes and scooters. Yeah, so in a way it becomes a little bit more of a social space. Yeah, definitely. Somewhere you actually want to spend time would be great. Brilliant, brilliant. But I think it would be good to start with, just to sort of pull this gravel back, let's see what's underneath it, then we can start to play with plants and see how we get on, shall we? Brilliant. Cool, let's get on. It might look like a sea of gravel right now, but in just one day, I'm going to show you with a few design tips how you can make a real difference. Phoebe's brother Joe has come along to help me with the hard graft. Yeah, don't try yourself out with this first bit either. I'm going to need you for the planting. Yeah, I might have to sit down to be honest. It's a much better way to the garden anyway, isn't it? Yeah, it's a good spectator spot, yeah. It's my kind of gardening. Yeah. First to go is that buddleia. Oi! Oh, sorry. Phoebe will be glad to see the back of that. I don't live that far from here if you ever get bored. Yeah, no problem. You know? Let me know. I can always use a pair of hands. As gardeners, sometimes we can be really quick to take things out. But this Cianopus here, there's a lot of dead in it. Sometimes I think just by lifting the canopies and cutting out that dead timber, not only that means that I keep the plant, which will give me that lovely backdrop, but I can interplant maybe some ferns or something like that underneath. This all looks like a bit of a nightmare with all the hardcore and everything. If I get my hands into that soil, you can feel there's clay in there, but there's silt in there as well. And I think realistically, if I get some organic matter into that soil, it will become half decent. So I think what we're going to do next is lay the plants out, get them how we want, and then after that, just dig out the areas that we want to plant into. And I think then, it should all come together. You might think this is an odd way of laying the garden out. I've done it really before I've prepped the soil because I want to just understand where I've got to dig the hardcore out of the gravel. But as far as building the garden up, I've worked off the Amelanchier, which is probably my go-to tree for a small space. Beautiful flower, lovely berry, and then fantastic autumn colour. But it just makes this area feel a little bit more secluded. And then after that, I've put the garden in layers so the structure's gone in, the pittosporum, and then the herbaceous goes in after that. And my herbaceous perennials, what I'm looking to do is I'm looking for contrast, so contrast in leaf, but also flower shape. So now I can prep the soil and get it all in. We're adding compost and topsoil to enrich the existing soil. I really enjoy this bit. Do you know what? It amazes me, though, that people cover up so many of their front gardens, you know, either for parking... Horrible, isn't it? ..or because of low maintenance and whatever, but once the planting goes in here, the wildlife will come, you know, as well. Help the bees out. Exactly, exactly. One of the mistakes that a lot of gardeners make, me included at times, I think, we get a little bit carried away and put shrubs too close together. Either give them the room or choose plants that you can cut back, you know, like this cornice, and then that will put on wonderful new growth this year and going into next winter have beautiful, bright stems. This Euphorbia robii is a really good worker. Some people might be fearful of it and think that actually it can be a little bit invasive, but in a drier, shadier position, this makes a really good ground cover and you've got those beautiful little acid flowers that look fantastic. It's been really important to put in low-maintenance plants for Phoebe, like the Annamanthil and the Pitosporum, which she can easily trim into lovely shapes. Obviously, you've lost a leg below the knee, but it hasn't stopped you today, has it, getting stuck in? Just how did it happen? The short story is blood clots cut off the circulation which they tried to restore, but they couldn't, so my leg was amputated above the knee and the blood clotting issue turned out to be caused by lung cancer. So you've proper been through the mill, really, haven't you? Yeah, a bit. Well, I hope more than anything that this garden brings some pleasure, I really do. Well, thank you for coming to help me because I didn't know what to do with it. Bless you, bless you. So that's it, that's all plugged in. I don't think that's a bad day's graft. It really changed this space. And the planting we've added, the amelancholin closes the space and then the shrubs work their way through. That's going to give really good seasonal interest. And the herbaceous, not only is there colour in there, but there's texture, there's movement created by the grasses. I just hope now that the family really enjoy it. Let's go and have a look at the garden. Look at the plants. See some of the flowers there? We really wanted a tree right at the front, that's great. I love it. It's so much nicer than it was. It really makes me happy now that it's a proper space that we can enjoy. We'll really look after it and get a lot of joy out of it. I do think it's a really good idea if people can see their front gardens both as an important aspect of their own garden and also as a good sort of halfway house between what is private and what is public. It's shared space but controlled by you. Now it's time to unwrap the dicksonias and get them ready for summer. They can take a little bit of frost. They're not totally tender. So the first thing to do is to remove the straw out of the middle and that protects the very tender cone down in there which the new growth will come from. And I put hessian around the outside but underneath that is really thick fleece because the tender part of the plant is where what looks like the trunk joins the top. This part here, round the top, is where all the action is. Now the fronds, even if they seem to be in good fettle, cut them right back. Take them right back to the base and then the new growth will come through very quickly. This will be up to about here with these lovely new unfurling fronds. There's an awful lot of wood lice in here. And what wood lice live on is decomposing wood which is the old growth. So they're not eating any of the new growth in there. Now here are some other jobs you can be doing this weekend. Parsnips can be slow to germinate but now the soil is warming up, sow them in rows, sprinkling the flat seeds thinly and keep the rows about a foot or so apart. And if you've got radish seeds to hand, you can sprinkle those in as well and they will grow and be harvested before they cause any competition with the parsnips. At this time of year, the weeds are growing really fast and you need to get on top of them before they get on top of you. Go through your borders, removing them individually, taking out as much root as possible whilst they're still easy to see. And if you're not sure if something is a weed or not, wait and time will tell. There is a sunflower that is suitable for any garden whether it be a giant to entertain children or some of the more subtle colours for a more sophisticated border. I'm sowing Velvet Queen which will work in my jewel garden with its rich brown marmalady hues. I'm putting one seed per plug. I will grow them on with a bit of heat and then pop them on and plant them out towards the end of June. Well, that's it for today but I'll see you back here at Longmeadow next time. Until then...