Gardeners' World 2024🍀Episode 11

Hello, welcome to Gardener's World. And after a hectic and fascinating week at Chelsea, it is lovely to be back in the peace and calm of my own garden. And at this point in the year, there's an awful lot going on, but it is a time of change. There's a real sense of transition going from spring into summer, but there's a certain amount of tweaking you have to do to make the best of that transition. And that's all part of the enjoyment and the skill of gardening. But there's one transition that is much more drastic and which is finite. And that's what's happening to the two big bamboos, the phyllostachys that I've got here in the grass borders. There's one on that side and one in the other corner. And I've had them growing in these borders for at least 10 years, and they've been completely happy, but they've started to flower. Now, of course, when a plant flowers, that's normally a cause for celebration. But I'm afraid that's not the case with bamboo. In fact, it can be terminal. And certainly the bamboo will never be the same again, because they only flower once and that's it. So if you're seeing your bamboos with this cluster of small flowers that almost look like dead growth on the end, I'm afraid that isn't very good news. So the thing to do is to cut out any decent canes, use them and see if there's regrowth. But don't be surprised if there isn't. That could be the end of the story. Whereas the bamboos in the pots that I've got here are looking a bit straggly, but that's because it's new growth and that will soon put on new leaf. It's only if they've got flowers that you need to be worried. Now, coming up on today's programme. Carol is surrounded by colour as she visits a garden in Oxfordshire planted entirely with annuals. You get instant impact and you get it much more in a kaleidoscopic range of colours. We meet an artist and wildlife expert who has transformed his garden into a wildlife haven. What we wanted was something which was rich in wildlife, also really good, full of flowers and attractive to look at as well. And I think we have achieved that. This year, Adam is designing a show garden for Gardeners World Live and we join him as he starts on that journey. Walking through here, this place is rammed with inspiration. You've got the scent of garlic, fallen trees that are left. A lot of this is about shapes and forms and the patterns that wild planting creates. Fantastic. And I will be revealing for the first time a new part of the garden here at Longmere. I said we're in a period of transition, but of course that means the arrival of lovely things as well as the disappearance of others. And here in the jewel garden, the dominant colour is purple from the alliums. This is purple sensation. But it can be a bit dominant. But this year, I think we've got it about right. And I love the Iris sibirica with its bluey mauve colour. However, the plants that are going over are not looking so good, obviously. And a really good example is the imperial fertility. But it's a mistake to cut them back because you want to let the plant die back as much as possible and that will feed next year's bulb. Whereas if you grow bulbs in pots like these tulips, you can be more proactive. And I'm now going to empty these pots and use them for summer planting. So first thing to do is to take the seed heads off. And I would recommend doing this on any tulips or daffodils that you grow in pots. So I'm going to just cut around the edges. Okay, that's the easy bit. Now the tricky bit. Lift this up. And this is why I've got the barrow here. Hope this comes out in one piece. Yeah, there we go. Not too bad. There we go. That out the bottom. That can go back in there. And this now will go into a plastic pot. Lift the whole thing up like that, hoping it doesn't fall apart. And if it doesn't, there we go. That's all I need. Now I will put this somewhere that gets at least half a day's sunlight. It must have some sun and the more the better. And leave it until there is no green in the foliage or the stems at all. So we'll put those to one side for the moment. Now I've got this pot which I can use for a summer display. And what I've got are dahlias. Now these are both a dahlia called David Howard and I love David Howard. It's got a slightly darker leaf and a wonderful orange flower. And you can see that with these I've cut them back. I've cut back the stem and we've got side shoots developing. Don't be frightened of doing this because the side shoots will have more flowers. Now this is a very different mix to the tulip mix. The key to growing tulips is drainage. Dahlias on the other hand, although they do need some drainage, need more food. So use a pea-free compost and then some perlite or grit to open it out. I'm going to take that out, pop that in and then fill it around it. Now obviously that needs a good soak now and then I will water it once a week and when I water it I'll also feed it from now on. And I use a quite dilute liquid seaweed and that will keep the flower production going. Now I should be planting some of these larger pots with dahlias but the vast majority will go in the borders and I'll do that as space appears. And as well as the dahlias we'll be adding masses of annuals. And Carol's been to Oxfordshire to look at the range of glorious annuals that can brighten up our summer gardens. Us gardeners can sometimes face all sorts of quandaries. Perhaps we've got a new garden with vast empty spaces that need filling. Or perhaps we've got perennial borders that could just do with judging up a bit. Well there's one group of plants that can come to our aid cheaply, easily and what's more it can do it in just one year. It's the annuals. An annual is exactly what it says. It's a flower whose seed is sown that flowers and dies, never to be seen again all in one year. Unlike herbaceous perennials which flower, die back and flower again year after year. So you might ask why bother with annuals? Annuals have so much to offer. You get instant impact and you get it what's more in a whole kaleidoscopic range of colours. And they're so diverse. Everything from great he-man sunflowers down to ground-hugging plants. They last so long and they're so incredibly floriferous. So of course they're full of pollen and nectar and they're the most brilliant plants for all sorts of pollinating insects. There are two different kinds of annuals. There are half-hardy annuals that can't stand the frost and then there are hardy annuals. Now this border is completely composed of half-hardy annuals. It's a picture now. It looks like a sweet shop but if you were to come along here in May you'd see nothing but bare ground. But then the plants are moved in. Small plants grown from seed but planted into modules and they're put out. Tiny, tiny little plants but within weeks they've started to burgeon. And then later in the summer this is what you get. And what a show it is. Just look at this beautiful cosmos. This is one called Bright Lights. Very aptly named too. Yellow, orange, red almost at its edge. And in perfect contrast is this Adgeratum next door. These plethora of flowers. That's one called Blue Horizon. And then in the background this wonderful stand French Murray Gold's Tagetes. And that's Burning Embers. Very apt for these dark cinnamon coloured flowers. It's wonderful to see all those brightly coloured packets of seed isn't it in the spring. But it's even more exciting to collect your own seed and grow your own plants from it. All you've got to do is wait for a nice dry sunny day. No good doing it on a damp day because your seed will rot. And then collect your seed just at the point where nature tells you to. In other words when the plant itself is ready to distribute its seed everywhere. So I'm going to take some seed from this calendula. Very straightforward and all you do is find one that's really, really ripe. Break it off, take it in your hand and just gently remove those seeds from the seed head. And each one of those seeds is going to make a plant of this kind of size and have masses of masses of flowers. When you're sowing your seed you've got several choices. You can either distribute it, broadcast it or you can grow it in a tray or a pot. And that way even if you haven't got a garden you can have annuals galore to grace any pot or container. You can use annuals in so many different ways. Often they're used to create a quite naturalistic effect but not here. Here everything is very, very deliberate, almost regimented. What happens is that these big triangular shapes are made within each one. Small plug plants are put out early in the year and you end up with these great big blocks of colour living cheek by jowl in interlocking triangles right the way through the border. You could achieve the same sort of effect but probably on a much smaller scale by direct sowing. In that case you'd have to use hardy annuals because you'd have to sow those seeds quite early in the spring or possibly in the previous autumn. Classically annuals are often used to fill in gaps in our beds and borders. Here that idea is given a modern twist by planting them alongside perennial grasses. Zinnias are superb. To me they're kind of old-fashioned plants from my grandad who used to grow them but what I love about them is the variety of colour. You can get all sorts of different seed mixes but the ones I prefer and more importantly the ones that pollinating insects prefer are the single ones where you can actually see these big centres full of pollen and nectar. They're a brilliant brilliant range of colour, really easy to grow from a February sowing and put them on your windowsill or in the greenhouse and you'll get little plants that you can put out at the end of May after the frosts have passed. Then they'll start to flower at the end of July and go right the way through until October or so. If you deadhead them that will encourage further flowers to develop and give you a much longer flowering period. One annual that's become extremely popular in recent years and is one of the most dramatic plants you could possibly grow is Amaranthus. This one is Amaranthus hoppy red dye. It's glorious with these deep crimson almost beetroot coloured leaves and then these long panicles of drooping flowers. It keeps those panicles even when it turns to seed and it does seed itself around absolutely everywhere. Those seeds though have quite important economic significance. It's quinoa. It's in that same family and it's grown worldwide both for its seeds and for its leaves which are also edible. I'd want to grow it just for these magnificent flowers. It brings real panache to the border. Annuals may be with us only for a year but we should grow them every year. That was at Aston Pottery in Oxfordshire last September but sow annuals now and they will start flowering in a month or so's time and this relates to a little experiment that I did a few weeks ago. I'd sowed three lots of Zinnia seeds, the same variety. It's called Purple Prince and I used a heated propagator, another identical batch in a sealed plastic bag to keep in the moisture and another one just sowing them on a seed tray and all three were put side by side on the same self-facing windowsill. Now what we noticed was that unsurprisingly those in the propagator germinated much quicker than the other two. They started to appear after a few days. They were followed by the ones in the plastic bag about four days later and then quite a bit later by the ones that had no assistance at all but now looking at them all three are pretty much the same size. So after three or four weeks it's a level playing field. The main conclusion you can draw from that is that a heated propagator is really useful to get things going quickly if you're short of space or short of time or if you have plants like chilies or tomatoes that need heat. A good substitute is simply to put it in a polythene bag. It really helps by keeping the moisture in and if you're not in a hurry just sowing them on a windowsill or in a porch or in Now I haven't pricked out this batch so I want to do it holding by a leaf not a stem because we don't want to damage it. Just ease a seedling out and you can see I've got a nice amount of root there so we then make room for it with the dibber and pop it in and just gently push it into place. Let's take another one and of course what we're doing by this is reducing the competition for space and therefore increasing the chance of really good healthy root growth for each of the plants. Now while I'm doing this we're going to visit I was going to say one of your gardens but in fact it's one of your allotments. Welcome to you all this is Newport in South Wales our council allotments and my name is Farida. I live in an urban area and I struggle with finding enough growing space enough sunny spot when germinating seeds and this year I'd like to share with you the method that happened to be extremely successful. It's a seed snail method it's a roll of soil with seeds in it it costs you nothing because it's made out of recycled materials you know this is polythene wrapping foam but you can also make it from plastic or a sandwich bag any material really. So you roll it like this at this point you can use a cello tape you can use elastic band or you can just put it in a right size pot and keep it safe like this. So now I will push the soil down place your seeds and sprinkle some soil on top. All my aubergines peppers tomatoes were started in a snail I've also experimented this year starting corn in a snail and this is celeriac. Look at the root system of each one of these plants can you believe that I didn't have to do any repotting and transplanting. Beautiful! So if you are struggling with looking after your seed lengths especially those little ones like celeriac or onions this is the method I used to try because it's very low maintenance. I think that's a brilliant idea Farida certainly not something I've ever seen or tried before but I will now and by the way we love receiving tips ideas innovations eccentricities anything that can add to our sum of knowledge so please don't be shy about sending them in and you can go to our website to get all the information about how you can do that. Now I'm in the Long Walk and we've had to be honest a really difficult winter and spring with the Long Walk because we used to have down here an avenue of clipped box cones but the box suffered terribly from box blight last year so we cleared the whole space and the whole point of the Long Walk from day one has been it is this calm green space dividing the cottage garden on one side and the jewel garden on the other so I want to keep that sense of the gap between two busy gardens and after lots of discussion what we've decided to do is make a lawn now for many years we haven't really had a lawn here at Long Meadow but I was watching my grandchildren play the other day and I realized that what was lovely was seeing them charging up and down just feeling at ease that they didn't have to bash into plants or keep off this or not do that this is somewhere where they could play. Now any lawn whether you turf or sow it is only as good as the preparation so you start off by digging it over and weeding it then leave it for a few weeks and let more weeds come through weed it again then rotovate it and then rake it maybe rake it two or three times try to get rid of all lumps of soil bigger than a marble now your grass seed because I want the children to play on it I want a tough grass which means including rye grass the next thing is you need to make sure you've got the right amount now according to this mix it's 30 grams per square meter and this is enough to do six meters of this width so I put canes at six meter intervals all the way down and the secret is to sow evenly don't be tempted to sow too thick the next step is to rake it in by raking it you bury the seed and you help spread it and distribute it more evenly and when that's done you need to either have scarecrows or wires or something to stop the birds eating it actually this particular seed comes with a deterrent which is salty apparently and birds don't like the taste and the grass will not germinate and grow if it's too dry so don't let it dry out until the grass is growing strongly well watching me rake isn't isn't that fascinating so let's go to Dartmoor and visit the Devon home of John Walters now John is a superb naturalist and it's not surprising that he's made his garden a haven for wildlife we first moved into the house 25 years ago now the garden was it was all very neat and tidy the previous owners had looked after it was a nice neat estate garden but that's not the sort of thing my wife and I like and I ended up just digging it all up what we wanted was something which was rich in wildlife also a really good full of flowers and attractive to look at as well and I think we have achieved that between us and she sort of tidies it up and I leave little wild bits around the edges this was barren pretty well nothing lived in here but now we've recorded at this time of year that this patch of comfrey is a magnet for bees it catches the sun in between the showers one of the main bees attracted to this is one of my favorites a hairy footed flower bee and that's named because the males have these big hairy middle legs starts flowering here usually early March just as the bees are coming out the males generally emerge first and they're sort of buffy colored with yellow faces and they patrol around the patch of flowers trying to intercept the black females when they come in and mate with those see this female now is lying in between all the flowers just stocking up on nectar and she'll carry on she's gone off elsewhere in the garden now as it starts to rain I've been passionate about wildlife ever since I was tiny when I was I collected some caterpillars of some small tortoiseshell butterflies and reared those at home on the nettles I remember seeing the amazing like Egyptian mummy type chrysalis with all these gold spots on and then this amazing butterfly coming out of it so I was totally entranced by that and I have been ever since really having a pond in your garden is a really easy way to attract wildlife and this is a mug of mine the handle broke off the other week and rather than throw it away I'll make a little mini pond for frogs because these are it might be small but it's actually really important particularly in the last few summers when we've had these intense heat waves so a few of these dotted around the garden it's another little mini aquatic habitat for things to live in this lilac here produces a lovely display of white blossom in May and it's quite stunning and very attractive to insects during the winter I'd skewer some apples into the trees to feed the local blackbirds and when it's very cold you'll get things like field fairs and red wings coming in and also we get black caps which I can watch from the kitchen window which is great in winter. Lots of people have bee hotels in their garden so we thought why don't we make some cob brick bee hotels so all you need to start with is some clay rich soil you add a bit of water but like making pastry you just add a little bit at a time really just get in there with your hands and scrunch it up and add a little bit of sand not too much and a little bit of straw as well which just binds it all together that looks about enough for a brick if I make them into bricks so I can stack them on top of each other but you could make it into any shape you like really bees will naturally go into little crevices in the cob wall and they'll excavate a hole but as this is specially for them I just help them on their way the important thing is to leave it to dry slowly so it doesn't crack and you know within a week or two it's ready for the bees to use. Some of the garden is a bit sort of unofficial really so this is an edge along our fence line here you get all this amazing vegetation so there's a lot of red valerian which the butterflies are on and in the summer we get hummingbird hawkmoths which are migrant moths which come up from the Mediterranean they love the valerian to nectar on and they love bed straws so I you know I encourage some of this bed straw to grow. I think it's good to be a little bit a bit lazy really and because it's really good for the wildlife let it flourish and the insects will love you. So we don't use any pesticides or any chemicals of any sort in our garden here over the years we found which plants can survive all the slugs and snails the things that do really well we allow just to spread around as they like so it's not really so it's quite organic really way of gardening these beautiful blue forget-me-nots the lesser selendyne beautiful yellow sunny flowers tell you spring is on the way really for me the real beautiful flowers are the native wild flowers and that's all for the benefit of the insects which live here and for me as well. When we go to garden centres what we tend to do is go into the outdoor bit and then just see which plants all the insects are going to and then buy those this stachys lambs ear has super furry leaves and the reason I grow this one and put it in a nice sunny spot is to attract a very special bee called a wool carder bee they're related to leaf cutter bees but instead of cutting leaves they actually collect the wool from naturally they do it from native woodworks but as this stachys is is so furry they just if this is around they go for this she collects like a cotton wool ball under her jaws and they fly off and they make little cotton wool sleeping bags for there to put their larvae in. After spending so much time and effort creating this garden it's just really good for you it's really relaxing all life is connected and so all these young plants and things are related to me and you in a very distant way in millions and millions of years but they're still if you trace back your family tree far enough they're they're your relatives so it's amongst being amongst your friends and family really. It sounds so simple but John's statement that everything is connected of course is the key to it because we think that we're acting upon one thing with maybe a fungus that we want to destroy with a fungicide or a caterpillar that's eating something we want but of course that is prey for something else everything is interlinked and by setting up your garden to encourage as much diversity of wildlife as possible the better balance it has and the better balance it has the healthier it is and everybody benefits. This little area which we call the wildlife garden I've deliberately tried to create just that as much diversity within a small space as I can and keep it looking good and certainly at the moment at this point at the end of May it's doing just that so we've got a pond and there are frogs sitting on the logs in front of me and water beetles and of course that whole host of subaqua life that you don't see but it's really important and at this time of year in around the edge you've got the iris pseudocorus and the various colors of yellow and the iris sibiricus the red campion the cow parsley all looking fantastic and so it's beautiful but it's really working for insects and for the birds we've got trees and shrubs and hedges so they can nest and it's safe for them and sitting here I can hear the wood pigeon I can hear a blackbird and a robin just there and then in the background just tweeting away the sparrows and if I sat here longer I'd hear many more and I do feel that if you can create a garden that is really rich for wildlife it's going to be good for you just sitting in a garden enjoying it in its entirety is my idea of happiness right still to come on today's program we join Adam as he seeks inspiration for his show garden at gardeners world live so what I want to do is I want to take that woodland this pub garden and more or less fuse the two well that's what I'm hoping to do anyway and we visit a garden that is simply bursting with seasonal color there's such a variety of color and shape and size of bloom scent there's one for everyone I think you've got to like rhododendrons haven't you come on this area of the garden has undergone big changes this spring we used to have here as a small paved area in the middle surrounded by box hedges but they were much wider than they were high and I like them very much but they suffered terribly from box blight so this spring we took them out and have paved the area because this gets fabulous evening light between April and September now because this is going to be where we eat I'm going to plant a pot of very basic Mediterranean herbs I'm going to start with rosemary and this is an upright variety called Miss Jessup's upright which is great for a pot because it leaves room around it to grow other herbs and I've got some sage now this is salvia officinalis by the way if you're growing salvia for cooking much better to have sage that's green green sage is better for the kitchen than purple sage and finally we have thyme now this is actually lemon thyme but ordinary thyme is as good as anything else all three share the same growing conditions they are Mediterranean herbs and they like really good drainage and critically poor soil and that's what you have to try and recreate so we've got all this grit and underneath it I've got a bag of peat-free compost I'm going to mix them up the ideal mix is 50 percent horticultural grit 50 percent peat-free compost right that is perfect that's exactly what I want now this pot has got a big drainage hole so you need a big crock over that you need to make sure that our very free draining mix doesn't fall through the bottom so I'll put some compost in when you buy herbs they tend to be in what you might call quite a rich compost this is only a temporary compost if they're to thrive and grow to their best they do need this really really sharp drainage so pop that there like that and then the sage can go around it and my plan is to have the herbs to hand if you just want to add a few fresh herbs to your meal there's nothing like it so finally we'll add the thyme now thyme is the one that likes shade least okay that goes there like that so that's it that's really simple so all I need to do now is just top that up right there's one final finishing touch which both makes it look better and also has a practical purpose which is to add a layer of grit onto the surface and the reason why it's practical is because when it rains or you water it the compost will splash up and go on the leaves and this will keep it clean so just fill in the gaps and as for watering I would say a light watering weekly and the water should run out the bottom and if you're putting them on a hard surface put them up on chocks and this means that we have fresh delicious Mediterranean herbs where we're going to eat and it looks good too now Adam is a very highly esteemed garden designer with many gold medals to his name and this year he is creating a garden for Gardeners World Live and we joined him at the early stages as he was working out his plans I am in June going back to Gardeners World Live to create a show garden and I've not done that for a good few years so I am a little nervous if I'm honest but you know what creating a garden I can remember when I first started to design I'd come into the office I'd sit there for eight hours with a white piece of paper and try to be creative and a blank piece of paper is a no-no for inspiration you need to get out and find something and that is what we're going to do come on Isla for me when it comes to putting a garden together I suppose it's about four things place, space, plants and the last thing is people but actually in reality that's the first thing so when I'm creating a show garden funnily enough that's the first thing I do is I create the people that I'm designing the garden for and then I start to put this little garden together walking through here this this place is rammed with inspiration you've got the scent of garlic in the air fallen trees that are left and then others have got canopies that have lifted and what I tend to do is I write all these words down look at that through there it's what I call a little picking path so wild garlic either side and just sort of a really thin path you can go in help yourself come back out and not really damage anything lovely look at the way that the nut trees just popping up through just starting to think a lot of this is about shapes and forms and the patterns that wild planting creates fantastic it's funny isn't it when you think about gardening and where it all started for me and it was with my grandparents I was lucky enough to have two real inspirational ladies one tidy nan and the other being scruffy nan and tidy nan they had this classic sort of 70s garden rectangular lawn concrete path and if I was a good boy I could run down a path in the morning open the greenhouse and get that early scent of tomatoes I love now growing food and putting it on the table but also if I wasn't there I was along the road at scruffy nans and that was a completely different experience some people would say it was chaotic I like to think she was slightly more artistic everything felt more instinctive all of a sudden it would seed around she would leave it there was a freedom but also there was a connection to nature so it was lovely having this blend between the two strange isn't it even now all these years on there's not many days go by when tidy nan or scruffy nan doesn't get a thought she's not listening to a word I'm saying are you I think you can only smell garlic I think with a show garden you know it's it's probably a little bit self-indulgent it is gonna be about that freedom wildness slightly instinctive but also at the same time food is gonna play a huge part I've always had a fascination with cooking and think about where we've just been been into a woodland it was peaceful you could hear the wildlife there was a sense of calm about it and now I've come into one of my local pubs that's got an incredible kitchen garden and this in the summer is absolutely buzzing they're barbecuing people are having fun that whole idea of plot to plate I love it so what I want to do is I want to take that woodland this pub garden and more or less fuse the two well that's what I'm hoping to do anyway so it's time to show you the design but before I do remember that I said ultimately gardens are about people and I create this person in my head for show gardens before I put pen to paper and this person is a chef the chef gets a new place a long thin garden but the end of this garden when they move in is totally like the overgrown so they go out the one Sunday and they start clearing away and they come across all these gnarly old apple trees and as they're investigating they find a stream that's running right through the middle so what I've done is I've created a bridge that cuts through the garden it also goes over the stream to one side of that is the apple trees that sit in a meadow but meadow is not just going to be ornamental it's going to be planted with edibles and that's going to be the feel of garden in a way I don't want it to be rows and rows of vegetables I want this idea that it's an ornamental veg garden so your ornamentals are going to sit with your edibles you know the herbs and the fruits so as you come across the bridge you then end up at the table which is the central space I want it to feel relaxed comfortable but at the same time somewhere where you could go and just celebrate food and you can pick cook and enjoy so that is it it's only on a piece of paper at the moment next I'm off to sort out the plants which in reality is the fun bit well we will see the results of Adam's plans at Gardeners World Live which is just in a couple of weeks time but at this time of year as we shift from spring into summer there's a transition period where a lighter touch is needed to keep the flow moving and some quite tricky decisions to be made for example here in the writing garden the leucosium the summer snowflake looks fantastic in April giant snowdrops is what they look like flowing alongside the path and looking great but the downside of leucosium rather like camassias is they have a very strong foliage that takes quite a while to die back and we all know with all bulbs that unless you let them die back completely you will hinder the quality and the quantity of flowering next spring but if I do that it takes up space where I've got other plants I want to go in to keep that flow going so for example I've got a tray here of olea this is an annual with a lovely white umbel of flower in June and July and maybe even into August and I want to get them in the ground but there's no room so the solution is to cut back some of the snowflakes in the knowledge that a that will make room for me but b I will accept a little bit of collateral damage and slightly less dramatic display from the snowflakes the good news is that leucosium is a very strong plant and can get a bit dominant so by cutting it back I'm controlling that dominance to a certain extent and all I need is just a bit of bare soil so I can get a plant in and these were seed sown in March there's roots to be seen and they will grow well and the sooner I get them in the ground the bigger they will grow and the sooner they will flower I'll work my way through just carefully thinning enough to get this tray in now the writing garden is a subtle place I want the greens and the whites to form a gentle mixture that flows through but last May we went to the edge of the Peak District to visit a gardener which couldn't be more different belongs to Peak Time where he grows hundreds of different varieties of rhododendrons rhododendrons definitely out of fashion yeah they get a bad rap at times but now we can live with that there's such a variety of colour and shape and size of bloom scent there's one for everyone can they make a comeback oh I don't know yeah I think you've got to like rhododendrons haven't we're here at Lee Gardens near Matlock we're a very unique collection of rhododendrons and azaleas in a woodland setting we've got 650 different varieties we've got a lot of history here as a family I'm third generation now so I've been here at the gardens for 37 years growing plants looking after the garden rhododendrons are one of the largest plant genesis of them all so they come from all over you've got them from Labrador we got them from Japan from the Himalayas and there's a lot of hybrids as well this is Lee Rainbow this is unique to the gardens here this came from a hundred plants that we bought off a hybridizer out of a hundred plants this was one of the three that were any good and this is a lovely pink edged yellow it's really unusual in the rhododendron world to have those sort of colourings and hold them so we've named it Lee Rainbow which is quite fitting there is a rhododendron for every situation we've got big ones we've got little ones we've got medium ones varieties that do very well in pots what we've got here is a group of the hybrids we've got a lot of key features which suit a modern garden or a pot so they're they're compact they're three feet they're hardy a lot have got a good leaf and we've got quite a range of colour in them most are pink to whites but what we've got here we've got Percy Wiseman which is a pink then goes through an apricot and finishes up a speckled cream it's a cracking plant walking through the garden a lot of it is now mature and the canopy is quite high but that gives a different perspective Conroy which is a cinnabarinum group plant it's got a blue green leaf and it's not like a blousy flower you have to sort of get under it and see through the canopy and you can see the striping and the sparkle in the waxy bell and it really is a lovely thing it's got a bit of a tie this one to the gardens because the original planter of the gardens John Marsden Smedley he was inspired by trips to Exbury and and Bodnant and this is one of their hybrids so it's nice to have this one as one of our feature plants in the gardens being a spring garden we are a bit like farmers and spring time now is harvest time so we work up to a height of color and we work down but generally look fantastic in April and May so we're slow to start slow to finish but crazy in the middle you know when everyone wants to see the the plants at the best one of my favorites is Nancy Evans it's a good performer it flowers every year it's a good red base yellow very good habit good performer year after year so when looking after eroded endrons we need to keep them moist especially this time of year because the sun's out it's drying them out and that flower structure needs a lot of water to support it on top of that we need ericaceous compost which is a nice acidic compost well drained and just admire it we love the place we sort of look after it we tend it we care for it we're just the caretakers we're here until we pass it on to the next one we have a position of privilege and yeah it's yeah i'd say we're proud to do what we do here i think pete was a little harsh on himself i i think rhododendrons can be absolutely glorious as he proved in his garden now i've got two vegetables here which i want to grow together but we're going to start courgettes at this time of year you want to be a little bit wary about planting out any of the squash family too early whether you're growing cucumbers pumpkins squashes courgettes remember these are plants that like warm weather now i've got a variety here called romanesco dark green and they're absolutely delicious and the more you pick them the more they will go on producing but don't be tempted to plant them too close together so although i've got four plants in the tray i'm actually going to plant out just two on this bed and as a rule of thumb a square meter per plant is really as close as they want to be now as a rule when you plant anything it's better to plant it a little bit high than a little bit low but with courgettes and squashes you want to plant them in a distinct saucer so what that means is that when i water it i'm watering into a saucer so the water isn't going to run off sideways it's all going to go down to those roots they do need plenty of water and like all squashes they're hungry greedy plants so this sort of had a lot of compost added so it's really rich now around them i've got plenty of space and until they grow that space would remain empty and maybe get weedy and be unproductive so i'm going to plant sweet corn these are seedlings that i sowed direct into the plugs and all my life so far i've potted them on i would take it out let's take one out for you like that and i would put that into a three inch pot grow it on until it was about two foot tall and then plant it out however i have been told uh by a friend that they always plant them out from plugs and they rump away and there's no problems so i thought i'd give it a go now with sweet corn they must be planted in a grid because they are pollinated by the wind and that means that the wind from wherever direction it comes from is going to pollinate the other plants this is a variety called swift named not because of its speed of growth but after the bird the swift but it is fairly early and it's really tasty and i firmly believe that anything edible you grow should be judged by taste first second and third and everything else thereafter the courgette will very quickly fill the space between the sweet corn stop any weeds and then the sweet corn will grow up but it won't shade out the courgette sufficiently to stop production right i'll put the rest in while i'm doing that here are your jobs for early june is the perfect time to sow biannuals such as fox clubs wallflowers sweet william or honesty sprinkle the seeds thinly like this honesty on a seed tray of compost cover them over and then give them a good soak they will then grow roots and foliage and be it's not too late to do the chelsea chop now what this means is cutting back late flowering perennials like rebecca's aleniums or asters this will result in a number of effects the first is to stagger the heights of the plants the second is to delay flowering in those you cut back so therefore extend your flowering season and also by cutting them back you'll promote more side shoots which means more flowers you can sow carrots from mid-spring to early summer but they germinate much better when the soil is warm and also later sowings tend to avoid too much carrot fly damage after raking the soil to a fine tilth draw shallow drills with the edge of your hand sprinkle seed along these drills as thin as you can and cover them over if it doesn't rain for a few days water them and the seedling should appear after two to three weeks and be ready to harvest sometime between three and four months you're going to come and sit down come on you come up here good boy come and sit down come on right up dad no well it never let me speak i've got some leaves for my supper and very soon we're going to be eating out in this new area it's not quite there yet and this is the new seating area which is coming on we're a bit more advanced here and the idea here of course is to have as much fragrance as possible well that's it for today ned is desperate to go for a walk so i've got to go and do that and i will see you back here next friday so until then bye bye okay good