Gardeners' World 2026🍀Episode 11

Added: 2026-06-03

[00:00:31]Hello, welcome to Gardener's World. And after the glory and the glamour and the hurly-burly of Chelsea, I have to say it's very nice to be back in the garden.

[00:00:41]And there are jobs to do. A really good thing to consider doing at this time of year is the Chelsea chop. Now, the Chelsea chop is really pruning of herbaceous perennials round about the time of Chelsea Flower Show, so the middle to the end of May.

[00:00:56]Now, this is a geranium, a hardy geranium. It's called Blue Cloud. It's glorious.

[00:01:03]But it is huge. And it does tend to spill and flop.

[00:01:08]But the main reason for the Chelsea chop is to delay flowering and to stagger it.

[00:01:13]So, if you've got plants like Rudbeckia, if you've got Heleniums, Helianthus, if you cut them back now, you delay it by a week or two. And also, the ones that you cut will develop more side shoots, and it's the side shoots that bear the flowers. So, simply get a pair of shears and cut back by about a third.

[00:01:34]Don't worry about cutting at any particular point in the plant.

[00:01:38]Just chop it back.

[00:01:54]That's enough.

[00:01:56]There you go.

[00:02:31]Here in the jewel garden, the alliums are probably at their best. This is allium purple sensation, which we planted in all innocence about 30 years ago and I'm planting 100 bulbs.

[00:02:43]And since then it's become an ineradicable weed, but a beautiful one.

[00:02:49]However, other things have moved on. So, the tulip display has been and gone, which means that the big pots both at the sides and the center of the garden need replanting, rethinking so that they give a display from now right through till we empty them in October ready for planting tulips and so the cycle continues.

[00:03:08]Now, at the bottom of this pot, I've left about a third of the compost and it's very gritty and dry, which of course tulips love. They need that good drainage.

[00:03:19]And it forms a good base for whatever I want to plant in here. I've made a mix of sieved garden compost, grit, leaf mold and a little bit of my normal potting mix, but it's mainly sieved garden compost, leaf mold and grit.

[00:03:37]>> [snorts] >> So, there's plenty of nutrition, but also lots of drainage.

[00:03:41]I'll tell you what, it's hot.

[00:03:49]Okay.

[00:03:55]>> Now my centerpiece of this pot is going to be something I've never grown in a pot before.

[00:04:01]It's a campus.

[00:04:03]And this is a campus spinosus.

[00:04:06]I've taken a section from a much bigger piece which I dug up from the garden. Now campus is a bit like the purple sensation alliums.

[00:04:14]Very difficult to get rid of out of a border once you've got it, but good for growing in a pot for that reason.

[00:04:20]Now that's very floppy at the moment because I've dug it up and separated it from the rest of its plant, but if I put a bit of a support in which I can remove later just for the moment that will keep it in place while I plant the rest of it up.

[00:04:42]I'm going to add three of these plants. These are salvia amistad cuttings that I've taken that I've kept over winter uh and they're growing. An amistad has two great virtues. The first is it has wonderful rich purple flowers.

[00:04:58]And the second is that of all the salvias you can grow, it's the most adaptable and the easiest to grow in the most varied conditions.

[00:05:08]So that will go in there like that.

[00:05:15]So I'll put this here. It's competing with the stick, but we can make that work.

[00:05:26]Now of course your campus has these very very zigzaggy leaves and then throws out flower spikes with white and bruised purple flowers. Uh and it should be about this tall. And the salvia also is quite tall with tall flowers. So this is going to be up here. It's going to be a big strong display, but I do need something lower down.

[00:05:49]And I've got these scabious.

[00:05:51]This is a tray of scabious black knight that I've grown from seed.

[00:05:57]What I'm going for is drama.

[00:06:01]Drama in every respect.

[00:06:24]Now, these scabious are obviously very small now, but they will grow bigger and they have wonderful rich burgundy flowers, slightly domed pom poms and these will flower at their best in July and August. So, the whole thing looks a bit scruffy, a bit floppy and certainly got no color in it, but it will have.

[00:06:44]Now, the Aster amellus I took from cuttings. This is a root division and the scabious I grew from seed. And Carol, who goodness knows has grown more seed than most of us have had hot dinners, has been discovering just how complex and fascinating the whole process of a seed coming into life can be.

[00:07:09]>> [music] >> Science is now revealing that plants [music] can compute. They can see. They can hear and they can communicate in ways that I'd never ever have dreamt of.

[00:07:30]And using advanced technology, we can now step into their world. We can find out how they perceive the world and just what they need.

[00:07:48]Seeds are splendid.

[00:07:51]They're just the most miraculous, the most magical, the most marvelous things there are.

[00:07:58]Just about every plant on the planet starts its life as a seed.

[00:08:06]Different forms, different sizes, different shapes, different textures, but within each and every seed is the potential to make a brand new plant.

[00:08:17]If I take this broad bean, this is one I've soaked.

[00:08:20]So, I'm just going to chop this in half.

[00:08:24]And within it is all the food it requires, everything.

[00:08:29]The embryonic root, the radical. This one's actually started to germinate. Can you see with this tiny little root here?

[00:08:38]And the cotyledon leaves, the first two seed leaves which come out, and then the true leaves which gradually, gradually will turn this seed into a plant.

[00:08:49]But, that's not all that's happening within the seed. As science advances, we're finding out more and more about the kind of processes which take place inside the seed. All seeds have these sensors which inform that seed when the conditions are perfectly right for it to get up and go and germinate.

[00:09:12]>> [music] >> To delve deeper into the science behind seeds, I've arranged to [music] speak to Professor Malcolm Bennett of the Hounsfield Facility at Nottingham University.

[00:09:25]He's a world-renowned expert [music] in the hidden life of plants. Malcolm, I must have been sowing literally thousands and thousands, possibly millions of seed. I've been doing it all my life and loving it. But, I don't actually understand too much about what happens inside that seed.

[00:09:46]Could you tell us in layman's terms or laywoman's terms just what happens in there?

[00:09:51]>> Well, just like you and I, plants have hormones. And there are two really important hormones that are fighting it out. They're the yin and yang of hormones. And one is saying stay dormant, and that's called abscisic acid. We could call it the sleeping beauty hormone. And you've got another one which actually says wake up, and it's called gibberellic acid. And it's like the prince charming of hormones.

[00:10:17]And they fight it out.

[00:10:19]>> Yeah.

[00:10:19]>> And if conditions are right, the gibberellic acid it dominates and it starts growth. And you see that because the seed starts to swell, it takes up water, and then the embryonic root starts to push out.

[00:10:33]>> The radical.

[00:10:34]>> appear.

[00:10:35]>> It's so exciting, isn't it?

[00:10:38]But, what can I find out which [music] is going to enable me to get better germination and, you know, become a better gardener?

[00:10:45]>> So, one of the tricks is to have variation in the temperature. So, once it's been sown, keeping it at a constant temperature doesn't really help. You want to fluctuate the temperature and this will really help. So, obviously in the spring you have a lot of fluctuation, yeah? And it that's biological noise. And it this is information saying it's springtime.

[00:11:09]>> I suppose rather than having to keep putting things in the fridge and pull them out, just you know, on the normal window ledge or in the greenhouse, anywhere at all, it's going to experience that fluctuation in temperatures.

[00:11:24]>> Absolutely. So, don't keep the temperatures constant.

[00:11:27]Actually, make sure they fluctuate.

[00:11:29]>> As As as this fluctuating temperature, what are the other conditions that the the seed senses?

[00:11:35]>> Well, it needs water. A seed is remarkable because it's so dehydrated, it's actually about 15% water content when it's in your pack seed packet.

[00:11:47]And before it germinates, it's takes up water. Water's essential to be taken up and it swells and the cells expand and then it's ready to actually germinate and you can see the radical expanding and growing out from the seed coat.

[00:12:04]>> But when that radical comes out, how does it know to go downwards?

[00:12:09]>> Well, this is the key.

[00:12:13]At the very tip of the root are special gravity sensing cells and they know to go down because essentially that's where the water is and the nutrients. So as soon as it emerges from your seed, it it knows to dive down and it even has root hairs to help it enter the soil and start to explore for water and nutrients and everything it needs to establish itself.

[00:12:38]>> Wow.

[00:12:40]Whichever [music] seed you want to sow, it's vital to give it the best start in life. For big round seeds like sweet [music] peas, I station sow each one individually.

[00:12:52]A module tray or a fruit [music] punnet divided into sections makes a perfect home.

[00:12:58]For finer seed like Nigella or Nicotiana, I sow on the surface of the compost and sprinkle lightly with grit, which helps retain moisture and keeps weeds [music] at bay.

[00:13:11]I've always watered my seeds from underneath. To me, it seems to work better to actually stand your tray, your seed tray in in water.

[00:13:19]>> What you want is a strong root system that will grow deep. So by watering from the bottom, you're doing it exactly the right thing because essentially, you're allowing the plant to sense a water gradient. It's less water at the top and there's more water at the bottom. Would you believe that was discovered by Charles Darwin? Him and his son did some really cool experiments where he he had demonstrated the roots could sense water, gradients of water in the soil.

[00:13:47]And what you're doing is repeating an experiment of Charles Darwin.

[00:13:51]>> Oh, right. Well, hats off to Charles Darwin.

[00:13:56]>> Carol, I've been admiring the pink blossom above your head throughout this interview.

[00:14:02]>> Yeah, well, it's funny you should say that because um this came from a seed. My mom grew it.

[00:14:09]It's a cercis. And when she gave it to me, it was about this big.

[00:14:13]>> Well, that's a wonderful uh a coming together of our discussion, huh?

[00:14:19]>> Seeds ruled, aren't they marvelous?

[00:14:28]I just found that so exhilarating, so interesting.

[00:14:34]I'll never think about my seeds in exactly the same way again because now I know so much more about why they grow, why they germinate, what happens.

[00:14:47]I've had quite a lot of success with my seed, but not in every case.

[00:14:52]Look at these. This is a calendula. It's called Indian Prince. It's one of my favorite pot marigolds. That's it growing right outside there. So, when they started to germinate, I got really excited. And up they came, 1 2 3 4 5 6 7, and then they stopped. Now, why?

[00:15:12]I think what I'm going to do is try and heed Malcolm's advice and try and replicate that sort of process in out creating chaos. But I think I might do it from this plant out here.

[00:15:32]Well, look at my magnificent marigold.

[00:15:36]As well as making all these flowers, it [music] has already set seed. And I'm going to do a bit of an experiment. I'm going to actually take [music] one of these seed pods off.

[00:15:49]But this time, instead of just sowing them and leaving them in the greenhouse, I'm going to subject them to the kind of fluctuation, the sort of chaos that Malcolm was telling us about. And I'm sure that that's bound to mean I'll get much better success. And that's the whole thing.

[00:16:08]What Malcolm says is not a contradiction of the sort of practice that [music] I and lots of other gardeners have been engaged in. It just deepens it. It just lets us understand much, much better what happens with our seeds when they germinate. And therefore, it means we're going to be more successful at growing stuff from seed, of having more plants, and becoming better gardeners.

[00:17:17]>> Obviously, that is completely fascinating and I love it when you learn something new that opens up doors you didn't even know existed to a whole world to explore and discover. And particularly as a gardener, as you get older, you do realize that you're just scratching the surface of knowledge.

[00:17:35]It is worth pointing out that that temperature variation for seeds applies to plants grown in the northern hemisphere, but those that come from the equator, what they respond to is light and heat. So, anything that you sow, whether they be sunflowers or zinnias or things like that, will just need constant heat.

[00:17:54]Now, these are wallflowers and I sowed these because they're biennials a year ago and they're still flowering. And I've had trouble growing wallflowers in the past. I think because I gave them too much heat.

[00:18:06]And last year, I sowed them outside directly into the soil and left them growing from the end of May right through till October, pretty much unattended. Planted them out and these have been flowering since February.

[00:18:20]And they're really happy and healthy.

[00:18:21]So, I'm going to do the same this year and sow my wallflowers outside for next year's display.

[00:18:35]Come on.

[00:18:37]This way. We're going to go in for this bed here.

[00:18:40]This one here. Good boy.

[00:18:43]Now, what I've done here is chosen a number of varieties that for me are tried and tested and also very much relating to where I want to grow them.

[00:18:52]So, for example, I've got fire king. Wonderful mixture of oranges and reds and really velvety and and strong.

[00:19:02]I got some from the better series.

[00:19:04]The better series were raised in Victorian times and they're very reliable. They're very disease free and they're good.

[00:19:12]I've got orange better, scarlet better, and primrose better.

[00:19:19]So, fire king, here we go.

[00:19:22]So, I'm using the board as a spacer.

[00:19:24]Just draw a line like that.

[00:19:27]And like that.

[00:19:37]There we are.

[00:19:43]This is not something to do on a windy day.

[00:19:46]The seeds will blow away.

[00:19:49]Obviously, I'm trying to sow them as thinly as possible.

[00:20:00]And this should give them the variation in temperature that they need to germinate and grow successfully.

[00:20:09]There's a weed there, so let's take that out.

[00:20:38]I will, of course, water these in. So, just with a with a hose pipe, just spray them.

[00:20:42]But, they are tough.

[00:20:44]They will grow with almost any conditions to be thrown at them. The only thing they don't like is being waterlogged.

[00:20:51]So, as long as the drainage is good, they'll be very happy.

[00:20:56]Now, I always like going to see one of your gardens. And this time, we're going south.

[00:21:02]Across the channel, down into the south of front.

[00:21:11]Hello. My name's Jerry Daniels and [music] welcome to my garden here in the Lot region of Southwest France.

[00:21:22]I live here with my wife Emily, my 4-year-old son Sid, and our spaniel Flo.

[00:21:30]So, we've lived here now for about 8 years and when we first arrived, there wasn't really much in the garden at all other than scrappy grass, a lot of thistles, and some old grapevines.

[00:21:44]And we actually got married in the garden and [music] held the reception here.

[00:21:48]For that, we grew a few cut flowers and from there, I really got a taste for growing and there was never really a grand plan, but it just developed organically as my passion grew for it.

[00:22:03]>> [music] >> So, this area of the garden, it's planted up in a more of a naturalistic style.

[00:22:10]Currently, one of the key plants that's flowering is the Knautia arvensis and that kind of floats through perennial grasses.

[00:22:20]That's later joined by the fennels.

[00:22:23]So, there's always some good color, good form, and some [music] good forage for the insects and invertebrates here.

[00:22:34]One of the highlights of the garden at this time of year is the bearded irises.

[00:22:39]These are called Iris pallida. They've got this beautiful color which catches the evening light absolutely beautifully.

[00:22:47]Now, they do prefer more drained soils.

[00:22:51]Here, we're on clay, so I've had to dig in some sand and some grit, but if you can give them the drainage and put them in a full sun position, they'll do really well for you.

[00:23:07]In between the house and the vegetable garden, we have a meadow area.

[00:23:13]We're really lucky that the wild orchids have started to proliferate through here.

[00:23:21]You might be able to hear behind me, there's a nightingale singing.

[00:23:25]We're really fortunate. They'll sing all night long and sometimes they'll sing throughout the day as well.

[00:23:34]Making it a a really special place to be at this time of year.

[00:23:41]Another thing that I love about the garden is how much it's [music] teaching my son about the plants and the insects and the animals that live here.

[00:23:52]>> Catch the newt.

[00:23:55]>> Since moving here, the garden has become a huge part of our lives.

[00:24:00]We're never happier than just spending time, just being here in the garden all together.

[00:24:11]So, that's it from me.

[00:24:12]I hope you've enjoyed looking around our garden.

[00:24:49]>> Well, thank you for sharing that with us, Joe. It's a lovely garden. And if, like Joe, you think you've got a lovely garden that you're very proud of. We'd love to see it, too. Go to our website and get all the details of how you can share it with us all.

[00:25:04]Now, one of the symbols of late spring, early summer, that unfailingly gives me pleasure in this garden, is this rose behind me.

[00:25:13]It's a species rose, Rosa cantabrigiensis. And like all species roses, what it means is it hasn't been crossed with anything. It is exactly as found growing in the wild. Just small, simple, single flowers, this lovely pale primrose color, dappled and speckled across the shrub. And species roses are really good plant to grow in woodland.

[00:25:37]Or if the soil isn't very good, because they're really tough. I mean, the truth is, they're a glorified bramble, but as brambles go, they are magnificent.

[00:26:43]Now, barrowful of plants is a luxury to be relished, and it's a joy, but it's it's appropriate, because I'm slowly building up this woodland garden.

[00:26:55]And the key thing for any woodland planting is characterized by trees. Trees dominate it to a greater or lesser extent. So, these trees up here, the leaves are opening out and that's providing shade.

[00:27:08]Sometimes it's heavy shade, sometimes it's dappled light shade, but it's always shady to some extent.

[00:27:15]Then the other factor that trees do, particularly as we get into summer, is they suck up moisture out the ground.

[00:27:23]So, even if the ground is quite heavy or there's quite a lot of rain, it will be dry. Now, a lot of plants go dormant.

[00:27:30]And that obviously applies to things like hellebores and snowdrops and the early spring flowers.

[00:27:34]But there are plants that not only will survive it, but actually thrive in look good. And if you're making a garden, you want it to look good for as long as possible. And that's why I've got these trail plants. Now, I'm going to start with Aruncus dioicus and it's got wonderful feathery plumes of flower in late summer. And they grow quite big.

[00:27:54]The foliage will grow about a meter high and then the flowers rise above it. And they will flower from late summer into autumn. And they look fantastic.

[00:28:03]Put that there.

[00:28:05]And that there.

[00:28:11]I've got two types of geranium.

[00:28:14]This is a hardy geranium and it's called Geranium nodosum.

[00:28:21]And absolutely is the best one for dark dry places. And it flowers for a long time and starts flowering relatively late. As you can see, this is in flower now and will go on flowering all summer long.

[00:28:35]And makes pretty good ground cover.

[00:28:39]This will be good.

[00:28:40]There we go. One in there.

[00:28:42]And another there.

[00:28:46]All right.

[00:28:50]I've got another geranium, which is geranium sylvaticum Mayflower.

[00:28:55]Uh and this flowers from mid-spring to mid-summer. And you can see it's got a richer color. It's a bit bigger. It's richer. Uh dappled shade is really what it likes best rather than heavy shade. I think we can put this in here like that.

[00:29:12]And maybe like that.

[00:29:18]Yeah, I think so.

[00:29:20]I'm very happy to change my mind about planting. And I also often move plants after I planted them. I try not to do that because obviously plants don't like it, but if you do it soon after planting, they barely notice.

[00:29:33]And especially if you water them really well when you've moved them.

[00:29:37]Finally, I've got foxgloves. I love foxgloves.

[00:29:41]Absolutely love them.

[00:29:42]And they are the perfect plant for light shade.

[00:29:47]They're woodland plants, but not heavy shade. And of course, they'll grow to about 3 ft tall.

[00:29:51]So, they will rise up and brilliant flowers from the end of May to the end of June.

[00:30:10]Aruncus has very deep roots. I mean, these roots will go right down. So, as long as this gets a good soak in winter, and of course, in summer, the rain is is kept off by the canopy of the leaf.

[00:30:21]But in winter, it can get really wet, and those roots will find it.

[00:30:26]Okay.

[00:30:37]Okay, that's the beginning. A lot more to plant.

[00:30:39]But it's so exciting when you're making a garden.

[00:30:42]There's this sense of something coming into creation, something bigger than you.

[00:30:48]And I find that so exciting.

[00:30:52]However, not everybody has space.

[00:30:54]But, records shows that almost everybody can grow, not just food for the table, but an incredible range of delicious food, too.

[00:31:15]>> I love a challenge, and I love to grow anything edible, especially if the opportunity is right outside [music] my front door.

[00:31:27]This is my third year here in Derbyshire.

[00:31:32]The temperature and the climate can be quite challenging.

[00:31:35]Got a north-facing, cool garden.

[00:31:39]This side of the garden, this is south-facing. There's barely any soil here, but that's not going to stop me from growing more produce.

[00:31:51]Growing your own is one of the biggest joys of my life. I know [music] where my food comes from. I know what's in it. It tastes incredible, and with the cost of living soaring, it makes total sense.

[00:32:04]This year, my plan is to fill my front patio with edible plants that are grown entirely in pots [music] and containers.

[00:32:12]I'm going to prove you don't need a lot of space to have a go yourself.

[00:32:17]And even this small [music] tabletop is enough space to grow your fruit, vegetables, and herbs.

[00:32:26]The best thing I think I've added this year is this mini greenhouse. It is 4 ft by 2 ft. This just goes to show you don't need big, ample spaces. small spaces, lots of containers does work.

[00:32:40]But, if you don't have space for a mini greenhouse, window sill is still good enough, and that will still hold lots of pots to grow lots of plants.

[00:32:54]This is a dwarf apple tree, and I started this 2 years ago in this very pot, and it's doing very well. It has come into flower, and soon fruits will set. And it's very important, because this tree is in a pot, that we look after it and feed it once a year at the least. Earlier in spring, I did give it a feed of fish, blood, and bone. It's a slow-release fertilizer, and topped it up with compost.

[00:33:22]Trees generally are hungry, thirsty plants. Now, for my apple tree, I've added an olla pot. It's a very old system of a terracotta pot, which is porous. I sunk it into this pot when I planted the tree, and this way it will always be well-watered.

[00:33:43]I want to grow all kinds of fruit, herbs, and vegetables. And just like my apple tree, the best varieties to grow in containers are dwarf.

[00:33:53]Now, these are my dwarf varieties of tomatoes.

[00:33:57]Dwarf varieties simply means compact plants, but produce high yield. And the whole benefit of that in a small space is the root system can cope with the restricted pot that it's growing in.

[00:34:10]This one is my Mongolian dwarf tomato.

[00:34:14]I'm taking it out now, because they're tender plants, and the frost in my area has now gone. So, perfect timing to get them outside.

[00:34:27]I've also got chili plants. This one is basket of fire and it's already started producing fruit. Again, small plants but very high yield.

[00:34:42]Another chili, cuz I do like my chilies, is one called firefly. I've never grown this one. This is the one I'm going to watch with some great anticipation cuz it's supposed to be a very hot chili.

[00:34:58]Growing any plants all summer long in a container or pot is going to demand extra feed and water.

[00:35:05]I like to soak my terracotta pots in water an hour before planting up.

[00:35:10]This just stops the pot sucking the moisture out of the [music] new compost.

[00:35:15]But that's not my only secret weapon.

[00:35:18]Beans are hungry crops and they need a lot of help growing.

[00:35:23]And for that, I have got a good peat-free compost and in there I am going to add wool.

[00:35:32]Not my socks, but wool from the sheep.

[00:35:35]Wool has moisture retaining properties, but it also provides nitrogen, which is very beneficial to the bean plants.

[00:35:45]Now, I have picked this up from a local farmer and I know it has not been treated with any synthetic chemicals.

[00:35:53]So, I would never pick this up from a fence or a field because I don't know if the sheep have been treated or not.

[00:36:01]Now, I'm only going to add in a handful, a very small amount of wool to my compost mix. I don't want a lot of water retained and it's mixed in and not at the bottom.

[00:36:14]This year I'm trying two varieties of beans. One is a borlotti bean, a stewing bean, and the other is a French bean, which is called Mistika.

[00:36:23]Both are dwarf varieties.

[00:36:27]I'm putting three Belotti's and three Mystique in here.

[00:36:37]Now, it may look like I'm cramming a lot of plants in here, but they're dwarf variety, but it also means I don't need to stake it up like a climbing bean.

[00:36:50]Next to my beans, I'm also adding in some nasturtiums.

[00:36:56]These make great companion plants as they [music] will act as a sacrificial crop luring away green and black fly away from my bean plants.

[00:37:12]Another companion plant I'm doing is carrots [music] and spring onions. They work together beautifully because they deter each other's pests. The carrot variety I've chosen is carrot Little Fingers. They don't grow too big, so they're perfect for small pots.

[00:37:34]And then, my spring onion, it's a purple variety called Lilia. Beautiful purple stem.

[00:37:42]It's one of my favorite spring onions.

[00:37:44]Now, I like using terracotta pots, but I also like using my broken terracotta pots. I tend to sow a few seeds like cut and come again kind of lettuce. But the one thing with lettuce is you need to keep it in the shade, otherwise it will bolt.

[00:38:08]This chard has started to bolt, which means it started to put on a flower stalk. [music] But all is not lost. I can already see new shoots coming through in with the leaves. Unlike lettuce, [music] which will taste bitter when it bolts, chard is quite forgiving and it [music] will keep on giving even once I've taken the top off.

[00:38:37]This strawberry planter epitomizes everything I'm trying to achieve here in my container garden. Just like my tabletop, it's crammed [music] full of delicious edibles that not only look good, but will taste great, too.

[00:39:14]>> It is amazing the range and variety of foods that you can grow in a relatively small space. The one thing I would say, certainly here, is we get big fluctuations of temperature between day and night, even though it's not frosty.

[00:39:27]And if you're growing tomatoes outside, make sure that they get as constant a temperature as possible. So, not exposed to bright bright sunshine in the day and obviously protected above all from cold winds if you're putting them outside.

[00:39:41]However, if you've got a greenhouse, it's brilliant for growing tomatoes.

[00:39:45]I sowed some in January and they're now coming good. I got two varieties here. I've got Gardener's Delight and Tigerella. Gardener's Delight is a really good all-round tomato. You can grow it outside, you can grow it inside, you can eat it raw, you can make sauce with it, you can roast with it. It's very tasty. It's pretty reliable and crops well. Tigerella, obviously, is orange and striped. Very tasty, too. Well, sweeter than Gardener's Delight, but both of them really good here. Now, I plant them using the string system. So, what it means is burying the string around the roots.

[00:40:27]Right.

[00:40:28]What I do is make a hole, put the string in the bottom of the hole, and you don't need to tie it round. What I do is is tie a knot, so it just catches on the bottom of the roots.

[00:40:41]Because as the roots grow, they will anchor the string really well.

[00:40:46]So, we put that down in the bottom of the hole, put the roots on top of it like that.

[00:40:51]Make sure the string is nice and tight.

[00:40:56]And then firm it back in well.

[00:41:03]And just twist it round the string like that.

[00:41:07]And as you go along, you just twirl it round, and you'll be amazed at how secure that is.

[00:41:29]You should plant tomatoes deeply, burying them right up to the first set of leaves.

[00:41:35]And this will help it take the weight of the mature plant, hopefully laden with fruit, as well as absorbing more water and nutrients.

[00:41:47]Only 60 more to go.

[00:42:01]If you're growing them in rows, which essentially these are, you only need a couple of feet between each tomato. That's plenty. And if you do put them further apart, you'll get more plant but not necessarily more fruit.

[00:42:24]If I left this, it would become loosely and floppily bushy because these little side shoots there growing at 45° between the leaf and the stem are very vigorous. And if you go away on holiday and come back and you haven't done it, you'll find great long side shoots.

[00:42:43]And you want to nip them out not daily but certainly weekly.

[00:43:03]Now, obviously give them a good soak like that.

[00:43:11]And that will do for a week.

[00:43:13]Far better to give them a soak once a week than to to water them every other day with a spray.

[00:43:21]There are two problems about over-watering.

[00:43:24]The first is you get very lush growth but not enough fruit. And then when you do get fruit, they split. And then you get disease in the split.

[00:43:33]And the [snorts] second is blossom end rot. Now, that's when you get these chocolate brown black collapsed ends to the tomato. The easiest way to think about it is unless it's very hot a good soak once a week is plenty.

[00:43:50]Better to water too little than too much.

[00:43:53]We should start harvesting the first batch in July and go on harvesting well into autumn.

[00:44:01]Now, we're off to a garden on the edge of Oxford.

[00:44:05]And this manages to be both a haven for wildlife and also a beautiful garden for people.

[00:44:18]>> I do think our garden and other gardens like [music] it and connected up together are replacing some of the wildlife habitats that we've lost in the open countryside.

[00:44:30]So, it doesn't have to be planting just to copy a hedgerow or just copy a wooden area. It can be [music] very beautiful as well in your own garden. You can create a a great diverse, colorful, vibrant place for for wildlife. [music] So, my name is Steve Williams and this is my wildlife garden in Oxfordshire.

[00:44:52]The last 15 years [music] I've been a self-employed gardener, but then I retired last year, so I've got lots more time to spend on my own garden.

[00:45:02]I wanted to create a garden that's friendly for wildlife, but I also wanted a proper ornamental, cottage style, naturalistic looking borders.

[00:45:12]And I wanted to create a [music] place to grow lots of food and vegetables and fruit, so we could be near self-sufficient as possible.

[00:45:23]So, this is what I really like to do.

[00:45:25]So, it's a nice mix of grasses, perennials, variety of flowers that are good for different types of insects.

[00:45:32]We've got some open flowers. We've got some tubular flowers. We've got uh the alliums which the pollinators love for nectar and pollen.

[00:45:40]I do like to densely plant the borders.

[00:45:43]One of my old lecturer said, "By middle of May, you you don't want to see any bare soil in your borders." So, that not only keeps down the weeds, but you're maximizing the plant material for your wildlife.

[00:45:55]My understanding or my feeling about weed is just a plant that's in the wrong place. So, the plant that you don't want. And I'm very happy to have a few weeds within the ornamental borders. As you can probably see, there are some wild grasses in the borders, which I think are quite ornamental, but I have several butterflies, the brown butterflies particularly, lay their eggs on those grasses. Oh, sorry, it's just in Sorry, it's a sparrowhawk just went whizzing behind you there.

[00:46:19]And actually there's a blue tit feeding [music] its young behind you there, too.

[00:46:21]So, it's a bit it's it it wants to feed its young in that hole.

[00:46:26]Oh, there he goes.

[00:46:28]They nest in that hole every year.

[00:46:29][music] These are our vegetable plots.

[00:46:37]So, we really love to eat broad beans, but as many gardeners will know, one of the main problems is blackfly. So, here's a good example of blackfly over the broad beans and the blackfly on the broad beans themselves. I'm quite tolerant of pests in the garden.

[00:46:52]Generally speaking, we don't get that many pests. I think we've got so many predatory insects in the garden that are taking them out all the time. So, all these [music] blackfly will be gone in 2 or 3 weeks, and I won't need to do anything about it. There'll be ladybirds, ladybird larvae, and and hoverfly [music] larvae all over the place, and they'll be taking them out for us.

[00:47:17]This is our wildlife pond. It's such a great [music] center for wildlife.

[00:47:21]If you put a pond in in your garden, you're going to many times increase the the wildlife potential of your garden, the biodiversity. Having a pond here like this, you need a wilder area around it to support all the insect life that's coming and going into the pond. The frogs and newts got some cover, got a log pile there at the end of the garden for the the hibernating frogs and newts.

[00:47:42]We've got a area of open water. It has to be kept open over a period of time.

[00:47:47]And we've got a boggy area, too. So, it's it's trying to make the pond as diverse as possible by having dry land, a boggy area, then open water.

[00:48:00]I do love the weird and the wonderful, the small things that look kind of People may be frightened of these kind of bugs. They look quite fierce.

[00:48:08]>> [music] >> I think the attraction of moths is is there are so many species.

[00:48:13]There's something like 2 and 1/2 thousand species in the UK.

[00:48:22]I bought this light trap so it'll catch moths that are attracted to light at [music] night.

[00:48:28]We like to survey what we have in the garden. We've had about 200 250 species over the last few years. So we're going to have a look now and this is quite a good catch already. See there are three or four species in here already.

[00:48:41]A really wonderful sounding moth species here, Setaceous Hebrew Character.

[00:48:45]There's a species there that's really pretty.

[00:48:48]Very easy to identify.

[00:48:50]The range of moths will reflect the diversity of plants you have in your garden basically. So having a huge range of plants, native and non-native, really benefit a wide range of moths. So that's what we aim to achieve here with some success it seems.

[00:49:03]This is a Poplar Hawk Moth. As As you can [music] see it's a beautiful large moth.

[00:49:09]I think it's just amazing.

[00:49:11]Up against a tree kind of lose it in the camouflage. It's just like a a frayed leaf.

[00:49:16]And why wouldn't you want this in your garden? Why wouldn't you want to grow plants that help this moth along?

[00:49:38]>> I love Steve's garden. And obviously his garden is full of wildlife. And I think all of us now realize that there are certain boxes that have to be ticked.

[00:49:45]Long grass, water, you know, keep some nettles and weeds. Don't be too tidy. But there is another aspect to this which I think perhaps gets a bit overlooked, which is we are part of nature and it is part of us.

[00:50:00]And as a gardener, I think the real secret is to respect and live in complete harmony with all living things in your garden and that is what makes you happy.

[00:50:13]That's what makes you feel good.

[00:50:25]That's it.

[00:50:27]Okay, then.

[00:50:28]Come on.

[00:50:47]That'll do for a start.

[00:50:49]These are mainly scented leaf pelargoniums and I bought a whole batch at Gardeners' World Live last year.

[00:50:57]All of these have distinctive fragrance to their foliage. Some scented of of mint, others of orange, others are slightly peppery, but all of them when you touch their leaves they have that incredibly rich musty fragrance. I'm not even quite sure what it's of, but it's so distinctive. Now, they spent all last summer and last winter in the greenhouse. They do need protection in winter from frost and from too much rain. These are from the Cape, so they're Mediterranean plants, but South African Mediterranean. They are used to being dry for half the year, almost bone dry, and then having some rain and that will make them flower and grow.

[00:51:38]So, they're fine outside until about the end of September, early October, then they will go back indoors.

[00:51:46]Now, what this has done is created space in the greenhouse, and I have a use for that.

[00:51:58]There's now an empty space for you.

[00:52:00]I've got new plants. How are you? I haven't seen you for 5 minutes. These aeoniums and the rest of the succulents have been stored in here over winter, and they've been crammed in.

[00:52:10]What I want to do this summer is move them across, give them some space.

[00:52:16]Woohoo! They're really heavy.

[00:52:19]Now, let's have a look at this, because this is a special case.

[00:52:29]This is a flower that you can see is now over.

[00:52:33]When aeoniums flower, they die.

[00:52:37]However, not the whole plant, just the stem.

[00:52:41]So, once you've enjoyed the flower, you need to cut it back, and it's no good just dead heading it, because nothing else will be produced, no leaves, no flowers.

[00:52:52]So, you need to go right back to the base there.

[00:52:58]And that now is spent. That's compost.

[00:53:04]However, the rest of the plant will be fine.

[00:53:08]Now, this doesn't look so healthy. You can see that's drooping a bit, and there's a probably just need some water. Aeoniums can be bone dry all winter, but they need a bit of water in spring, and probably watering once a week.

[00:53:23]They will grow outside. I have planted them in the jewel garden before, and I might even plant some more in there. So, that needs water, but you can see that absolutely doesn't. If they're looking healthy and looking upright, you don't need to water them, cuz like all succulents, they store their water. They don't drink through their roots, they take the water up into their leaves through their roots and then draw upon it as and when they need it.

[00:54:02]The main thing is this gives me an opportunity to look at each plant, take off the flowers if need be, see if they need watering, see if they need repotting and some of them do.

[00:54:12]Generally just give them a little bit of attention after a long winter and then give them a little bit more space to breathe.

[00:54:20]Now, while I'm finishing my job, here are your jobs for the weekend.

[00:54:39]When you take your pelargoniums out of winter storage, it's worth refreshing the compost. Now, this might just mean taking them out of the pot, scraping away some of the old dry compost and adding some new. But, if you have got a bigger pot, then pot them on.

[00:54:54]Put some fresh compost underneath, make sure it's got good drainage, a little bit around the outside, top it off with grit and it's all set for a fine summer display.

[00:55:13]Broad beans are now growing fast and they can get top heavy and be knocked or blown over. So, they need some temporary support.

[00:55:20]I do this by placing canes about a meter or a meter and a half apart and then twist twine in layers about a foot high and you add as many as you need like guardrails. So, if they do get knocked or blown, they're protected.

[00:55:42]It's now time to sow pumpkins and squashes.

[00:55:46]I do this in pots and in fact a deep pot is a good thing cuz that allows the plant to develop without potting it on.

[00:55:54]Put two seeds to each pot, one of which you intend to remove leaving the strongest in place. This may seem wasteful but actually it guarantees you have good strong plants.

[00:56:05]Soak them for about 10 minutes to absorb water and then put them somewhere warm to germinate [music] and the warmth is essential. They will not germinate if it's cold.

[00:56:15]And they should be ready to plant out in about a month or so's time.

[00:56:45]These are the grass borders.

[00:56:48]And every year this narrow path completely disappears under the growth.

[00:56:53]I mean at this stage it's not too bad.

[00:56:56]But in a month or so all these plants just move in together. So I've learned to to sort of keep the path protected and clear early as possible.

[00:57:11]And I'm using these hurdles that I make in the winter specifically for this purpose.

[00:57:20]>> [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] >> Mhm.