Gardeners World episode 40 2021

hello welcome to gardener's world now today is a special hour-long program from gardens world live at the nec the show started on wednesday and it's open till sunday night lots of people here today and i guess lots of you will be coming along over the weekend and what we all come here for is to get that first taste of summer it's a summer flower show and they get the color and the vibrancy in the show gardens in the floor marquee and all the stands and as well as inspiration you get a great chance to go shopping too now i'm not here alone i'll be joined by the whole team joe will be casting his expert eye over the show gardens drawing out design tips that we can use at home good design is all about using what's available to you and it doesn't have to cost the earth this garden is made entirely from recycled materials rachel is taking full advantage of all the shopping opportunities here at the show since we gardeners are increasingly keen on encouraging wildlife into our gardens i'll be getting some expert advice on the best products to keep the birds bees and the bugs happy and as ever carol is on the hunt for fabulous plants i'm here in the floral marquee looking for the star performers that are going to transform your gun and announce summer's cover code and i shall be talking to a nursery woman who's displaying proudly a new plant that she found by accident [Music] now i want to start by showing you this because this is the living wall that i've been talking about on the program for the last few weeks asking you to bring along some plants we still got room to add more although we have established quite a lot of plants on it already and it's designed so it's got three different facets around the corner we've got a face that is devoted to wildlife plants plants that will encourage insects into the garden on this side we've got the sunniest point so all these plants will relish full sunshine because you can have any shape or size you wanted that's the beauty of it it's very very flexible in fact we've chosen this height because that is the height that you can do without any planning permission but you could make it 50 foot tall if you wanted and this is going to be taken down and reassembled in schools around the corner here we've got plants devoted to shade and this is what i'll be especially focusing on and i'm bringing some plants from longmeadow that i've gathered up which i know will work really well here and you can see that the foliage looks fantastic whether it's the hostas or the ferns or the astilbes you do get that sort of three-dimensional effect on the wall which i think is really dramatic so if you've got any plants at home that are spare we can find a good home for them and whatever type of aspect it likes it'll look really good on the wall [Music] well here i am on the sunny side of the wall and look at this wonderful array of plants this is convulvulous neorum silvery leaves it's soft to the touch because each of these leaves is covered in fine hairs which protect the cuticle of the leaf from hot sun and above it this is rosemary and here each of these leaves is developed into a needle so transpiration is really low there's little water loss and they just look marvelous here well i've got an addition to put in here and this is a plant called sangui soba it's burnett's and it's used extensively to stop soil eroding it's got a really thick root system that will just bind the soil together ideal for this wall and when it's in flower it's just wonderful all these catkin like dark flowers no i wonder where it's going to look best well i've been given responsibility for the side of the wall which has plants selected to attract wildlife and how beautiful they are this is definitely the best side the trick really is to go for a variety of different flower shapes things like this lovely open daisy of the anthemist that's a really good strong sort of nectar bar and a bee will land there and just stay there for ages and also you would have things like the nepeta with a tubular flower and ketone astra as well anyone who grows it will know that this is absolutely smothered in bees so i have chosen this lovely ekium viper's bugloss this fabulous blue color i'm just going to pop them into this pocket i think we can get three in there there's one look out for these labels as well in the garden center because they show that they're bee friendly they're also good for attracting all sorts of insects and look got bees moving in already that's proof that they like it [Music] now just as i hope lots of you will i wanted to bring along some plants here to add to the shady side of the living wall so a few days ago at longmeadow i went around the garden gathering up plants that i thought would be ideal [Music] i've got a job i want to do but it's also going to give me really good stuff to take to the living walk garden as well and that's dividing primroses primroses love damp shade particularly woodland all you have to do is just dig up a clump like that if i just take out a block like that now i could transplant the whole thing and it would do fine but if i break it up i'll get a whole load of plants from this and be confident these are strong plants all you have to do is get your thumbs in and just rootle around and work the roots free so you're not breaking them you're not snapping them or cutting them just pulling them apart if a root does break it doesn't matter as long as you've got plenty left there we are see that's a nice root system good plant and that's a actually a little clump in itself so that's a good one and i think people tend to be a bit tentative about plants but they're usually much tougher and stronger than you think there we go see that's only got one leaf but that will grow perfectly well most of the early flowering herbaceous perennials will take the same treatment certainly pulmonary well and pulmonary will be ideal for the shady side of the wall give us some colour early on in the year i've got plenty in here and it does no harm to divide it every few years here we go and that you can see in exactly the same way we'll divide up just break it off pop into pieces which i'll pop up and replant by the way if your pulmonary looks a bit mouldy and is dusted and a little bit sad shear the leaves back right to the ground and then fresh new leaves will grow they'll look fine for the rest of the summer and it will start doing its growing and forming its flower buds in late summer so the time to share them back is now these plants should thrive on the shady side of the living wall i've also got some spare plants that i've grown from seed [Music] now these ipamir and i've got three cobia scandans left over will be perfect for the sunny side of the wall that's if it ever stops raining and we have a sunny side of the wall well these are the plants that dug up they survive well and i'll get them into the wall find a place for them and they'll thrive they'll really enjoy it in here and by the end of the weekend this will be looking stunning with your plants too of course now one of the biggest displays in any flower show and certainly here at gardener's world live are the show gardens one of the things that i like about them is that there's a tradition of young designers cutting their teeth here trying it out experimenting and to assess them and all the gardens we have our own gold medal winning gun designer joe swift ah thanks monty but having been through that process i will never look at a show garden in the same light the amount of work that goes into one of these is quite incredible and they're not just for show there's lots of ideas here this is design ideas and planting ideas that you really can use in your own garden this garden's called inside out and what i like about it is it could be a self-contained garden with with rural inferences such as the the stonework and the timberwork or it could be part of a larger garden it's got this fantastic outdoor seating area and i love this wall here the detail there is really good and then to the outdoor kitchen complete with barbecue and over here i like the use of this wall too we've got herbs in pot sitting up there and a really good display of ornaments and ornamentation in the garden like this is really worth thinking about don't always go small the water feature over there is oversized so small garden think big this garden brings the outside in by taking its inspiration from the brecon beacons the curves of the dry stone wall and oak decks invoke that local welsh landscape i really like its valley planting down the middle whilst the lawn areas are all around the outside now that's an interesting and original idea i don't think i've seen it before but it doesn't feel forced [Music] this garden has a strong sense of place the design has picked a planting style of drought-tolerant plants amid arid rocks and gravel and really gone with it the iris leptospermum and salvias each have room to breathe which is nice and can be appreciated for their individual color and form [Music] well the plant quality and the execution of the garden is fantastic here for me i would like to have seen the boulders and the plants grouped a little bit better together make it feel a little bit more natural they're a bit too even sort of spread throughout the garden but it's top quality [Music] good design is all about using what's available to you and it doesn't have to cost the earth this garden is made entirely from recycled materials [Music] but whatever it's made of is still a really good little garden great design it's got everything you'd want it's got water plenty of volume of plants in here too and lots to eat and i like the different levels and the feeling of privacy and security and most importantly somewhere to sit oh that's better june is the start of summer in the garden and here in the floral marquee the place is packed with plants that truly epitomized this time of earth and i'm on the lookout for the star for borders [Music] and surely one of the brightest stars in the june firmament has to be peonies just look at this this is peonia flame if you look at individual flowers you can see its relationship to buttercups it's in the ranunculusi family but i'll tell you what buttercups were never as seductive as this [Music] lots of peonies are truly flamboyant but perhaps that's not your taste if you go for the subtle and the refined then this has to be the peony for you it's called immaculate and you can see why it's perfectly spotless it's just so beautiful [Music] well this really sets the place alive it's aptly called blaze and isn't it just devastatingly beautiful especially next to this blue antusa really brave plant combination i think peonies make the perfect present and it's my daughter's 30th birthday today so i'm going to take a load of them home for her i know they'll be happy there because the soil is heavy and rich exactly what pain is like gladiolus and june you associate gladiola with late summer but not in this case this is gladiolus byzantines and it's doing its own thing right at this moment as with other gladio light it grows from corns but in this case you don't have to mess about lifting them and bringing them indoors in the winter because it's perfectly hardy where it comes from it's a cornfield weed and it pops up everywhere and with a bit of luck it might pop up next to something like this beautiful sweet william again june personified [Music] with most plants it's their colour or their shape that draws you in but in the case of roses it's that perfume that just won't let you walk by look at this one the centerpiece of the show souvenir do doctor german this is a climbing hybrid perpetual which means it goes on flowering for ages you can grow it as a climate or if you've got enough room you can leave it as a freestanding bush to do its thing the colour is wonderful and the texture of these roses it's so velvety but if you plant it in a very sunny place the colour will fade so it's best against the north wall where it flowers magnificently when the flowers reach this stage you almost feel like reaching in pulling up the whole flower and plunking it into a bowl so you can enjoy that perfume but one thing is for sure whatever rose you choose now is their time well as monty said our living wall has three different aspects and this side which is all planted with plants to attract wildlife is really coming along and starting to fill up and i popped these vacuums in earlier you see the bees still enjoying that and luckily we've got lots of visitors bringing more plants i'm really pleased to see these fantastic what have you got here it's a white rugged robin uh called white robin i originally bought it a plant fair i propagated it from seeds at home and it is perennial it comes up every year but it will self-seed and i have a little meadow area at home so i'm trying to get it to naturalize into the the meadow with with the native pink one and do you see lots of of bees and other insects buzzing around it there was a lovely bee on it a minute ago yes i'm sure yes yes it was lovely gorgeous i think it's i think it's prettier than the pink one it's very dark isn't it yes where are you going to put it over i thought i'd put it up there um that's good it gives a nice bit of height there at the top and actually this side the estrandia that's really nice as well it's got quite a large flower yes what variety is that one it's jumble hoe and it's just so beautiful it's tall and it stays the white and the green it doesn't share with the pink it's a really nice one is is planting for wildlife something that you really think about when you're choosing plants yes yes i do and i have this in different colors the bees and you know the other flowers and everything they have done yeah they love it well it's gorgeous and of course australia you could have taken i suppose to the shady side as well but i think it's very good here so where will that go do you think here perfect just pop it in yeah that looks smashing there really nice i reckon we're going to wait a minute and i'll be covered in bees of course one of the greatest pleasures for a gardener is to come to a show like this and meet other people to learn and to learn from the best is always the best experience but one of these nursery women arrived here from quite an unusual route and we went to see she was a king gardener and then after a bit dared to open her garden to the public not really expecting any more but as a direct result she then was offered the opportunity to start her own nursery my first gardening memory is really sewing a packet of aquilegia seeds and just being completely blown away when they flowered i was just hooked from that moment onwards really i've lived and gardened here for the last 17 years when i first came here it was largely rectangular lawn with narrow borders around the sides little by little i ate away at the lawn to make more room for plants and the garden just sort of gradually evolved as my gardening skills grew really we have a few things here that are permanent structures like the tall ilex you can see here they're evergreen they stay all winter and they mirror the spire of the church that we're lucky to have in the distance the rest of the planting is all hardy herbaceous perennials we've got a lot of euphorbia in the garden with its lovely lime fresh green aquileges the alliums we've got irises here irises aren't very long flowered plants but it's very nice to have a few plants in the garden that are just so sumptuously spectacular that although they don't go on for a long time they're really worth having because they knock you out when they are in flower [Music] i decided to try and open the garden for the national garden scheme two very nice ladies came along to assess me to see whether i was worthy of going in the yellow book and we are taken through the house where we are really knocked back by the sight that is in front of us wonderful colors and just the most inventive creative beautiful space one of them in particular enjoyed the garden so much that she asked me to come and do some garden work for her i spoke to annie about her life and her ambition was to find somewhere to grow her own plants and we had the space that i thought might be suitable and she came up to see the space and luckily for us said she thought it would do that is really how daisy roots the nursery began and really 12 years later she is still here [Music] here at the nursery we have no electricity so everything we grow here has to be hardy most of our plants are over wintered right out in the open exposed to all that the elements throw at them so really what i want to produce is a hardy plant that people take home and they can enjoy for years this year will be our third time at gardeners wildlife and we're going to be taking plants that have particularly beneficial qualities for pollinating insects amongst those we've got a plant which some people might be a bit nervous of planting in the garden but this is the variegated form of ground elder a lot of the umbella fur plants are very good for hoverflies as well as bees and it's a brilliant plant for lighting up a dry shady spot another variegated plant that we're taking with us is this breezer breeza media russell's form which is commonly known as the quaking grass because when the wind blows the seed heads quake in the breeze this is dianthus carthusia norum good seed heads follow the stems and it's another great insect plant wants a nice sunny position on a reasonably well-drained soil although i know for definite a lot of the plants that i'm taking to go on as well there are one or two that will just have to wait and see and be last minute decisions one of those is this lovely astrantia which was a chance seedling that came up on the nursery a couple of years ago weather permitting it will be at gardner's world live with us and we'll be revealing it to the world for the first time [Music] i adore growing plants it's my life really i'm the luckiest person in the world to be able to do what i love doing and manage to keep the roof over my head at the same time [Music] now i see that that astronomer that chancey limit that you had in your nursery is featuring prominently on your display it is right on the front corner here monty it's it's looking fabulous we've had lots of interest in it and also you've named it it didn't have a name before didn't have a name we were trying to think of a name when members of your team came around to chat to me about it yesterday morning and one of the cameramen happened to mention he had a daughter called celeste and the name fitted it's quite a star-like flower so that is what we've named it so fabulous plant the bbc can have a tiny little reflecting glass absolutely it's a beautiful name it's beautiful thank you very much yes i'm very pleased enjoy the rest of the show thank you [Music] now annie's a stranger celeste was luck a chance seedling that proved to be a good but you don't need luck to use seeds to make a garden really magnificent this stand for example has grown almost everything from seed and that seed only amounts to 50 quid 50 quids worth of seed has provided all this which doesn't just give you wonderful plants but a really wide range to choose from we've got perennials like their own gym you've got biennials like the vebascon polar summer which i love and also that stunning annual poppy black peony there is no plant that's more intense than that and that's just to pick a few the range of plants to be grown from seed is just enormous [Music] growing cacti from seed are very very easy they germinate between two to three weeks but you do have to wait for 12 months before you can start transplanting them so do many people grow peptide from seed most people buy the plant because they don't think they're going to live long enough to see the plant flourish but that's not the case no once they start growing after the 12 months in their own little pots they just take off [Music] if you think that cacti are a bit specialist here's a plant that everybody's gonna grow sooner or later and that sweet peas and a sweet pea in all its glory is as lovely as flour as you could possibly grow and of course the thing about them is not whether you grow them from seed or not but when you sow the seed you do it in autumn winter or spring i'm doing a trial at longmeadow looking at the various advantages of each of those timings but i'll tell you something if any of my plants produce flowers as lovely as these i don't mind when i serve them [Music] and last but in my book anyway certainly not least you've got vegetables vegetables grown from the seed can feed you delight you and make a garden look beautiful now i do know some people are buying plugs but bear in mind seed is much cheaper just as easy and it's not too late you don't have to sow your seed in the spring for instance if you sow some carrots now or some french beans they will give you a harvest later on in summer and be fantastic and of course the same is true of any of the salad crops talk yourself crops i don't think there are any lettuce growing on our living wall that'd be brilliant well here on the sunny side of the wall we've actually had some sun and things are beginning to settle down and perk up the whole thing's looking really wonderful everything's knitting together brilliantly but over here there are still spaces but people keep bringing in loads of stuff all the time i reckon by the end of the show this is going to be completely full an absolute picture we've got a courgette um and a tigarella tomato and a jalapeno i think your jalapeno pepper up to be where it's going to be at its size yeah about in there [Music] so it's companion glomerular it is yes it's so hardy yeah such a good doer and it'll have its work cut out in here won't i expect something it can ramble into one it'll find its way i'm sure i'm sorry it will i'm all good i've put money on it [Music] hello nice to meet you lovely to meet you what's your name thank you mine's carol how do you do it i brought you a selection a [ __ ] wrinkle that's the syringe do you know how to divide it oh yes it well it seems very readily yeah um we didn't pull the roots apart yeah you can just pull this part as easy as as easy as we can so you can have loads of it here cute get me that on the pod now oh yes this is another one it grows all over the place from the seeds you don't even have to sew them they just come up it's a non-appointment on a podium yes scotch thistle and it grows bigger than you it grows it can go to 16 feet do you really think it's the right plant for a little i think not no should we dig a hole at the corner [Music] no you've got fever for you isn't it yeah this will spread i don't know what you're going to do with your living wall whether it's going to be a permanent feature here oh it's going to schools different schools in in the area it'll all be dismantled and then reconstructed and then the kids are going to live can we try to yes planting for wildlife is a really strong theme at this year's show and there's lots of very naturalistic planting schemes and actually adam frost's garden which has won best in show is a prime example now he's left the at the back very quiet i think you get the impression that the plants aren't disturbed there very much and that means it will provide shelter and refuge for small mammals and birds which is vital some beautiful trees and shrubs among them this lovely cornice mass which not only provide flowers but then the berries later on for the birds and as you walk through there are these banks of perennials just really beautiful to look at and the combination here which includes things like geranium johnson's blue and then a peta they're just buzzing with bees and one of the exhibitors at the show is kate mcrae or wildlife kate to her friends and we went to spend the day with her to see how she goes the extra mile to attract lots of creatures into her garden anything i can attract here into my garden i do my best to do so through planting habitat creation and feeding i don't want them to just nip in have something to eat and go i want them to take up residence here [Music] one of the first things i did in my garden area was to build a pond to me that's one of the most fundamental areas to start with in terms of wildlife i built a small stream area to keep the water circulating and to offer other areas for feeding and drinking and then created an area which would be full of edge plants marginals and then a wider area that i could plant up with a range of ferns and foliage but a lot of it has just evolved self-seeded there's primulas cow slips and the marsh marigolds just take over everywhere mainly because you can see i let them go to seed birds come here and drink the hedgehogs i know come down here it's such a lovely space [Music] i've got lots of areas that are quite shady and there i plant lots of ferns because they like living there but also if you plant those ferns along with little log piles and bark chippings you're creating a habitat for lots of small insects that are then going to attract other creatures such as hedgehogs and you think an area like this with lots of hostas usually you're struggling with slugs and fighting off of them being eaten but since i've been attracting the hedgehogs to the garden my hostas have been untouched [Music] i just look for stuff i like the look of and and i also let the garden tell me what it wants and if fox gloves for example they're coming up absolutely everywhere at the moment i let everything go over to seed and see where things self-seed because if if that's the right place for them the following year they'll reappear i've always had a bird table in the garden or two or possibly three sometimes but i love making my own stuff as well this is one of my diy feeders i saw this ladle and the way it was shaped i thought it'd be perfect for a bird feeder so i just screwed it onto the fence and the birds love coming down and just perching on the end here and feeding it works really well and i like to have trays on my feeders and one it stops some wastage but also a lot of birds like sitting on the trays a lot of the commercial trays i found were quite shallow so i started using pizza trays or baking trays and the ball finch particularly love those so they've worked really well it's like you want to get down kate's cafe because it's um it's a pretty hot place to be the nesting dispensers have been really popular mainly on whisks but you can use an old bird feeder or anything that allows you to pack a receptacle full of the kind of things that birds would like so i've tried all different stuff dried grass and hay but by far the most popular is my dog's fur so bryn gets a good old brush every now and then and i pack it with that and the nice thing is that you can actually see them flying off with great sort of mustaches of um of dog fur in their beaks for my 40th birthday my dad bought me a nest box camera kit and it completely captivated me it showed me a side of the wildlife in my garden that i've never seen before and that was really the slippery slope downhill because one nest box camera kit wasn't enough so i got a couple so i now have 17 cameras in the garden so wherever you look you'll see cables you'll see cameras they're all over the place [Music] [Applause] so that one nest box camera kit that i got for my 40th has now turned into this 17 cameras all wired back to my office 24 7 live streaming on my internet sharing it with people all over the world and that just amazes me that people anywhere can share in the life stories of animals that are here in my patch you can imagine with all these cameras there's always something to watch these chicks today it's a hot day and they're getting quite big so they're coming out of the nest cup and sitting around the edge now and today's the first time they've done that so i haven't seen that before stuff like this you just can't see outside so i've got a very special relationship with the animals there when i see those chicks in my garden i will have watched them from well when they were eggs and then i'll be able to see them sitting in my garden and hopefully stay around in the coming years and possibly one of these chicks will use one of my nest boxes in the future and raise their own family kate i thought that was absolutely fascinating it was inspirational how much wildlife you managed to get into your garden now i know you've had a good look around at the show and done a bit of shopping what have you found well there's loads available for wildlife first thing i found which i absolutely love this is a remote trail camera so it works by having a little passive infrared sensor and it's operated by batteries so you can set it up anywhere in your garden or anywhere in your surrounding area and you don't have to wire it back like i do with a lot of my cameras when an animal comes past it triggers the unit to either take a photo or a video depending on how you've set it up and then there's an sd card inside just like in your digital camera so when you retrieve it in the morning you can just take your sd card pop it into your computer and see what was there just like having a spring watch in your garden it certainly is now this is a very snazzy bird feeder it is indeed this is a super feeder i love this especially if you haven't got that much space so you don't want lots of feeders because the best way to attract lots of species of birds into your garden is to feed them lots of different foods because they all like different kinds of things this feeder is brill because you can see it's like a twisted feeder which means you can put three different types of food in so what sort of birds would you expect to find on this and what would you use to attract them you wanted to try and choose a good selection so this seed here is a finch mix with a lot of niger in and the goldfinches just love niger seeds so this that sort of section is going to attract the goldfinches we turn around here i've got black sunflower hearts green finches love those great tits and blue tits will pop in and take those and then the gourmet food in my garden is sunflower hearts and that attracts all sorts of species just about everything loves that and my favorites the ball finches they absolutely love that one this is a great feeder because you can maximize all the species that visit now what about ways of introducing habitats into the garden there's lots of commercially available little bug houses like this and these are great because there's lots of little holes that creatures can either over winter in or hide away in so these are great little habitats that you can buy and they look great in your garden as well and i noticed actually that that can be part of the design because here on adam's garden where we're sitting there all of these gaps here where the logs fantastic habitats for creatures in here so and what a feature it looks fantastic excuse me i'll just get through i've got to see this green wall i've heard lots about it excuse me oh oh wow look at that it's looking really good there's so many applications for these especially in the city where space is limited loads of them at chelsea this year these green walls are really taking off [Music] [Applause] [Music] with space to grow in the city at a premium gardeners are turning to walls and boundaries gardening vertically as opposed to horizontally the most celebrated vertical gardener is french botanist patrick blanc he's been clothing city architecture with green sculptural living walls around the world for many years living walls are opening up a whole new range of opportunities to garden in the city they're great for biodiversity they're fabulous pieces of living art and edibles herbaceous and even shrubs are being planted on the vertical to take gardening to a whole new level garden designer adam shepard has been designing and creating living walls for the last three years in 2011 a garden in north london with a green wall won him a prestigious award from the society of garden designers fat seers and flying hydra shrubs in the sky shoves in the sky absolutely and it's freestanding is it yeah it is it's double-sided that's correct yeah a wall of green madness basically how old is this wall then uh this is about a year the plants start to have a bit of maturity and do their thing and they they grow out and then they fall under gravity and they start to look for the light again so you get this strange sort of shape to the plants that you don't get when you just drop them into the ground yeah what i like about it is the way it's so green and sort of imposing and tall but it ties in beautifully with the extended landscapes or blurring the spaces but i just love the way that you might have sort of like strappy leaves sort of growing through the bigger leaves of the who carella the way things grow up through each other pakistan are terminalists now everyone's so rude about that plant a lot of garden designers friends of mine are so rude about that brian has a very good plant well look at the glossy green leaf i like it this freestanding wall has established and grown over the last 12 months it's a great example of a living wall packed with plants thriving in an urban setting but 12 weeks ago adam embarked on another project which is rapidly integrating itself into a small city garden wow this is absolutely stunning this one it's beautiful is it what was behind there just a concrete wall or something yeah just a concrete block wall yeah yeah and from a design point of view you've managed to completely free up this space with an entertaining area but still got the volume of plants and variety of plants into a garden do you sit down with a piece of paper and think this is how the planting is going to go yeah well actually this is my fourth wall and the first three i was a bit freestyling you made up as you went a lot yeah i know how to do it but this one i did draw a planting plant but i think it has it has benefited from that but i do like some of the combinations that euphorbia martini is one of my favorite euphorbias this is the first time i've used the euphorbia yeah and it's been really successful um and i've also just behind that i've got the regularia yeah um which is the first time i've used them and they're being they're doing really well yeah they're lovely and also can you see the underside of that like the mahogany underside of the leaf as you get closer i really like that yeah it's stunning so adam have you actually made this wall then well there's two layers of fabric pinned onto uh plastic backing which is sit-standing still thread what is the fabric as well it's a moisture attentive fleece okay so you've got two layers of that yeah yeah and then you just cut holes in it or basically you kind of slit in the in the in the top layer open up a small pocket take the plant and root it in and then i staple gun the pocket closed with stainless steel staples and that holds it all in place oh i see special compost or just normal i put a bit of sort of like magic compost in there which has like sort of water attentive gels and there's some gold flakes in there and some food in there okay and then obviously as as the plant grows the roots go down into the fabric and sort of really start to hold on to it and it knits together it all knits together it becomes one giant kind of organic thing okay and watering water permeates down through the two layers and into the pockets and the idea is just to keep the pocket sort of moist you don't have to use that much water you just want to keep it damp and the plants perfectly happen they're becoming more and more popular but do you think they've got a real future i have to say i would love to see it kind of take off because as our population grows and our pressure on cities grows i think people are going to have less space to be in and so the more they can use the sort of floor space for the children to run around and to entertain or to eat then you know they can put their planting up onto the vertical surface which would otherwise be quite dead space [Music] so how achievable is a green wall in your own back garden well adam went down his own route of making something up and you can do that but there are many off the peg products that can help you do it too for example there's this plastic module like that which basically stack up on top of each other or you can fix them to the wall and they are a reservoir which will hold the water in there and then you plant through these gaps and the plants spill out and they spill over and they green it all up over time then there's this which is just a small hanging section of pockets and that'll work really well for herbs or some smaller plants it wouldn't be able to take a great deal of weight but that might just be perfect for you at home or you can go down something like this which is it's a bigger system it's a little bit more adventurous a section of this five pockets will set you back about 130 quid but it's a good investment because it'll last you 10 to 15 years and this system is made using really quite chunky thick fabric it's plastic lined at the back and then there's plastic underneath here as well so it's really holding the moisture in here but holding the moisture off the wall too so ideally get some small plants plant them in combust and let them knit together over time and it takes on a life of its own and also it's not like hanging baskets or window boxes which you might plant up seasonally this is there all year round so you're going to garden it all year round too you're going to cut back perennials you're going to deadhead plants and you've also got to weed and feed it as well our watering is the key thing about these walls you've got to keep them nice and moist or they'll dry out very very quickly this one's got a slot running all the way through for a perforated hose that you can just loop it through and keep the wall nice and moist and you've got to think also about feeding and you could run some feed through that pipe so it could feed the plants over time or you could go for a foliar feed just mix up some foliar feed and spray it say once a month keep the plants looking really nice and healthy but these green walls can be a fantastic solution if you're limited for space or looking out onto a dull brick wall then this is a way to get your green fix i just love the plant crash this is where everybody comes with their booty to store it away while they dash up and buy miles more plants and one of the best things about it is that you can get the whole sort of feel of the show you know what people are really interested in and as these plants go fast it's such a temptation to look into those bags and think about how they could propagate the plants and make masses more [Music] oh lovely load of grasses aren't they beautiful such texture do you think we can split them at this time of year to make more because they're all in flower at the moment it's not a great time to split them but best time to split grasses is the spring but also most of those are species so they're going to grow true from seed but if you've got a grass like this one this is a little discomfort called tetragold and it's just perfect for being divided right now but you need a bit of bicep power here so just tear it apart it's very satisfying especially if you've had a hard day every little piece that you can extract that's got a little tiny bit of root is going to make a new plant make a hole lower them in gently firm them in and that's it but brand new grass how quickly do the grasses grow probably by this time next year you should have a clump i think you've got enough grasses well pat you grew these for the first time last year is that right i did i purchased one last year and it did so well i decided to treat myself to those today one of the most exciting things about streptococcus is actually propagating them take a fully developed leaf and you just cut carefully into the base and then i'm just going to slice it and you've got to keep them the right way up so the bit there was at the end that was attached to the plant is always the base of the cutting oh i see right yes otherwise they'll be upside down and all you do is push them gently into that trench come and do one come on that's it one lot of water right over the top when you're finished yes and then if you've got a heated propagator that's great but just a kitchen windowsill is fine what will happen is that every time a vein hits this bottom cut surface yes you'll get a new little plant just detach them very carefully and pop them up individually one leaf will give you what 20 plants all right you'll be back here now i'll need more windows this year the rhs are running a new show garden competition here at gardeners world live open to both keen gardeners and established garden designers fellow um chelsea gold medal winning guard designer and the old mate andy sturgeon was at the helm we caught up with him yesterday when the designers were brought here to the nec they were given the same palette of materials to choose from same timber the same stone and then they could buy additional plants making a total budget for each garden of only eight thousand pounds and it really is incredible to see what each of those designers has done because the results are absolutely fantastic there are some great design techniques used in these gardens this one for example has put the whole design on a diagonal within the rectangular plot now that creates a nice flow and movement of the space but that also creates these triangular planting beds around the main area which again creates some more interest and a bit of flow to it boards bring the whole design into 3d keep that spiraling theme going but break the garden up at eye level which is really important what's really interesting is the designers have had all the same materials but the way they use them is so different garden design is about stamping your personality onto your plot there's no question that the thing about show gardens is you don't have to like them all but you invariably find something that you can take back home and apply to your own garden now talking about your own gardens at home here are some jobs to be getting on with this weekend it is important to keep seedlings moving from the moment they're ready to prick out to the moment they're planted out in the garden this is a tray of wallflower seedlings now they were just sown about a week ago and you can see they've germinated nicely but there's yet there are no true leaves in other words all the foliage comes from the seed itself rather than from roots and this isn't ready for pricking out however a tray of wool flowers identical seed which were sown two weeks earlier now these are perfectly ready and you can see that they look quite different because they've got in effect the adult leaves and that means that they're growing off roots and if you've got roots you can move it so what you get are plants growing in plugs but they have to be potted on at the right moment it's quite critical that you don't leave them in too long or try and plant them out too soon now here are some zinnias which are growing nicely but they're not ready to be planted out and if i take one out of its plug you can see two things have happened one it's broken off because the roots haven't reached the bottom of the compost so therefore there's nothing to hold it together so that wants to go back into its plug and be kept either in a cold frame or somewhere protected here i've got some yarrow and this is looking fantastic now to me this is a hundred percent ready and if i take it out nice root system the roots are growing right down to the bottom they're not outgrowing their goodness the plant looks healthy that's ready for going out it'll do for another week or so but after that it'll start to get root bound and exhaust its goodness which is exactly what's happened with this basil here you can see the roots are matted and if you compare it with one of these you can see many more roots they're struggling against the edge of the plug it'll grow it's not wasted but it'll never grow as well as that will if it's planted out so timing is important so i would say it if you're growing plants from seed and it's always a good idea to do that the major thing is to keep them moving on wait till they're ready and then when they are ready move them on or plant them out there is an awful lot to see here from a floor marquee that is crammed full of lovely plants to an array of garden gadgets and gizmo that's going to satisfy any gardening whim but you can't take everything out you have to choose your favorites and here are ours at gunner's world life this year you've got to be really eager-eyed at this show and i've spotted these brilliant plant supports made of rusted wire with that curl top i think they look very good and they're very practical so that if you've forgotten to stake early on you just push one in alongside your delphinium or the basket and just twirl it round and it holds it steady very simple looks good brilliant it's impossible to choose a favorite plant but could drool all day over this anemone nursery ziplora it's a woodland day loves cool damp conditions and its flowers are a delight pure white on the inside shaded with blue and purple on the back with green centers and blue antlers who could ask for anything more [Music] this is my favorite thing i really want one it's a charcoal maker take the lid off put in some twigs or some branches lid goes back on again onto the fire and after a couple of hours all the moisture has been taken out and you're left with the best charcoal for drawing for a barbecue [Music] it's irresistible if you had asked me before i came to the show whether i would choose a santa destia as my favorite thing in the show i kind of guaranteed i would say no almost certainly not but there's something about this that keeps drawing me back and i want it i want to go home with this plant it's part of the intensity of the color and partly because now we've got the pond i think it would work in a way that it wouldn't have fitted into the garden before the color's right the shape is right and also i've seen them growing in the wild in ditches in the mountains in south africa where they get filled with water for weeks and then bone dry for weeks and it's that difference between extreme wet and extreme dry which they like and which i can give them in the area around the pond so it's not as though i've chosen it i think it's chosen me and i better take it home all right thanks first of all thank you very much indeed thanks a lot bye-bye now these santa dashes like some sunshine so the shady side of the living wall is probably not ideal but i see that you have brought along some fabulous plants and it's beginning to look really good obviously hostas flourish here see how come with the modest has been brought in that will cope actually with sun or shade very very adaptable ferns are ideal we've got a batch here with a note attached i need my glasses really but it says it's from alan smith in yarmouth thank you very much alan uh small garden but packing a lot so plenty to spare well that's really good and we can put we've got some ivy here we've got some hookahs there so if i put that in that spot there immediately that looks good because the ivy falls down and any plant that will hang down a wall often look just as good as a plant growing up now the show is open all weekend right up until sunday night so do come along most of it's undercover actually so it doesn't matter what the weather is there's masses to see and you're also a chance to see carol joe and myself because carol and i are here all weekend and joe's here tomorrow and we'll each be doing a turn here at the living wall so bring along your plants meet us chat to us and we can help you position them in exactly the best place and i'll see you at longmeadow next friday at the normal time so bye-bye [Music] tracking the devastation left by the plague in the 14th century the great british story of people's history is next on bbc2 over on bbc4 now what happened to the music after 1978 find out with punk britannia [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: Gardeners World

Views: 10,510

Rating: 4.9607844 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: 2_gW9te0JJc

Length: 60min 21sec (3621 seconds)

Published: Mon May 24 2021