Gardeners World episode 53 2021

hello welcome to gardener's world i always feel that july is the start of the harvest season and of course that means lovely vegetables from the garden but also don't neglect the flowers i try and every few days cut some roses just from whatever is out in the hot sun that won't last more than a day but if i take it inside into a cool room that'll give me an extra 24 hours of pleasure this week i'll be continuing to develop the wildlife meadow that i sowed last year [Music] joe gets an exclusive behind-the-scenes tour of the private gardens at eaton college where princess william and harry went to school it's like a secret garden in here i came through the gate and what a beautiful space it's a centre of excellence for education isn't it so we try and do that in the gardens carol is looking at the wildlife that is so beneficial for our gardens this week she's dipping below the surface of a garden pond what's actually important for the creatures that live in here isn't the species of plant but it's the variety of structure and shape because each one of these will then create a different niche or a habitat if you like the particular types of insects will prefer [Music] every year i try and plan it so i have new potatoes on my birthday which is at the beginning of july so now is the time to see if they're ready you can tell if potatoes are likely to be ready by a number of things the first is they must flower and these have flowered and finished flowering so i would expect that to be tubers the second is as a pretty good guide the first earlies taking three months main crop four months and second early somewhere in between so this is charlotte which is a second early oh look at that now i challenge anybody it doesn't matter how many years you've gardened doesn't that make your heart sing if they're wet or damp leave them on the surface of the ground to dry off but these are actually pretty dry so they don't need it there we go a little bit of green on that the green is poisonous of course you shouldn't eat that charlotte is a variety that i've come to love it's a french variety slightly waxy and they're really good just plain boiled eaten either with some butter or olive oil and plenty of salt and pepper it's worth taking some trouble to get every last little one out the ground because the chances are they will grow new plants next year that might sound like plants for free but there are two downsides one is that you grow potatoes on a rotation so they'll be growing up through a different crop next year and two potatoes can accumulate viruses so it's not a bad idea to buy fresh every year from a reputable grower right that's enough potatoes to keep the don household going for the next few days the rest can stay in the ground over here i've got some courgettes and courgettes have done really well so far this summer i wouldn't want a courgette any bigger than that and i'm very happy to take them quite a bit smaller this is a variety called black beauty obviously the more you pick the more that will grow and of course you can eat the flowers on the end too there's a delicious dish which is to deep fry them in a very light batter and stuff them with a soft cheese so you have this hot deep fried flour and then the warm cheese and then that sort of melts through it and it's slightly crispy it's absolutely delicious now these are vegetables ready for eating now but i want to clear a bed so i can plant out some veg that will give me a harvest later on in the year this looks pretty scruffy by now it's rocket sowed it on the first of february planted it out in march and we've been eating it since mid-march and you can see that it's producing more flowers than leaves now that's not a terrible thing because rocket flowers like courgette flowers are very good to eat but it's a law of diminishing returns so pull up the plants there is already a lot of organic material in this raised bed but it's a good idea every time you clear a crop to add a thin layer of compost and that just recharges it i'm going to plant some sweet corn it needs a sunny position and good rich soil and i'm going to space it quite widely apart in a grid and the grid is really important that's because sweet corn pollinates by the wind the wind blows the pollen from plant to plant if you haven't been agreed it doesn't matter which direction the wind is coming from they will all catch it at some point and they will all be pollinated now those are in the ground and will be quite happy and need no attention at all but they'll grow slowly but i can use the space and really good companion crop our courgettes because they will share the same growing conditions of sun a nice rich soil but provide their fruits before they get shaded out by the sweet corn and i'll just fit four plants in here nicely spiced up so they can spread you can plant lettuces or anything that will give you a quick harvest in amongst the slower growing sweet corn and it's not too late to directly sow courgette seeds or sweet corn because the soil is warm but it will depend on nice warm weather for the rest of summer for them to grow fast and to ripen now this is all very practical but over the last few weeks joe has been looking at the beautiful decorative gardens that lie behind some of our more famous institutions often gardens which people rarely get the opportunity to see and a few weeks ago he went to a school but not just any old school eaton is probably the most famous public school in the world it has a long list of distinguished former pupils including 19 british prime ministers and the future king prince william and his brother prince harry the college was founded by henry vi more than 500 years ago today the grounds cover 900 acres including numerous sports pitches and several private gardens these hidden gems are only open to public one day a year for the national garden scheme the job of keeping these gardens looking at their best forms the head gardener michael long and his team hi michael good to meet you and you what a fabulous secret garden in here i came through the gate and what a beautiful space it is it's fantastic isn't it this is the headmaster's garden it's only for you spider headmaster the pupils don't get to come in here so you've been involved in the design of this garden why have you designed it like this um basically the headmaster's wife likes flower arranging she does it in the house and in the chapel yeah and the idea is to cut the flowers from the garden we try to make it a bit of a cutting garden it's a centre of excellence for education isn't it so we'd like to try and do that in the gardens so which one of these gardens is your favorite luxmoors the island garden oh put put the tools down wow this is a beautiful bridge isn't it it is isn't that stunning so this is the river tent yes okay you'd never know it beautiful [Music] welcome to luxmore's island that's a very exotic name isn't it why is it called that the garden was originally started by mr luxembourg who was a house master at eaton he talked here for about 50 years in the 1800s why is it your favorite um i think partly it's so different to the other gardens because they're quite formal and this one is very informal and it's just it's so peaceful and you can come over here and if everything is quiet you could be anywhere so the pupils allowed onto the island yes they are the older boys are allowed on the island for study quiet time and the younger boys can come on with a tutor to do private lessons does this garden have a specific planting palette there's a book called lots more letters which we've looked through and we've picked out plants that mr luxmore used so we use similar plants to those as there's things like hemorrhage roses irises yeah also traditional english garden plants really yeah a lot of these plants have been here quite a while in a way you're gardening in a snapshot in time do you feel a real responsibility yeah absolutely because this garden is hopefully going to be here another 100-plus years you know so we've got to look after it for the next generation of gardeners to take over eaton hasn't just educated british royalty members of royal families from around the world have come here including many years ago the king of siam who donated money which was used to build another garden which feels quite different from the others oh this is beautiful this garden i love the sunken nature of it this was originally done in 1929 but it's recently been redesigned you can tell it's got a slightly modern edge to the planting yes but a lot of harmony it looks fantastic i have to say it's nice they're all small beds so you can get to everything quite easily that the iris and the catmint and the the hesperis with the with the cow parsley that is beautiful it's very nice and i mean it's the one everybody sees this is the one garden that everybody who walks past sees because yeah the public can walk past here another garden is for the use of the provost who is officially in charge of the college and appointed by the crown this is my first time ever in these gardens and i think it's fantastic that you open them to the public on a yellow book day well we love to see the public here because we're proud of what what the gardeners do i mean it's lovely to see people coming through real experts a lot of them talking in horticultural latin which i'm afraid it's beyond me they're incredibly lucky the boys here have this beautiful surroundings and the fact is we do seem to produce a steady stream of good gardeners so some of it gets into their minds i think and a lot of them do appreciate it's just the sheer beauty and the luck they have to be in these surroundings [Music] the gardens will be open again next year so maybe that's a date to put in your diary now the garden that i'm making here on what we call the mound is very different this was a rubbish heap for nearly quarter of a century and last year we thought we would sort it out and try and make a wildflower meadow and that's work in progress but it is at last coming along and the theme of this piece of the garden is to encourage as many wild and indigenous plants as we possibly can and it certainly is beginning to look a bit wild but this was sown just about a year ago it may look like the sort of growth you get on a rubbish heap or the side of the road but actually there's a lot of really interesting stuff in there now the seed mix that i sewed in the middle of last july contained grasses which are here and although they've been bashed by rain they've established and grown quite strongly but they also had some wildflowers in it like these clovers which have come through there's cylini both the white cylini and the pink and viper's bugloss was in the mix you can see here and this will seed in turn and then spread a wildflower meadow needs careful tending needs gardening you do need to let the plants that you want to keep seed and to make sure the plants that you don't want to keep don't see you this dock here is developing seeds and i don't want those to spread so i can put the hoe down at the base of the plant and dab in like that that cuts it off at the roots i can pull it out and importantly the seeds won't spread and germinate this plant here is hemlock it's poisonous really quite poisonous and you can tell it it's got these lovely white umbella for flowers and then the very distinctive purple blodgy stem if you have got it i'd wear gloves when you handle it so we'll just chop that out like that and i will collect that up with gloves here we have a south whistle and they can be a bit of a weed so i'm going to chop that out there we go and i'll gather that up there you go aren't you coming this is the meadow's second summer and each year after the grasses and wildflowers have set seed it must be cut down on all the mowing material taken away this will reduce the nutrients for the grasses and allow the wildflowers to compete and gradually over the years to thrive this is one of those weeding jobs i really like because it gives you a chance to get in and enjoy the garden to see it up close and and from the inside rather than always looking on it from the outside and it's something to do slowly something i'll probably spend another half hour or so doing but even if you haven't got any weeding jobs to do here are some other things to get on with this weekend if you grow chives they may well not be looking very good at the moment however you can easily rejuvenate them by cutting them back hard to the ground give them a really good soak and within days you'll have a fresh flush of foliage by now your autumn fruiting raspberries should have sent up plenty of new shoots but before they become top heavy it's a good time to support them put some stakes securely into the ground and stretch string between them which will keep the canes upright and make them much easier to pick [Music] so far it's been a wonderful year for clematis and they've really enjoyed the wet winter and spring but this has resulted in a lot of extra lush growth and it's a good idea to gather them up now and tie them in to any support to give them extra protection against summer storms [Music] increasingly more and more of us are learning to appreciate both the wildlife we see in our gardens and the value that they add to the health of our gardens and over the coming few weeks carol is going to be looking at the various creatures that we can share our backyards with and the best ways of enticing them in in sunny borders and in shady corners under rocks and amongst the trees and leaves live a myriad of creatures part of an intricate chain to which we all belong i want to find out what this means to us our plants and the sanctuaries we call our gardens in britain we've created more than two and a half million garden ponds water plays a very significant part in the designs that we love but what more does it contribute other than its visual appeal steve had is a zoologist who for the last 15 years has been developing and studying his garden pond to attract wildlife it's incredibly beautiful but what are the real reasons for having a wildlife pond in your own garden well i think you want a pond in your garden because it's such a source of life in the garden because so many specific insects like the pond need the pond but then there's all the other creatures that will make use of it including some quite unexpected ones bees on a hot day a honey bee hive needs liters of water to keep the hive cool and air conditioned to evaporate when you think of a wildlife pond immediately you think about native plants and yet you've got lots of plants that are ornamental haven't you non-native yeah things like the stilby are in there because they're just so extraordinarily colorful yeah but we got some native species in here as well there's the lovely thing bog bean here it has an extraordinary triple leaf but the most gorgeous little delicate white flower and the veronica beyond but what's actually important for the creatures that live in here isn't the species of plant but it's the variety of structure and shape because each one will have its own shape of stem its own shape of leaves its own shape of roots particularly and each one of these will then create a different niche or a habitat if you like particular types of insects will prefer to look at the intricate habitats that lie beneath we're using a special camera to glimpse a newt's eye view of the underwater landscape oh that's an extraordinary shot going in under the surface and you can see these submerged leaves and there's a root there appearing at the bottom when we look around it sort of emphasizes just how much structure there is underwater there so if you're starting a pond how does all this life get in there in the first place insect life comes in of its own accord almost immediately and it's remarkable how many plants will come in um just on the legs of birds you know seeds and so on coming in that way oh that's a snail can you see oh yeah yeah there we are of course that's a snail which is confined to the pond it doesn't come out and eat your cabbages so it's completely safe in the garden but you know everything else that we get in the pond like the newts and the frogs and the toads even are tremendous predators of those unfortunate things like slugs which we all love to hate what we could do now is see if we can find some of the creatures we've been talking about so we can look at them a bit more clearly let's have a look what we've got see what we've got in here we've got quite a few bits and pieces i think the star in many ways is that uh caddisfly lava or rather we're not actually seeing the lava which is hiding away inside this case which is made out of little tiny dead shells and bits of vegetation glued together you can actually see snails charles can't you and of course we've got lots and lots and lots of snails in here the snails live close to the surface don't they and they they look cover everything up you even see them actually upside down feeding off the surface layer and generally keeping the pond really clean but i mean the most the most handsome things in here are the news these are the common news yeah nudes have got a fascinating life cycle and what happens is that they come into the ponds of february march and they mate and then the female lays their eggs one at a time generally on a little bit of flat pond weed which they then fold over to protect it and when the eggs hatch they turn into an extraordinary tadpoley thing it's got external guilds and they'll live as a tadpole usually for six months or so and then they lose these gills they become air breathing and they climb out of the pond and they stay out of the pond for anything up to two years feeding completely as if they were terrestrial animals and then of course when they're ready as the first warm days occur in late winter early spring back they come to the pond and they start the life cycle over again [Music] we've got something else in here which i particularly like and that's this wonderful big dragonfly lava here this is the tiger of the pond world there's significant predators on just about everything else in the pond where are their eggs laid the females lay their eggs directly into the water at the top of the water and they hatch out to make little tiny nymphs and they grow up they shed their skin several times until they get to this sort of size how long does that take well it can take six months or depending on the weather and again the species it can take actually anything up to five years and uh when they're ready they then crawl through the water surface up a steep stem and they break the skin over the back and out of this really quite ugly strange looking aquatic animal burst forth an adult dragonfly and they have to pause while they inflate the wings and get ready but within an hour they'll be off flying into the sunshine i think the thing is even if you've got a really tiny garden you can still have water and you can't yes you can and both the wildlife and us can really rejoice in this beautiful habitat we've created and isn't it just gorgeous there's no question that adding the pond to longmeadow has dramatically increased the wildlife and and the pond is bound to make your garden healthier and much richer now i've been contacted by tracy from yorkshire and she says dear monte i was given a quince tree for my birthday and i planted it last autumn and it was doing really well however over the last few weeks it's developed nasty brown spots all over the leaves and is now looking very sorry for itself do you know what it could be and can it be rescued and the answer to both is yes now this is quince leaf blight and i've got it on my own quinces on the other side of the pond it starts out as rather browny red blotches that then spread and become black the leaves quite often then turn yellow and fall off but actually it's not a total disaster the trees recover next year there's no guarantee that they will get it and they will give you a really good crop of quinces but collect up all the leaves and burn them we've had a very wet mild winter and spring and this has encouraged the fungus that causes the blood it's also encouraged powdery mildew and my quinces on the other side of the pond have got both this quince has got a really clear case of leaf blight the leaves are splotched with brown and they're starting to crisp and die back and these will fall but this one isn't too bad i'm not too worried about it but i've got four quinces here and one of them is much worse now the blight and mildew won't kill my quince trees but to reduce the spread of the fungi i've decided to take the drastic action of cutting down the worst affected one which will help the remaining three now this one in particular is really bad i've planned to take it out that will let ventilation in air a little bit more rain light and just take that off look at the combination of blight and mildew on that the mildew is a powdery felted covering on the underneath of the leaf and the blight is there too if you're cutting down any tree do it slowly bit by bit a really sharp saw and just take control of the operation don't hack at it and then hope it falls where you want it to one queen's less in my life now i could dig out the stump but i think there's any need i'll plant around the roots and chop through them and whilst it's had it's done well i've eaten of the quinces and hopefully everything else will do better that's part of the cycle of the garden but that's it for this week next week we're still at nine o'clock because we follow the athletics but before then rachel carol joe and myself will all be at hampton court flower show we've got three programs coming from there and i'll join you here back at longmeadow next friday night till then bye-bye [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: Gardeners World

Views: 51,612

Keywords:

Id: 2lRAhw7u8vA

Length: 32min 6sec (1926 seconds)

Published: Fri May 28 2021