Gardeners’ World 2025🍀Episode 14

It’s almost summer solstice, the longest day of the year, and Frances Tophill is gardening at Damson Farm, a magical garden set in the glorious Somerset countryside. There’s a beautiful wildflower meadow, a productive edible garden and naturalistic ornamental planting to inspire. The designer shares many of Frances’s passions – growing plants for purpose and creating wildlife-friendly spaces – and at this time of the year, there’s plenty to get on with.
Carol Klein shares her growing experience and favourite plant combinations to guarantee colour in beds and containers all summer long. Adam Frost meets a grower who has adapted her garden to cope with serious annual floods thanks to a clever choice of plants and innovative design. And the plants don’t just survive, they thrive!
There’s also a visit to an Aladdin’s cave of a garden in Watford to meet a gardener who can’t resist a junkyard buy to add to her collection.

i’m on my way to spend the day in what I’ve been told is a very magical garden and I’ve never been there before so I’m as much in the dark as you are there’s no doubt that today’s program is going to be a very special garden as well [Music] and here it is what a beautiful spot [Music] the gardener who lives here has told me just to come in and find her and I can’t wait to explore [Music] coming up on today’s program [Music] Carol will be sharing more tips and inspiration to guarantee color in your beds and containers all summer long you’ll get this wonderful growth and all these flowers from June July August September right the way through absolutely beautiful [Music] we’re invited to an Aladdin’s cave in Watford the garden is full of antiquities me being the oldest one full of little bits and pieces which all mean something or other on the journey of putting this garden together and Adam continues his journey up and down the country meeting gardeners who really are battling the elements to create innovative gardens a few months ago the water was this high isn’t that incredible that sort of demonstration of the power of plants [Music] good boy until this is a very doll friendly garden so I can let him off this reel that’s collecting spring water through the garden is just so beautiful so minimalist with this single iris chorus ru obviously likes the reel as well this gray stone also against the gray of the building is so beautifully balanced and leads you into this planting which looks like it’s going to be incredible i love the textures you have the shrubs but also so many different kinds of leaves things like packers the veronic actually before it’s flowered is giving lovely textures then there are flowers too sangorba which is one of my favorite flowers and the acid yellow of the euphoria up there really draws your eye up the hill and to the landscape beyond which is where I want to explore via these very impressive steps Oh I think there’s Allison [Music] damsen Farm is the creation of Allison Jenkins and gardening is in her bones a stunning 2acre small holding and edible garden set in a glorious valley on the edge of Bath and the Cotswwell Hills i guess I’m trying to create a space here that feels welcoming and nourishing because I think there’s so many opportunities for learning in the garden and I’m really curious about how we garden now in an era of environmental crisis whilst also meeting our own needs for growing food and creating beautiful spaces but without compromising the needs of other creatures and everybody else we share the space with i’m thrilled to be having Francis here i think we have a similar ethos and we’re both interested in growing food and we both garden on the wild side of things so I sort of knew I wouldn’t have to worry about the scruffy edges cuz I knew that she would kind of get that i’m looking forward to spending the day with Allison doing what us gardeners love best being outside sharing ideas and getting our hands in the soil hi Alison oh
hello the most beautiful garden down there
a thank you
nice to meet you
thank you so this must be Ruer
this is Ruer who’s this
twiggy
twiggy hello Twiggy
so are you are you planting planters is that Yes so I quite like to experiment with edibles in planters just to kind of see how it’s possible to grow food in a small space
i I like experimenting i was just about to ask if you’re an experimental gardener or if you sort of do the research first so you know and then do it
no well a bit of both but I I am also inclined to just think
oh we’ll just see what happens you know because I think sometimes unexpected things happen you can plan
and sometimes things happen that you don’t plan and they’re sometimes better
yeah I agree with that so I’ve got some agreti here as well good to go so I I also just like to kind of scatter things you know sometimes I’ll plant things out a bit like a you know bit like you plant a herabaceous border really so um and also with it being a planter I think we can afford to just put things in quite tightly
yep guessing you don’t want straight lines no no atti is a tender annual succulent with a distinct fresh flavor it can be tricky to sew from seed but once established can be harvested all summer long basil will grow quickly to fill a space and happily thrive until the first frost cinnamon basil so that has really lovely um purple flowers so sometimes it’s nice to just grow as an ornamental as well
and it’s nice to have lots of them so that you can pick away at them as well
true and I guess here you’ve got some nice big planters so you can get quite a lot of stuff in yeah absolutely if you’ve got the depth of soil then I think you can afford to um squish things in
this is a bull’s blood
oh the beach yes yeah that might be nice closer to the front I guess
yep so they’re just a really nice dark purple i’m always thinking of um
kind of making interesting salads really you know all the different edible flowers and different kinds of leaves you can put in a salad so I’ve got five different lettucees here
okay names well I kind of would quite like some green let’s do some green ones these are elf
okay
punky name
i love growing lettuce i’ve got some nesters seed here so I thought we could just direct sew some of those
um so this is blue pepe um which isn’t a climbing one but it might work around the base of this and maybe also some just along the edges and that
the edge flop over yeah
perfect i love notoriums they’re so useful for slug repellent you can eat the leaves you can eat the seeds you can eat the flowers they’re great in salads
and they’re beautiful i just think they’re so cheerful well this certainly is full
yeah but I think it’s looking really really nice and I hope it all grows so that you can’t I’m sure we won’t see any compost i’m sure it will yeah we’ll give it a good water and um Yeah it’s good to go good that’s one job done lovely thank you [Music] now it’s time to return to Carol’s beautiful garden and see what additions she’s making to bring even more flowers to the early summer [Music] this year I’ve been looking to my garden for inspiration for new plantings in the spring first thing it was all about optimism and then came the anticipation of what was to come and now in early summer it’s arrived [Music] one of the prettiest parts of my garden at this time of year in early summer is this it’s Alice’s garden alice is my youngest daughter and it’s full of all sorts of plants that I adore but I suppose one that really stands out in a quiet dainty kind of way is Chelenia trifoliata it’s vaguely related to roses but it’s got these tiny white flowers that just sort of dance in the breeze later on all its foliage will turn to lovely rusty autuminal shades too and it looks perfect with this pimpanella a very simple umble member of the APAC family it’s like a sort of pink cow parsley except it’s much daintier initially I planted a couple in here but now it selfseeds all over the place [Music] [Music] well the pimpanella is a really dainty little plant but there are lots of its relatives in these beds which are much much bolder and the main one amongst them is the arrantia well I say the arrantia there are loads of different ones here but the one that runs right the way through all the beds is a stranty aroma it’s true pink the strangy aroma is a sterile hybrid which simply means that it can’t set seed if you like later on in the summer you can cut it right down to the base and with a bit of luck you’ll get further flaring in September right the way into October on the other hand lots of the arrantas in here are absolutely fertile and they’ll drop their seeds and the consequence of that is we get all sorts of new arrantas popping up here and there in late spring I planted up this large container with perennials irrigint and scabius they settled in happily and all I’ve had to do is keep it well watered and take off dead petals from the scabius leaving behind decorative seed heads [Music] well for my early summer pot I’m not going to put a whole load of plants together i want to use several containers with just one plant and repeat it as a little theme and the plant I’ve chosen is this Rogeria it’s called bronze peacock i think roers are such handsome plants with these great big palmate leaves often very bronzy and then later in the autumn go the most gorgeous colors and they’ve got a very shiny texture to the leaves as well and as if that wasn’t enough we’ve got these tall spires of flower so I’m going to keep it really simple i’m going to put three rod jerseys into three terra cotta pots starting with this one [Music] [Music] now because these rod jerseys are in pots I’m really going to have to keep an eye on them i’m going to water them regularly and every so often I might give them a bit of liquid feed an organic seaweed feed the great thing about growing anything in a pot like this is you can move it wherever you like up and down the path or if you can see a hole somewhere where something’s died back or not done too well you can just plunk the whole pot in there but the real reason I’ve chosen roers is because I’ve got it planted in these beds and I really think it’ll help take you on a little journey right the way through these beds and borders along the path and out again [Music] well now that I’ve sorted out my pots I’ve got down to the real nittygritty these are two little borders they’re edgewidth bricks they’re slightly raised and they’ve been used for all manner of things plenty of all sorts of wonderful new things in here this is one of a new breed of clemetus they’ve been specially bred to be used on patios in pots and containers or like this to create a bit of height in the middle of a herbaceous border this one is called bridge water they flower and flower for ages and ages if you just look along these stems on every leaf axle there are buds just waiting to come on so once these terminal flies are over they will come out and prolong the flowering season right the way through into the autumn so much has been written and said about how to treat clemetus and all the different groups they belong to and it can get a bit complicated but with this no problem whatsoever on Valentine’s Day sometime early in the year you just chop the whole thing down to just a few inches from the ground and then you’ll get this wonderful growth and all these flowers from June July August September right the way through absolutely beautiful [Music] i wanted to use white fox gloves to kind of link these two beds together over here I’ve already planted digitalis papura alba the white version of our native fox glove but this is a brand new fox glove this one’s called digitalis lucas white and you can see the bells are slightly smaller it’s more branching in habit but it’s a sterile hybrid and it’s that that gives it its perennial nature no seed no reason to stop flowering at all so it’ll just carry on and on [Music] so this is the the final act alchemis it’s sometimes called ladies mantle when I first came here I knew very little about gardening i know a little bit more now but I desperately wanted this plant and I couldn’t find it but I searched and searched eventually found it put it in and now it’s all over my garden just a bit of organic matter in the soil dig it in well put your plant in water it and then leave it alone and it’ll just repay you with years and years of service [Music] isn’t it just glorious it’s brilliant everything’s just bursting into bloom everywhere you look flowers are opening and look at this corners just have a look at that the wedding cake tree corners controversy this foliage is fabulous and all these heads of flowers pale green and white the whole thing is just wonderful and if that wasn’t enough through it is growing this Paul’s Himalayan musk this beautiful pink rose just beginning to open its flows and a real taste of what’s to come hello Come on then oh come on then i think it’s fair to say Carol that you know a lot more than most of us about gardening and the garden is looking absolutely beautiful come on like me Allison is really keen on growing veg and produce but she has a really interesting way of approaching it and it makes for a beautiful veg garden but I really want to explore the different ways that she manages to get succession through the year come on then everybody has crops each year that don’t work so well and this krabby is one of them it’s been munched by pigeons so I’m just going to remove all the colabbi and any plants that aren’t wanted being careful not to weed out things like wild rocket coriander there’s a little ochre here which is a perennial root vegetable and some chundula so everything else will go especially fat hen which tend to see themselves everywhere it can be really disheartening to have a failed crop when you’re growing veg especially if you haven’t thought about succession succession is when you’re almost constantly sewing seeds throughout the spring and summer so that when something goes over you’ve harvested it or it hasn’t worked very well you have something ready to replace it with so the basic way of thinking about succession sewing is all your long crops so things like tomatoes cucumbers chilies oberines they need to be sewn early in the spring because they need a whole season to develop and then brassacas which do need a whole season to develop but are often hardy through the winter can be sewn for a longer period but then your short crops so coriander lettuce radishes can be sewn all the way through the year and if you keep doing them you’re always going to have something to plant out and hopefully something to eat as well now I’ve got rid of everything Allison wanted me to get rid of and I have a nearly blank canvas and all I’m going to do is get some seeds so there’s red vein sorrel there’s some viola with edible flowers and some fennel i’ll mix them up and then just scatter some through this space just a couple of chard in here cuz they’ll get quite big take up a lot of space and provide food for months and months it’s such a good vegetable to grow and that is this space hopefully transformed [Music] [Music] [Music] isn’t this meadow incredible and especially being down in amongst it which I wouldn’t normally dare to do but it’s lovely being here and this meadow is actually on clay soil which is not what you would expect to be successful but what Allison has done is sewn lots of yellow rattle this takes nutrients from perennial grasses which weakens them and then gives space for other plants to grow you can see behind me there’s no yellow rattle in there and that’s what this would have been it’s about 12 years old it takes time to establish but now when I look around there are so many different species there’s clovers there’s veetches we’ve got oxide daisy but it’s not taking over which they do have a tendency to do there’s sorrel there’s plantain there’s so much going on here but what is really special is that there are also orchids there’s the common spotted orchid and there’s quite a few of those but Allison says this year for the I think only second time there’s a pyramidal orchid and there’s a few of them and it just shows that although we know that meadow habitat is really really important for lots and lots of fungi invertebrates insects and I can hear bees around me everywhere it’s also a really important place where we can conserve some rare plant species too and it’s so magical that they have arrived here that’s a bit quieter than a strimmer should I pick up what you’ve
That would be amazing
yes yes please
and is it just the nettles that we’re picking up
yes okay how often do you have to do this um what we tend to do I like to use the nettles um as a compost activator
so when we’re ready to um make the compost it’s quite good to have fresh nettle leaves uh because they contain lots of iron and other nutrients and of course lots of nitrogen
so how do you do that as an activated
we just layer it in
okay so just in with your normal green waste compost
yes yeah i might just kind of rake some of these towards you now make sure you don’t compost nettles that have gone to seed as you’ll have them growing everywhere
nettles are just I mean they’re so brilliant in every way i love drinking it as tea you know especially in the early spring when all that fresh new growth has come through as well
it’s so good and it’s so delicious in soup and things as well i love it as a plant
yeah you can always taste how nutritious it is and they’re also really fantastically beneficial for all kinds of wildlife as well a lot of our common butterflies lay their eggs on nettles so yeah I definitely don’t size all of them i would leave patches in places as well for the wildlife
amazing there are so many uses for this valuable and versatile plant going to make some fermented nettle juices a plant food from the nettles that Allison was sthing from the field it’s very simple just want to crush up the nettles as much as you can to bruise them and rip them and then mix them with an equal weight of brown sugar really then work the two together so that you’re breaking the nettles even more but allowing the sugar to get to every part of it because that sugar is going to be extracting the liquid from the nettles sparking the fermentation and it’s that liquid that’s going to be the plant food in the end so the more broken the better and now that that is all mixed up just put this mix into a sterile jar and really really really firm it down so you’re removing as much air as you can from the mix so that you’re not introducing bacteria and fungus and then just to finish off that air seal I’m going to pour a bit more sugar on and that will form a cap on the top weigh the whole thing down with a stone leave an air gap at the top so that there’s room for the gases to escape and then put a breathable cover on top you don’t want insects landing in it but you do want the air to be able to escape so just some kitchen towel with rubber bands to hold it on then leave that somewhere cool and dark for 5 to 7 days strain off the liquid that forms and that’s your plant food and it needs really diluting so one in 500 or for delicate plants one in a thousand it lasts a long time this is one that’s busy fermenting it’s about 5 days old and you can see the liquid there already forming like thick tar and the lovely thing is it doesn’t smell bad at all [Music] [Music] look at this border it’s absolutely packed with color it’s so beautiful there’s sweet williams here the W is just going over to seed vipers bug gloss fennel there’s some annuals like poppies it’s just a massive riot of color and looking absolutely perfect right now but if you want to plan something like this for next year now is the time to be thinking about sewing those seeds i’ve got a multi-purpose compost here with some horicultural sand mixed in to improve the drainage by now you’ve probably finished sewing any annual flower seeds but now is the time to think about sewing biennials and perennials now the difference obviously is the annuals you’ll sew them they’ll grow they’ll flower and they’ll seed all in one season whereas biianials will grow a little bit now and then they’ll actually flower next year and perennials will start growing now and then flower hopefully for many many years to come and I am going to sew some wed seed this is seed that Allison actually collected from the garden here and it is a biionial or a short-lived perennial it’s isotus tincturia and the word tinctur gives a clue that it’s actually a dye plant this one is traditionally used as a blue dye it’s also quite a large plant with a huge yellow inflloresence which is incredibly good for wildlife so it’s a really useful plant in the garden these are quite big seeds and normally with big seeds I would put them in a module or a pot but bianials and even more so perennials can take quite a long time to germinate and so it sometimes saves you space if you put them into a tray and I’m just going to place them in rows quite well spaced because of their size and that means I can see when they come up in a sort of grid that they’re the right thing anything that comes up not in a line is probably a rogue seed or even a weed then I’ll just cover these lightly with a little bit of compost because these seeds don’t need sunlight to germinate firm it down so that there’s good contact with the soil sticking a label give it a good water and then I’ll leave this outside to grow because it’s fully hardy this time of year it’s warm enough and now we’re off to Watford to visit a garden that is positively jammed full of treasures [Music] was doing a lot of water with so many fouls hi everyone and welcome to my lovely garden and I hope you’re going to love it as much as I love it this made up of maybe 10 different little rooms my crystal room my blue and white china room here we have the bird cage corner with at least 10 bird cages they’re all so beautiful and different in all their own ways i’m Susie or Susette whichever i’ve lived here in the house for 58 years when we moved in there was a lawn and vegetables and shrubs everywhere it was just so boring and we used to spend every weekend mowing the lawn why waste so much time i said to Vic “The first thing we do is the garden.” He said “No no no we’ve got so much.” I said “No the garden comes first.” [Music] The garden is full of antiquities me being the oldest one full of little bits and pieces which all mean something or other on the journey of putting this garden together the last corner of my garden is my chimney pot my chimney pot corner i rather like them when you think of all the years they’ve been on roofs and now they’re adorning my garden I love it i was an interior designer and my customers I they used to clear their rooms and they would say “Susie it’s going in a skip do you want it?” I say “Does a bird fly?” So of course they land back here definitely not a junkyard no way no a gemard totally i like that expression bird cages really are my obsession i have to say that so I’m going to find this a new area for this pretty little one which I think I’m going to hang up here how about that i hope it fits in yeah i always leave them open for anything to fly away cuz I am a free bird myself and I need to know that I can fly whenever whenever I want to they’re so pretty to put plants in i mean I could I could put this in here for instance the patunia which goes rather well with the purple and it’s all surrounded by an habiscus at the back it’s covered with the wisteria which goes all over there this is my restful corner i’ve cleared the space of all the laurel and the Philadelphia it came out here you you you didn’t you just saw greenery and I decided to clear the whole lot and give it a calmer feeling i’ve got an acer coming out here and some lovely ferns coming through gently they’ll be better next year the favorite plants in this area alone are the the beonas and the hookeras the hookeras are lovely because of their contrasting color and these just go on and on i bought over a hundred of them at the beginning of the season and they’ve seen me right the way through so that well worth buying don’t buy one buy 10 oh the work in this garden really never stops i’m always dead heading um which gives me more flowers in the long run mind you I have no nails because of it and I know I should wear gloves but I like to feel my plants but it’s my passion for a start and it’s my sheer joy i mean how lovely to work with flowers all day and every day which I do i love the garden oh hoover my garden gets hoovered more than my house i can assure you of that one if I know somebody’s coming that hoover comes out and the garden looks 100% cleaner and nicer i think I’m getting maybe just a two too many articles this is another little corner called my blue and white charity china every one of these pieces come from the charity shop and everybody saves them for me which is lovely and topped my lovely patunia which goes on through the summer and it’s a compliment to each other which is lovely and sometimes I fill them up with these little succulents just put them into water and they will they will take there [Music] can you hear that frog [Music] you hear it proper gardeners would say she ain’t no gardener but I don’t really care this is one of the easiest plants to take a cutting from the Leveta tree sometimes they call it Levitra but I call it Leveta you literally split it off a joint and plunge it into good damp earth give it a good water and leave it you’ll have a tree next year i mean the garden as much for me I want to show it off to everybody else maybe that’s a little bit bigheaded of me cuz I think that everything looks so beautiful of course I love gardening yes it’s part and parcel of my life i’d be lost without it don’t move me to a flat when I’m too old i’d have to have a garden [Music] what makes our garden so special is how personal they are to us and I love that Cette turned what would have been a garden like everybody else’s into something completely uniquely hers are you making some of your beautiful supports Alison
yes I’m just putting um something in for the ders just because when they grow up they’re going to start getting a little bit floppy
fair enough but they’re absolutely stunning all around the garden i love it it gives so much character to the space
thank you it’s quite addictive once you start working with the willow and the hazel yeah
I’ve never done it much i’ve always intended to and then found other things to do and end up just stringing things but could you show me how you do that yeah of course yeah so yeah if you grab with just two willow sticks willow okay what you’re doing is you’re going in at 45° cuz that way when it’s finished you’ve got an open center
okay
and then hold them in the middle point and then just ease them round sometimes it’s helpful to put your hand through and grab the end is that right
yeah and then you’d come in and put the next two outside
yes that’s right
okay
exactly you can get quite creative with it
suppose it’s like anything once you’ve got the technique the basic you can start to kind of riff off that and do it a bit more
with flare yeah
i’m not going to attempt flare today i’m just going to attempt the very very basics looking good
oh thank you see how strong they are once you’ve twisted them
it makes a huge difference doesn’t it
yeah it really does
well I think I’ve sort of got the hang of this if it’s helpful I can carry on doing this
be great yeah okay thank you
no worries new skills good
told you it’s addictive i warn you might look like I’m doing this really prematurely because this daily is very very small but actually getting stakes in the ground now before the flowers get tall is a really good way of doing it because if I waited for this stem to get tall the wind to blow and it to flop over and then I tried to pick it up it would never quite look right so by doing this now it’s going to make the world of difference to how this border grows and of course ders are late summer flowers they’re filled with quite big flowers which makes them more prone to falling over because the weight of them can collapse the stems so it’s an ideal candidate for some staking now the thing I like about this method as well is that although this is using willow that’s bought especially for weaving you could use other things gardening can be quite expensive so if you had some maybe hazel branches that you’d cpped spare pea sticks something like that or you just had any old branches that have come off in winter storms you can save them and reuse them and create something that may not be quite as neat as this but would certainly be a lot more bespoke and um wildl looking and I really like that [Music] [Music] [Music] this space I’m in is a rather magnificent but unintentional dry garden so all these beautiful plants are self-seeded as well as lots of other things these are just sages and this incredible digitalis parvlora milk chocolate it’s called with beautiful sort of orangey flowers has just popped up everywhere here and given Allison the idea of turning it into a much more planned out dry garden this is a lovely euphobia called euphobia suana and it’s very small now but it gets about 80 cm height and spread when it’s fully grown but it keeps this lovely delicate foliage it’s really beautiful and it should go very nicely against things like the blue flower of the sages that have selfseeded these lovely yellow bracks but also the form of it sort of echoes the shape of the digitalis and there are other euphorias here as well there’s large ones down here but also different kinds throughout the higher garden as well but dry gardens in general they’re one of my favorite kinds of gardens and as you can see when I dig down into this it’s really sand and gravel that I’m planting in no soil at all and of course lots of plants wouldn’t love that kind of position but then many many plants really do like to have dry roots so particularly if you’re living in a wetter area you might want to introduce some gravel and sand and just plant straight into that rather than trying to grow plants like Mediterranean herbs for example that would really be unhappy in a waterlogged soil it could be one way of doing it or you can just go with what your garden naturally does and exploit the kinds of plants that would thrive in your conditions there are two schools of thought but here this was just a nice usable place for the family and has now become a selfd designated dry garden there we go even though these are drought tolerant plants they’ll still need a really good watering in just to get them to establish well and then they should be happy to be left here in this sunny free draining spot there now obviously not all gardens have this kind of very dry position and Adam recently went to visit one that was quite the opposite [Music] we’re always talking about the weather this year it’s been a hot dry spring some of us like it some of us don’t and some of our gods have suffered and it’s quite easy to forget that other extreme cold wet winters a lot more flooded well today I’m off to meet a lady who’s dealing with just that wendy Bundy moved here with a late husband in 2006 this 2 acre garden had bags of potential and nearly 20 years on it’s become something really special what makes it all the more impressive is where this garden sits right on the banks of the river Derwent so during the winter months it’s vulnerable to flooding you look very busy yes I’m trying to get rid of all this Himalayan balsom which is dominating in this border as you can see comes in every year it floats in on the flood very easy to get out but you have to keep doing it very gently so paint me a picture i mean this floods nearly every year
we’ve been here nearly 20 years and we’ve had one winter when it hasn’t flooded
some winters it comes up for a week and goes down and then it comes up again in the spring sometimes it’s much much longer the winter and spring of 23 to 24 this lot was all underwater from October to the beginning of March wow
so 4 and 1/2 months everything in here survived that we’re at the bottom end of the river so it comes up very slowly but you can’t get cross with it because it’s the flood you’ve got a great attitude to just you know what will work will work and I’m not going to worry about the other stuff well you can’t and I’ve learned over the years what will go what won’t go so everything that survives is tough and so it’s common because common things in gardens are toughest that have survived and whilst everybody said “Oh you can’t plant roses where it floods.” Well you darn well can actually as you can see yeah
the 40 years of experience I’ve had in the village I’m sure it’s got worse and it’s got worse in the sense of there is more water it lasts longer
so when the water eventually goes away you’re left with
a mess
yes
but silk that does you some good
yes
and I’m looking forward to finding out a little bit more but we’ve pulled some of this out what do you do with it
put it in the compost yeah
it’s interesting because a lot of people would then panic wouldn’t they but I’m presuming it’s not in flour there’s no seed
it will rot down beautifully
well I’ll get rid of this for you
thank you very much this Himalayan bogome can be an absolute thug but when it’s got quite a layback approach trying to keep on top of it she knows she’s never going to get rid of it and when it comes to the composting it’s not in flower you know it’s not seeding so that makes sense but for me if it rocked up in my garden it probably would make me very nervous and I wouldn’t just put it in the green bin in reality what I do is I check with a local authority because you’re going to find that some of them are going to take slightly different approaches as to how to deal with it wendy’s practical she’s not chasing a dream and that word common tough hardworking plants i think sometimes we can be a little bit snobby but look at that they are exactly that you know plants that you’ll see maybe around a car park at the supermarket but it works on so many levels but first of all if you look at the trees things like the plum cherry the hazels and then you’ve got the sales so good hardworking stock if we come down to the shrubs cornice dogwoods spyas lovely white flower and then you’ve got the berberous but they work as really good forms for the habaceous planting things like the alamila and then the deraniums the masamakia which loves those damper conditions but one more thing that for me has become a bit of a fascination is the annuals the bianuals and the shortlived perennials whatever your conditions yeah other plants might suffer but anything seedbased hits the ground it stays there we could have dry we could have wet but you can pretty much guarantee they’ll come up the following year and that’s exactly what’s going on here you’ve got the poppies popping up and then you’ve got the maragolds and you can see bits and pieces doing that around Wendy’s garden so think about it a few months ago the water was this high isn’t that incredible that sort of demonstration of the power of plants [Music] as tough as some plants can be Wendy’s really embraced the changes that come with more extreme weather and being on the edge of a flood plane means it’s not if the garden will flood but when so Wendy the river sort of wraps all the way around
yes it goes around in a great big curve and there was a mill there at one stage
but actually looking at it you know your view quite incredible you see the irises coming up and then that’s followed by
meadow suite
meadow suite and the reedi type grasses
absolutely
i mean they’re like moving aren’t they and dancing yes it’s are very beautiful your pond obviously gets a natural feel once a year
absolutely on a positive look your hostas seem to absolutely love it
they’ve come up and gone from strength to strength i suppose they’re getting that dose of silt other people mulch with bark but in reality you couldn’t cuz bark floats and it finishes up all over the lawn [Music] fruit trees don’t really like sitting in wet soil so here they’ve been planted on slightly raised mounds to keep some of their roots out of the water they seem to be thriving and it’s not just apples and pears
look at my apricots oh wow yeah in North Yorkshire you love that then didn’t you north Yorkshire there we go it’s funnier though absolutely yeah [Music] i’m smiling Wendy because I’m thinking flab plane asparagus wouldn’t be the first thing that jumped to market
no absolutely and it only survives because we are prepared to build up this bed on top of the raised bed already
so you’ve got raised beds on raised beds
it’s the only way to do the asparagus
and what sort of mix did you put in there then
a real mixture of compost gravel and sand real sharp sand
um and then more compost i take my hat off to you you seem to have really stuck at it grown what you can taken gambles experimented which ultimately is what gardening’s all about it’s a hobby isn’t it and and you have to do what you can with the hobby and I enjoy achieving what you can achieve and then actually also seeing what you can’t achieve yeah
and also understanding that one year will be good and the next year it’ll be rubbish but you mustn’t think you’ve actually had a poor year and it’s never going to be good but it’ll come back again extraordinarily [Music] i’m going to take you back
yes
20 years to when you moved in here
would you do it all again probably if I’ve had the health and strength today as I did have 20 years ago I probably would
i knew this exactly what you were going to say honestly I seriously It’s great absolutely brilliant i love the way you’ve just got your head around the conditions and you just plowed on
yes absolutely oh oh somebody else does the plowing these days [Music] this here roses seem to have done really really well i think we’ve had lots of quite warm and dry weather they flowered early but that means that they are now in need of a little bit of deadheading if you want to keep them going this one is a repeat flower so cutting off the dead heads will keep new blooms going you can see there’s lots of buds forming for more flowers and when I dead head them I don’t just take the top off i cut it right down to where that meets a new joint so that it’s also doing a little bit of pruning at the same time and that just keeps it in good health but there getting rid of the dead heads just means you’re maximizing the flowers without the unsightly old blooms at the same time but if your rose forms hips then once these later flowers have finished lead them on because then you’ll have something to feed the birds through the autumn there of course this is the time of year when we can really enjoy our gardens but there’s always more jobs to do [Music] as soft fruit like these tabberries start to ripen it’s time to protect them from hungry birds drape a temporary netting over the plant making sure it’s pulled tight and secured firmly [Music] check it regularly to ensure no wildlife has got trapped inside [Music] to protect young plants from suffering in the heat it’s important to keep your greenhouse cool as the weather warms up open all the doors and windows to allow air to flow through and pollinating insects to come in and out it’s a good idea to close it all again at night in case the temperatures drop [Music] while self-seeding plants like borage alchemilla and this valyan make beautiful additions to the garden they can sometimes become a bit too dominant [Music] to keep them in check remove most of the seed heads leaving just a few behind for the seeds to ripen and spread naturally [Music] here you go cup of nettle tea m
yes please cheers
cheers very good
can still taste that iron
m it does it tastes really good doesn’t it well thank you very much for having me today and sharing this with me and Ruer who’s making himself very at home
yeah well Swiggy’s loved having you here and Yeah well hopefully you’ll come back that would be lovely thank you very much do that
well next week Monty and Ned will be back at Long Meadow and until then see you [Music] heat heat [Music] heat heat [Music] heat heat [Music] heat [Music] heat heat [Music] heat heat heat [Music] [Applause] [Music]