Monty Don Meets An 100-Year-Old Gardener Who Shares Her Secrets! | Gardeners’ World

Watch more Gardeners’ World here: https://youtu.be/cRXCcj-CQuU

This week, we look at the seasonal delights of plums and damsons, with a look at their historic journey to England. We meet a truly inspiring gardener, Margaret, who is about to turn 100 and still tends to her garden with incredible passion. We then share some essential advice for planting foxtail lilies for maximum impact, and the secrets to keeping salvias looking their best all summer long. Later, we show you how to prepare your garden for autumn by harvesting summer herbs like basil and planting a new winter crop of parsley. We end the episode with a beautiful, low-maintenance garden makeover, turning a problem area under a hedge into a wildflower haven that will also benefit local wildlife.

00:00 Introduction
01:31 Planting Foxtail Lilies
08:25 Pruning Salvias
12:18 Harvesting Basil & Making Pesto
15:58 Growing Winter-Hardy Parsley
19:36 Meet The 100-Year-Old Gardener
24:00 Creating a Dry Shade Wildflower Garden

Click here for more gardening content: https://www.youtube.com/@GardenersGuideChannel

From: Gardeners’ World Series 04 Episode 23
Content licensed by All3Media to Little Dot Studios
Any queries, please contact us at: owned-enquiries@littledotstudios.com

#Gardening #MontyDon #Flowers

Hello. Welcome to Garner’s World. Plums are one of those fruits that are so distinctly associated to a season for me. But there’s always a surit and the best way to store them is as jam. And one of my favorites are damsons. But the thing I most like about them, apart from their taste, is their story because they were bought over by the crusaders back in the early medieval times. And they’re called damsons after Damascus. Of course, humans aren’t the only ones that love plums. Butterflies will gorge themselves on the lovely sticky juices. This week, Carol pays a visit to a garden in Kent, where the beauty of salvas is celebrated in every form. Salvas are one of the largest gener in the entire kingdom of plants. Almost all of them are worth growing for their extraordinary flowers. They say that gardening is one of the best ways of keeping your youth. Well, here’s the proof of it because we visit a gardener about to celebrate her 100th birthday and still gardening with enthusiasm and vigor. I couldn’t live without it. It keeps me going. And I’m going to be resolving a problem area where hedges are shading out the grass as well as harvesting a herb that belongs quintessentially to summer and replacing it with another that does very well in winter. [Music] I’m going to plant one of my favorite early summer flowers. And that’s the foxtail lily, the erramus, which grows a fabulous spire of flower that when it’s back lit is incandescent and it glows and burns and yet manages to be elegant and silhouetted by light. It’s a glorious, glorious plant. Now is the time to plant it. Don’t wait till spring because this is its dormant period. So you can move it, get it in the ground. and it will start growing in early and mid-autumn. So, this is something to do this month if at all possible. And what you get when you buy the plant at this stage is anything but a spiral flower. It’s these long rat tails of roots with a central boss in the middle and that’s of course where the flower stem will come from. And these are very fragile so you have to be careful when you’re handling it. This, by the way, is a variety called Cleopatra, which has got a pink apricotty tinge to it. Very beautiful. And I’ve got a space in there. Now, you can see that the soil in there is nice and gritty, which is good. Aramurus originates from Central Asia. That’s the area around Turkey, Afghanistan. And it grows on rocky baked hillsides that are grazed by animals. So it likes good drainage and sunshine and the animals, particularly cattle, won’t eat the aromurus. So they eat all around it. So there’s nothing shading it. So think of all that when you’re placing it in the garden. So full sun and good drainage, which I’ve got here. Now, when you dig a hole for it, it needs to be pretty shallow. And I’m going to put some grit mixed with compost onto that. Now, one of the slight peculiarities of Aramurus is that you plant it very shallowly. Don’t bury it deep. Just an inch of soil over the roots is quite enough. So, essentially, I’m putting the roots down like that, and then I’ll just heat the soil up over it. like that. I’m just going to put some grit mixed with compost over the top and that will protect the roots and also ensure the drainage because you can guarantee between now and next April when it starts to grow we will have a lot of rain. Now, there’s one final job that’s important. That is to mark it because the roots are very brittle. And if you don’t mark it and come spring or winter, you’re working in the border, you hear a horrible crunching sound. And that’s as my great feet tread on the roots and break them. So, I’m going to stick that in there. And that’s it. It’s completely happy now. And it will start to appear. And what you get is this sort of steeple. this cone that appears above ground and from that the flower emerges. Come on. Come on. That’s a good boy. Here. Squeeze. Go on then. Good boy. Go on. I bought this Salvia Salvia Amistad at Hampton Court Flower Show this year and it’s got exactly the sort of intensity of color that I love here in the Jaw Garden. I’d like to grow more salvas if I could, but they don’t really like our heavy wet soil here at Long Meadow. But Carol went to Seven Oaks to meet William Dyson as part of her search for the iconic plants that we all love to grow in our gardens and the people who devoted their lives to him. And he has an incredible range of salvas. Come on, Mush. Come on. [Music] Salvas are one of the largest gener in the entire kingdom of plants with more than 900 species. Some of them are shrubs, others perennials. There are annuals and bianuals too. Most have aromatic foliage, but almost all of them are worth growing for their extraordinary flowers in a rainbow range of colors that brighten up even the dulllest of days. William Dyson holds the largest collection of shrubby salvas in the UK and he’s the country’s leading salvia expert. So this border is completely composed of these shrubby Mexican salvas. It certainly is. Yeah. Quite a sight, isn’t it? When do they start flowering? How long they go on for? These will start off flouring typically in early May and they’ll go right the way through into late November. And which are the hardiest in all this vast range? Well, a lot of these are hardy, but the real um stall warts bone hardy variety if you like would be these two here, the very dark purple um salvia blinder. Lovely color, isn’t it? And then the plant next to it, which is Salvia Jezebel. People get very worried because they’ve got a reputation for being tender, haven’t they? They have. If you think about the environment where they come from, we’re looking at high altitude, plenty of sunlight, plenty of air, and perfect drainage. So really, the reason people lose them is because it’s a combination of wet and cold. Yeah, that’s right. Don’t try and grow them in clay. If you haven’t got the right kind of soil, try growing them in containers. I think they look absolutely brilliant in these mixed borders, but they’re a fairly new group of plants as far as a lot of British gardeners are concerned, aren’t they? Most people have only started growing them fairly recently. They have. And I think the arrival of hot lips really was the thing that started everybody on salvas, which is a shrubby salvia. What do people ask about salvas? People ask most of all about how do they prune them and when do they prune them? Yeah. And the two main periods of the year for pruning are the the early April prune. Take that maybe down to about a foot, but always making sure there’s new shoots below where you’re cutting. And you’ll then get a big amount of regrowth, a surge of growth, surge of growth and mass masses of flowers. And if you want to keep a good shape to the plant, it’s better to actually prune the whole lot off again by about a half. We do it in July. We call this the Hampton hack. All right. Okay. So, Hampton Court time. It’s easy to remember. As opposed to Chelsea Chop. Chelsea Chop. Yeah. And this is going to encourage a new crop of flowers within about four or five weeks from pruning. And it’s not going to give you a leggy plant. And those pieces that you’ve cut off, can you grab hold of those and make new cutings? You can make cutings out of those. I mean, better still is to use the growth that comes from the April prune. Take some of those nice soft tips and root those up. They will root probably in about two weeks. Easy as that. Two weeks really. And then you’ve got a good long growing season before the bad weather of the winter arrives. I just love the way they combine with other plants. Don’t you? I do. Absolutely. And I mean they will have been in flower when all your first perennials were here and and here they are again with ders and fuches and this lovely thing that’s a salvia too. That’s salvia as well. Yeah that’s a herbaceous species which comes from Argentina and that’s going to die down completely to the ground in the winter and then rock it up from about May onwards to what are we there about 7 foot high. Yeah. Nearly as tall as you. Absolutely. [Music] There’s no doubt that salvas are wonderful garden plants, but they’re also fascinating when you actually get down to the detail, aren’t they? They really are. And where they come from in Central America. I mean, one of the things that pollinates them is hummingbirds, isn’t it? Yes, indeed. Yeah. Hummingbirds are very, very attracted to the nectar rich source within the tube here. But it’ll come along and in goes its beak. Oh, how those stam down there. Astonishing. So this is a stammans and the anthers on the end are loaded with pollen, aren’t they? Absolutely. Yeah. So that’ll go onto the buming bird and it’ll drink all the nectar out of the tube and then fly away to another one. Yeah. And he’ll go in and start sipping nectar from there. And the pollen might just catch onto the inside top. This is a stigma. So that’s the female part of the flower sort of feathery on the end, isn’t it? And that will pick up the pollen grains and fertilization will take place. It’s rather wonderful. I mean, why has it got this sort of mechanism? The whole idea is to broaden the gene pool. So you’ve got genetic diversity. Yeah. And you’re not in breeding, so to speak. Yes. But you don’t have any such problems, do you? Because you you can cross. We can do whatever we like. We can cross anything with anything. Yeah, we crossed this for instance, Salvia Knack Flinda. Yeah. With this one, Salvia Dyson’s joy and we came out with Salvia Dyson’s J. Beautiful deep purple, isn’t it? Nice color, isn’t it? Yeah. We’re currently trying to work on a very, very dark blue. Salvia patterns. That’s my favorite salvia. Fantastic blue. But that in a shrubby hybrid that flowers from May till November, grows to about I don’t know 2 ft tall. Absolutely perfect. That’s what we want. It’s already in your mind, isn’t it? Completely. And now all you’ve got to do is create it. Create it. Of course, sage is a salvia. A very beautiful one, too. We always let this flower before cutting it back. Talking about beautiful and flowers and herbs. The basil is beginning to show signs of autumn. And of all the plants in the garden, basil is the best measure of temperature because it hates cold. And as soon as the temperature drops, the leaves get thicker and the plant gets less palatable. You lose that lovely freshness that good basil has. And if there’s a touch of frost, just a nip, it’ll just blacken and you lose a lot. So, what I plan to do is cut my losses, say that this will not improve, harvest all my outdoor basil, and turn it into pesto where I can store it and then use the bed to plant some parsley. And by the way, the outdoor basil has been okay this year. It’s been worth growing, but not nearly as good as a basil in the cold frames. Basil is a tropical plant that likes lots of heat, lots of water, good drainage, some goodness and richness in the soil. Now, to put all that together is really tricky outside. However, let’s make the most of it. Oh, look what I found. There’s a surprise. You don’t want that, do you? Go on. The best way of handling basil is to cut the whole stems and take them somewhere like a kitchen table and strip the leaves off. This is the last of the crop. So the point is to store it as good as it can be at this stage of the year and that means turning it in our house into pesto. Pesto just means paste. And if you use basil, pine nuts, and parmesan, you have a delicious pesto. It’s really good. You can freeze it easily and then use it in the middle of winter and just get that lovely rich taste of summer flooding back. This, by the way, is our second sewing of basil. Oh, that’s our cockro. I got given some banttoms for my birthday. There were tiny little things. Well, that’s the first time he’s crowed. Good on you, boy. Now, just don’t do it at 4:00 in the morning. This is our second sewing of basil. This was sewn in April. This end section of basil is from the first sewing, which was in February. And you can see if I pull that up, that’s quite a substantial plant. Whereas when you buy the herb in a supermarket or wherever in a little pot, they sprinkle seed. So you’ll probably have a dozen different basil plants in a tiny little pot and the leaves will be good and they’ll be nice, but they won’t last very long because that’s what each of those dozen plants wants to be. So, buy a packet of seed, start sewing them next spring, space them out nice and widely, and you’ll get strong plants that you’ll harvest from May right through till September. Right. Well, I’ve got an empty bed and I don’t want that over winter. So, I’m going to prepare this and put some parsley where the basil was. Although there’s added grit in this bed, which is good for the drainage, I’m adding some compost, and I had added some before to slightly enrich the soil because I’m going to put parsley in now. And parsley likes good drainage, and it likes some sunshine, but it can take some shade and it does best in fairly good lom. Now, compost is the ideal thing. And you can see I’m just putting it on very thinly because compost works by stimulating the soil’s bacterial and fungal activity. So, every time I replace any plant in these vegetable beds, I just dress it with compost and that literally is enough. This is flat leaf parsley and the more traditional English parsley is curly leaf. And the essential difference between the two is that this has got a milder taste and also the texture of the foliage is much finer whereas curly leaf parsley you have to chop up really. But they’re both good. Space it out generously. That’s the key to it. Give them a chance. And what that means of course is repeated cutting. I tend to harvest my parsley by cutting the whole thing down to the ground and letting the whole thing regrow. And you can probably do that three, four times in its life. It’s not only delicious, which is the main reason for eating it, but it’s actually very good for you, too. It’s rich in vitamin C and vitamin K, which is bone strengthening, in antioxidants, and so it’s one of those foods that is happily a combination of medicine and delight. And you can’t say that about many things. Well, if I haven’t persuaded you to go out and buy some parsley and plant it this weekend, here are some other things that you can be doing. [Music] Many shrub roses put on a growth spurt when they finish flowering, and this can result in long waving tendrils that can catch the wind and damage the roots over the winter. So prune these back so the shrub has an even uniform shape. If you’re going to water anything in your vegetable plot or on your a lotment this weekend, give celery, cilerak, and young lettuce a really good soak as these are plants that will benefit most. And as always with watering, don’t water the plant, water the soil. It’s a good time to take pelagonium cutings. Choose a strong growing tip and cut off between two and 4 in and put this straight into a polyine bag. Then when you’re ready, remove most of the foliage, just leaving a leaf or two. Make a clean cut with a sharp knife and place the cutings around the edge of a plastic pot filled with a free draining compost. Now I’ll pop these in the greenhouse and keep the compost moist but not get the leaves too wet because pelagonium cutings like to be kept fairly dry. Now, they say that gardening is the best recipe for preserving your youth. Well, here is the proof of that. [Music] Well, my garden’s small, but I love it. I know everything in it, and they’re all mean something to me. Although it’s not a showy garden, I still love it all. I’ve enjoyed my life. Wouldn’t change anything in it. I don’t think about being a hunter. I was born 23rd of September 1914. I was the fourth of five children. My father was a head gardener in a large house and my mother was parade. So I presume that’s how they met. They grew all their vegetables like peas and beans and carrots. Potatoes used to last right through to the next season. You swapped with neighbors. Nothing was wasted in those days. It was war time. I like to think I take after my father. You wonder all your life what he was like. Early 1917 he was called up and he was killed at the end of 1917 December and I would have only been 3 years old. None of us remember him which is very sad. something we can’t alter but always regret. [Music] Well, my husband was a keen gardener, but like me, we were amateur. We learned the hard way. Even when we married, we had garden. We loved our garden and we used to spend most evenings in the summertime in the garden. I always did the flower beds and he did the lawns and the heavy work. My husband would have liked the beds more organized and I haven’t, but I like them natural. This is my husband’s favorite rose tree cuz it was yellow. He loved yellow roses. It’s my favorite photograph. He’s sitting outside his chin. [Music] That chameleia a friend bought me because it was called Margaret and it’s been beautiful. Cut it down. Don’t know whether I should. It still blooms. I don’t do things by the book. I want something cuted cut off. I cut it off then. I’m usually lucky. I don’t kill them. These are seeds I’ve gathered ready for next year. That’s being optimistic. Those are cichlmen and these are pens. [Music] I like taking seeds and cutings. I like to have a little bit of everything in the garden. I have my tomatoes every year. These are called Shirley and they’re doing very well this year. And I have had cucumbers. Got one left. I think there’s more coming. Love cucumbers. [Music] You can forget your troubles if you come out in the garden for a few hours. I couldn’t live without it. I think it keeps me going. [Music] Well, all I can say is wishing you a very happy birthday on the 23rd, Margaret, and may there be many more to come. You’re an inspiration. I bet you’re glad you’re not doing this, though, Margaret, because it’s horrible work. This is a strip of ground either side of the path. And up to 5 years ago, this was perfectly mowable grass, just like the rest of the path all the way down the center of the garden here. But in the last 5 years, the hedge has grown quite substantially. Not up because we kept it cut, but the roots have grown out. You can see as I dig in, you can hear I’m just tearing at roots. And the upshot is that it’s mud for half the year and a dust bowl for the other half. So I want to make a virtue out of necessity. And you can buy very specific grass and wild flour mixes for almost every kind of soil and situation. And if you’re not sure where to go for it, if you look on the internet and just type in uh wildflower mix for hedros, for example, you will come up with all sorts of choices. And what I’m doing is preparing the ground to sew seed for a predominantly wild flower with some grass in it that will cope with shade, that will cope with the roots of the hedges and will look really nice and then can be moan later on in the year. And to prepare the ground, all I’ve got to do is just loosen the soil. It doesn’t need double digging. It doesn’t even need going very deep at all. Just an inch or two. And you can do this in quite a small area. If you’ve got a patch alongside a fence, a wall, or a hedge that’s a bit shady, then you could just do a small area, a yard or two, and that would look really good. And the other great virtue as well as looking good is it’s fantastic for wildlife. All the unruly growth that you get with wild flowers and long grass is perfect, particularly for bringing insects into the garden. So, having lightly dug it over, it just be raked to get rid of the worst of any lumps or stones. Doesn’t matter if it’s perfect because this is not going to be a lawn. Just a nice even surface. Now, I have a seed mix that I’ve ordered specifically for dry shade along a hedro. And that’s the amount for what I’ve prepared already. Now, you can see there’s not very much there. Hardly any seed at all. In fact, it works out about four grams per square meter. And it’s quite important not to sew too much. There are about 12 wild flowers including red campion, cows slip, wood havens, napweed and some grasses. The first year there will be more annuals than perennials and gradually the perennials will germinate, grow and spread. And by about year three, you’ll have the final mix you want. So don’t be tempted to sew too thickly. And the reason why you’re not sewing too thickly is because each of these seeds, even though they may seem tiny and insignificant, are plants. And the closer they are together, the more they’re competing for nutrients, particularly the perennial wild flowers need to have a good start in life. Now, that’s the seed sewn. Now, if this was a lawn, you’d rake it. But what you need to do for wildflower seed in particular is to make sure it has really good contact with the soil. The easiest way to do that is treddle. Right, that’s the closest you’ll ever get to see me on Strictly Come Dancing. Next thing to do is water it in. One of the great beauties of sewing any kind of grass seed at this time of year is not only is the soil warm, but there’s usually enough moisture, if not from rain, than from dew to help it germinate and grow very strongly. And then next spring it will take off and the first wild flowers will appear and hopefully we’ll get the transformation from a rather bare ugly path into a woodland walk filled with flowers. Well, the proof will be in the pudding. Hang around and next year we’ll see. But certainly that’s it for today. Bye-bye. [Music] Come on. [Music]