Monty Don’s Private White Garden: Woodland Planting Tips | Gardeners’ World

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Monty Don guides you through essential gardening tasks, beginning with a visit to his famous white garden where he shares planting inspiration for shady borders, adding a stunning white Hydrangea and Viburnum. In the vegetable patch, Monty shows you how to tell when your new potatoes are ready to harvest and giving tips on enjoying them at their best. Meanwhile, Adam Frost begins a major project to build a gravel garden, demonstrating his simple technique for transforming heavy clay soil into the free-draining conditions needed for plants.

00:00 Introduction
07:35 Formal Planting Principles & Garden Structure
12:23 Harvesting New Potatoes
16:48 Creating a Gravel Garden
18:11 Best Plants for Gravel Garden
23:23 Summer Pruning Espalier Pear Trees
26:15 Making Comfrey Liquid Feed & Gardening Tips

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From: Gardeners’ World | Series 05 Episode 17
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Go on. Come on. Come on. Hello. Welcome to Gardener’s World. Well, after the hotly burly of Hampton Court, it’s nice to be back into the cool of my writing garden, which of course is mainly white. What is magnificent and I’ve come home to is this rose. It’s called wedding day. It’s a rambling rose that I planted two years ago. The first year didn’t do anything. Last year I was very disappointed it didn’t flower at all. But boy has it made up for it this year. An absolute treat. But I’m not quite sure about that yellow evening primrose and the pink opium poppy. In the right place, they’re both lovely flowers that are more than welcome in the garden. But here in the white garden, I don’t know. Should I pull them or just enjoy them while they last and then get rid of them? Not sure. [Music] This week, Carol is celebrating the formal planting combinations of Woolton Old Hall in Shroptshire. Wow, look at this. Isn’t it magnificent? And away from creating gold medal winning show gardens, the designer Adam Frost tackles his own backyard. I’m literally going to have hours of fun just simply playing with these plants. [Music] A few weeks ago, I laid this turf and it’s growing strongly and I reckon in about 3 4 days I can just lightly pass a myrr over it be able to walk on it in a week but it’s looking good now this whole area has been long meadow grass for the last 25 years since we’ve been here and so these are brand new borders and I want to get shrubs under here this is a particular type of environment it’s quite shady this is effectively woodland planting and I’m starting with this glorious hydranger. This is hydranger macrofiler lanath white. One of my favorite of them all. And these great big petals give it its display. Whereas in fact in the middle you’ve got the flowers which are tiny and they are actually blue which means they’ve been raised in acidic conditions. Hydrangeas will respond to acidic soil by taking on a blue shade and to an alkaline soil. That’s a pH over seven with a pink shade. And we are just slightly alkaline here. So in this soil here, next year they’ll be pink. I want these to be an accent plant on the corner. I thought I would have them either side across here. Now, these will grow to about five, six feet tall. Now, as for planting them, easy peasy because the soil is prepared. It’s been dug and garden compost added to it. Hydrangeas do best in light shade. And by light shade, it means either dappled shade or shade that is only for part of the day. That’s a little too deep. If I want the surface of the soil in the pot to be the same height as the surface in the ground, traditionally you would plant this somewhere between October and March when it was dormant. But it’s fine to do it now as long as you give it a really good soak when you first plant it. And you must keep them watered. Often the situation when you’re planting a young shrub with large flowers, the structure supporting it isn’t yet woody enough to stop it flopping all over the place. So that may well need support. And then those big flowers will be held and poised and not drag the branches down. Well, before the rain really gets too heavy to garden in, I’m going to put in a couple of viburnums. This is viburnum plecartum summer snowflake. Now, viburnum plecartum grows laterally. You get these lovely tears of branches and the flowers sit on them in June and July. White flowers actually quite similar to a hydranger. But the thing that viburnum has which can beat any hydranger is this incredible autoutuminal color. The leaves turn almost a dark sort of plum color. It’s a fabulous autumn foliage and they are very very tough adaptable plants. Perfect for this semi-shade. Quite happy in the soil. Nothing could be simpler than just to pop that into the ground. firm it in. Well, and there you go. Now, what I am going to do, it may seem eccentric because it is raining quite steadily. I’m still going to water them all in. What I’m trying to achieve with these shrubs is to create an informal planting style within these two parallel quarters. But Carol has been to visit a garden that is distinctly formal and yet gloriously so. And this is Woolton Old Hall, an RHS partner garden in Trotch. I’m looking at the exciting and inspiring ways gardeners are putting plants together. A few weeks ago, I saw how plants could be successfully combined to achieve a wild and naturalistic effect. But if you want a bit more lore and order in your garden, today I’m going to be looking at formal plant combinations. The garden at Wooliton Old Hall is a formal feast for the eyes. It’s the creation of Leslie Jenkins who in 1983 bought back her childhood home and began to create a garden of interconnecting rooms around the property. This garden has lots of features that we all associate with formal planting. It’s got clipped obelisks and these beautiful domes. Although there are these straight lines and these tailored hedges throughout the garden, they are all there to allow us to appreciate the absolute exquisite beauty of the planting. [Music] So what do we mean by formal planting? Andrew Humphre, the head gardener at Wallace Old Hall, agrees that while the garden is formal, they use the formality to create a visual rhythm around the garden. Hello, Andrew. What a lovely way to come into a garden. Oh, hi Carol. Having cats swishing around your ankles. Yeah, it’s beautiful, isn’t it? Oh, it’s a just such a gorgeous garden. But this whole idea of formality, I mean, what does it mean to you? Oh, I think you’ve got to have the structure of the hedges and the walls and that formality to set off the vibrant planting. It’s all about uh the height in the borders uh the rhythm of the planting. Uh it’s to do with the the repetition of things throughout the garden, which helps the garden flow. It’s all to do with having uh a garden that is not a series of just individual rooms, but trying to make the garden gel as a whole and to flow as a whole. having the taller things at the back mostly, although we do try and bring height forward as well. Um, and just trying to get the planting looking good so that the plants look fantastic. Every so often you have to really squeeze between hedges, don’t you? Is that deliberate? It is. Those narrow gaps. Uh, one, it’s perspective. So, you’re looking particularly from the main house right through and then you have a narrow gap. So, that again is making it look further than it is. And it’s also hiding those hot colors cuz the hot garden’s behind that and we don’t want to see uh those hot colors. That needs to be a surprise as you come out into that area. Yeah. So, cuz it’s like being like that and then suddenly there it is. Absolutely. Brilliant idea. [Music] Wow. Look at this. Isn’t it magnificent? This planting is perfectly orchestrated from one end. It runs through the whole spectrum. Yellow down there coming to here with these gorgeous lavenders and cool pinks. Look at the border. It’s taller at the back. It’s shorter at the front with this straight edge of grass. You have to walk along here. This is the emphasis. and then up into all these beautiful plants that you can truly appreciate just walking all the way along. How about that? Gala. Such a straightforward plant. Kaliga, his majesty with the these long beautiful sort of rasims. Aaronic castrum. This one’s called pointed finger and mounds of achilia too. But I’ll tell you what, nothing’s strayed. Everything is controlled. Everything is exactly as it should be. And it is glorious. [Music] Well, one of the many garden rooms here is formality personified. You’ve got these beautifully matched symmetrical box clipped absolutely perfectly into these big domes. And then in the background, look at this. This rose Francis Lester. I mean, plant combinations don’t always have to be about what’s sitting in the border next to something else. This is a beautiful plant combination. And just look at the rose. how symmetrically it’s been trained so that it just meets in the center. And just when you’re thinking what an incredibly formal garden this is, what do you come across? This rectangle of meadow, perfectly moan edges, but inside it’s just an explosion of grasses, daisies, and buttercups. It’s utterly lovely. And what’s more, it’s funny. And we need a lot more of that in our gardens, don’t we? Formal or not, [Music] symmetry, a key feature of all formal gardens, could feel regimented, but not in this garden. Here, subtle differences in the variety and placement of these deliniums, for instance, make a formal planting a vibrant and fresh composition. The formal layout of hedges, paths and structures form the stage on which the whole drama of this garden takes place. And this theater puts on one entrancing production after another. I think you can tell from the way that Long Meadow is laid out that I love that combination of extreme formality with a loose generous planting. Having seen that, I want to go and see Woolen Old Hall myself. Now it’s that time of year round about my birthday. I always harvest the first new potatoes. Potatoes come in three groups. First earies, second earies, and main crop. The big difference between them is that new potatoes, first and second earies, taste best dug fresh from the ground, but they don’t store very well. Now, this is a variety called Bel Defontine. One of my favorites, quite similar to Charlotte, French, obviously, as the name suggests. And now’s the time to harvest. Also, I want the bed to plant up this fennel. When you’re using a fork, go gently. Don’t just dive in because you can guarantee you’ll spear a splud or two. There we go. How about that? You don’t want these to be too big. Is that not beautiful? Immaculate golden little pebbles of joy. People have often asked me how you know when to harvest potatoes. Well, there there are a number of indicators. The first is that in general first earies are not ready for about 80 days. Second early is 90 to 100 days and main crop for 120 days. That’s after planting. But that’s a very general thing and it depends what the soil is like and what the weather is like. The second thing is if they’ve flowered after flowering they will be ready. A variety like Belontton can be left in the ground and just dug as you need them or you can harvest them all. And if you do harvest them, keep them in a cool, dark place. Potatoes are a really good crop for cleaning up a piece of ground. If you’ve got a new a lotment, plant potatoes. the roots get in, it suppresses the weeds and is really good then for following with another crop. That’s a good basket full of spuds. I’ll put the horns, the top growth on the compost heap. And I plan to plant up this bed to use the space with a secondary crop. And I’ve chosen Florence fennel. And Florence fennel of course makes delicious anaceidi tasting fleshy bulb which are actually overlapping leaves. And I’ve been growing them here in pots. The roots are growing fine but you can see that there is still plenty of room within the pots for them to grow. And I’m just wondering if it might be better to leave these. If you plant it out and the soil that it’s been potted into just falls away, then that’s quite a shock to the system. What you want ideally is that when you take it out of the container, the roots just hold the soil in shape. I think good horicultural advice will be to leave these for at least three or four more days, if not another week. So that’s what I’m going to do. And I’m very happy with most buds. Come on. You come. Come on. Off you go. One of the bits of the garden that I like most at the time of year is here in the grass borders. And the thing about the grass borders in July is that the grasses themselves are starting to take control and the surrounding plants which are packed in it were with them. And what’s extraordinary about this part of the garden is although there’s so much energy and so much growth and there’s a sense of real vigor, it’s a very calm place to be. And if I want to just sit and be quiet for a moment or two, this is where I come at this time of year. Now, a few weeks ago, garden designer Adam Frost went for us to Hulk Farm to see the gravel garden there to get ideas for his own garden back at home. And now he’s making a start on that project. [Music] You know, I spend most of my life creating gardens for other people, but this is really what I love. Sort of getting your hands into your own soil, having your own patch that you can sort of work on and play with. It’s absolutely fantastic. At home, I’ve terraced out the garden and I’ve been busy planting the lower terraces, but there’s an area at the top that catches the evening sun and it’s perfect for a gravel garden. You know, the key to this garden, I think, really is the preparation. I was worried about the clay soil and a lot of the plants that I’ve chose want those really free draining conditions. So, what I’ve done really is covered the whole area in compost and then gravel. As you dig over, you can really see that gravel and the compost going in, bringing life to the soil. [Music] The next step is to firm down the soil. Then, using a fork or rake, get rid of any large stones and clouds of earth. I’m using a membrane to help suppress the weeds. But more importantly to stop the surface gravel that I’ll be mulching the beds with later mixing in with the soil. Now the fun bit. We’re going to get stuck into the plants. [Music] As you can see, I’ve got a little bit carried away. So, I’ve got some fantastic plants to play with. And I think when you’re choosing plants, it’s it’s not just about the color. It’s about whatever else they give you in the garden. So maybe it’s the form, the structure of the plant, the texture, and plants that maybe I wouldn’t get away with normally that need that sort of slightly sort of drier conditions. For instance, things like lavender, the scent is fantastic. So wonderful gray foliage, but if you plant this somewhere where you’re going to walk past, you’re just going to brush and that scent’s going to come up, which is absolutely beautiful against things like the sedum, a completely different leathery leaf with a great autumn flower. So this is going to give me wonderful autumn color. And then look at things like the arenium. The structure of this plant stands alone. But if I plant this and it’s poking up through other plants, the spike is really, really going to stand out. Look at that. Looks sort of tropical in a sense, you know, really spiky and different. And then we’ve got things like the stackis, the little lambs here, which is really soft in texture, you know, and this will scramble around the ground. Great ground cover this plant. And then color neopia, you know. Wow. That just kind of pop up all over the place right through this gravel garden. These are the plants that people just react to instantly. And my stypia oat grass. I found this down at Holt Farm and it looked beautiful moving in the wind. And the light on this in the evening is absolutely stunning. So, as you can see, I’ve had a fantastic time. I’m literally going to have hours of fun just simply playing with these plants. [Music] Now, when I’m laying this gravel garden out, I mean, what I’m trying to do really is bleed the outer garden in, the first thing I’ve done is introduce the grasses. They all sit in the outside borders. And then after that really is putting in key plants. So, I’ve used the Vabascum, which are big, big, tall, strong plants, and really built the garden off that. [Music] Don’t be afraid to sort of take stuff in, move it out. Take stuff in, move it out. It doesn’t really matter if it takes two or three days to get this right. And then eventually you put them in the ground. [Music] Because I’m using the membrane, I can’t dig out like you normally would and just keep placing it on the side because I’ll just make a complete mess. So, what I’ve got is a bucket here. I just keep feeding the soil in and out. gravel. That’s for my gray leaf plants. On my clay soil, these might suffer a little bit. So, all I’m literally doing is feeding a little bit in the hole. And that will really help them just drain away. These do not want to be sat in the water in the winter. And last but not least, on a day like today, a bucket of water. That’s a bit like me. It’s wilting at the moment. But just give that a little soak like that just before you’re planting. And that’s all she needs. Drain her off a little bit. out she comes. And then in we go. Feed a little bit of soil back around there. End of the day when I finished everything, this garden will get a really, really good watering in. And by tomorrow morning, everything will be bolt up right. I really love doing this bit, just working the gravel in between the plants. The gravel I’ve chosen really works with the local stonework. And this gravel literally just comes from 15 miles down the road. [Music] God, I look forward to that. Do you know what? Probably not my best idea to create a gravel garden in a heat wave, but it’s fantastic. This is just the beginning. You know, it’ll evolve and it will change, but I really, really love it. I designed this to enjoy that sun going down at the end of the day, and that’s exactly what I’ve achieved. So, I am so pleased with this. Looking at Adam’s gravel garden, he’s got heavy clay soil just like mine and yet is very confident that he can grow those plants that need free drainage. So, it’s a good inspiration now for anyone to try. Now, I’ve had a letter which typifies a question I get asked an awful lot about. This is from Sue Brazbury in Barnsley and Sue says, “In April this year, we espalied an apple and a pair against our garage wall and they’ve taken very well. The apple has a central branch and then two tiers and they’re each about 5 foot. And she wants to know should she cut back and if so, by how much or should she leave it alone?” That is a really just one example of a lot of queries I get about pruning in general and summer pruning in particular. And if you are making an espalia or a cordon or a fan, you’re going to need to do your really important pruning in summer rather than winter. When you prune in winter, you encourage regrowth. When you prune in summer, you stop the growth. And so by playing those two factors off, you can shape a plant exactly as you want. These espalia pairs a quarter of a century old. They’re getting less and less productive. But you can see there’s lots of new growth here which has grown since about April. None of which is bearing any fruit. So if you don’t want that as part of the structure of the plant, and I don’t because they’re espalia, we don’t want to go out this way, then that’s got to go. The fruit itself is produced on spurs. So I’m going to prune back to old growth to create a spur like that. Doesn’t matter what you are pruning, there is one law that always applies and that is prune back to something. Don’t just put your secrets in and hack away. So in this case, we want to remove this and we come back. And there we’ve got the beginnings of a spur. So I’m just going to prune above that leaf there like that. I do these every year and it does two things. It retains the shape. It crisps up and importantly lets light in to the fruit so they can ripen better. This is the end of the espalia. That’s the branch growing much too long. So I want to shorten it. If I pruned this in winter, there would be a mass of regrowth. By pruning it now, it will do the job. So I’m going to take that off there. Bang. I hope that’s helped you Sue and anybody else who’s trying to either maintain established espalas or create them. And if you’ve got any other questions that might help you in your garden, please contact us. You can do so by email and go to our website and get the address or you can go to our new Facebook page and contact us that way. Now, even if you have no intention of espioning anything, then here are some other things you can do this weekend. [Music] Comfrey makes an ideal feed especially for promoting roots, fruits, and flowers. Cut the plant, the leaves, and the stems, and pack it into a bucket. Chop this up with a knife to increase the surface area. And then fill the bucket with water. Set it well out of the way because it smells pretty bad as it decomposes. But in 3 weeks time, you can strain it and use the concentrate to make a folia feed. Don’t forget that in order to keep a regular supply of lettuce, it’s important to sew small quantities regularly throughout the summer. Whether you’re sewing them in seed trays or directly into the soil, sprinkle them thinly, keep them watered, and they should be ready for harvest at the end of August. Roses are still blooming well, but you can extend their flowering period by deadheading regularly, ideally daily. And the important thing is not just to tidy up the plant, but to prune it. Use a pair of secrets and cut back to the next leaf or flower bud. And this will stimulate regrowth and new buds. Well, that will extend the life of the roses. It really is worth doing, and it’s a job that I like. There’s a meditative quality to it. However, we can’t prolong today’s program. That’s it from Long Meadow. I’ll see you next time. Bye-bye. [Music] [Applause] [Music]