Original subtitles

Hello and welcome to Gardeners' World. What a glorious day.

The sunshine's incredible.

You know what? It's that time of year

when we can start making changes in our garden and, as strange

as it sounds, start planning for next year.

And over here, the grass borders, I've had a bit of an experiment

going on further up, not planted so many grasses here.

I went a little bit heavy! So I've taken a few grasses out.

I'm just going to add a few plants in.

But first of all, this little fella needs to come with me.

On today's programme, we join musician and

singer-songwriter Billie Marten

on her family allotment in Lancashire

as she shares a love of gardening

and the natural world.

It makes me feel incredibly calm

and I have a sense of what's

important and what's not.

There's not much else to think about but the practicalities

of your allotment.

And I find that helps larger ideas of emotion and struggle

kind of go away.

Toby invites us into his garden to show us

how he is preparing for autumn.

There are plenty of tricks that'll keep the summer flowers

going and the colour going in your borders,

right through the winter.

And I will be adding some plants to a pond that I've created.

So this is my sort of take, I suppose, on an ornamental meadow.

But as I said, this has got a little bit heavy, so I have created

a few spaces.

The first thing that I want to do is get this in the ground.

So this is Potentilla, Monarch's Velvet.

And I think potentillas are an undervalued plant

that just flower and flower.

But it's not just that, it's the form of this plant.

So when I'm sort of putting these plants together, I want

things popping up and I want a rhythm and a sort

of movement through.

But every now and then, I want to put in sort of just a bolder shape,

and this is what it gives you.

It gives you a good ground coverage.

Then it throws up the flower spikes.

And when they start to come up through these grasses, you know,

that relationship is beautiful.

The one thing I'm going to do first is, I'm going to take

all this foliage off because what I want this plant to do, once it goes

in the ground, is I want it to concentrate on getting its roots

in for the winter months.

So now I just prep the hole.

When I first moved in here, a lot

of the soil was very tired.

So year on year I've been mulching with organic matter.

But this year, the nutrient levels are really quite high, which means

some of the plants have ended up getting bigger than I thought

they were going to.

But at the same time, they were quite fleshy,

which made them quite weak

and they started to fall.

So what I'm going to do in places this year is, I'm just going to ease

off with some of my herbaceous planting, because a lot of them

will perform quite well on lower nutrient levels.

And then it'll sit in there nicely.

And remember, you know, this won't sit by itself.

I'm probably going to add another one or another two.

Oh, hold on, hold on. Look,

someone's rocked up.

Hello, young man.

Your timing, son, is absolutely impeccable.

So I work that soil back in.

And what's wonderful about planting this time of year and moving plants

is there's still that warmth in the soil.

So I've got that one worked in well.

I'm going to give that a good watering.

But what I want to do is just add a little bit more height

and some more rhythm.

The next plant I want to add is this - Echinacea pallida.

It grows up to about a metre,

but what I love about it is the flower that hangs

slightly spider-like.

Echinaceas seem to be a strange plant!

You either put them in the garden and they flourish or you plant

them for a few years and they just keep disappearing.

But what I have found with this pallida is, if I can get

it going, it will last that much longer than a lot of the others.

But I do want that free-draining condition.

So this little beauty is called Gaura, Whirling Butterflies,

and when you look at that flower, you can see exactly why.

As far as conditions, exactly the same as the Echinacea.

These will grow to about 2ft.

It's light, it's feathery.

There's a real sort of delicate feel to this.

So if you imagine, as the breeze comes through

and the grass is moving, those heads are moving at the same time

and that all adds to the atmosphere.

Remember, I'm not going to cut this stuff back until well into

next year, and the autumn colour on this is superb.

All right, let's get these in the ground.

So, decent-size hole,

make sure it's about twice the size of your pot.

Work the soil back in around.

And I am going to give these a really good soaking,

and again tomorrow morning.

Now we're off to Lancashire to meet singer-songwriter Billie Marten

to discover how she draws inspiration from the natural world.

The natural world is my biggest and greatest love,

and it is such a joy for me

and also provides the bed of all my inspiration.

I grew up in a place called Risplith, which is right

in the middle of the Dales, so we kind of had all of that as our

playground growing up, which was wonderful.

My dad taught me to play acoustic guitar when I was six or seven,

and the very first songs I started writing about were to do with nature

and escapism and a sense of freedom.

So nature is my biggest songwriting tool.

WIND WHISTLES

So, at the moment, we're near the top of Weets Hill

and we're on the border of Yorkshire and Lancashire.

And this is a place I've been coming for years now.

My parents live here.

This time of year,

there's beautiful heather everywhere - it's just glorious.

Around the time of lockdown last year, after years and years

of waiting, my mum managed to get an allotment.

She's always been a keen gardener.

It's all in the family -

my auntie and uncle are professional gardeners,

my grandma loved it, and that became our biggest project.

How many lines would you like?

Five? Four? Erm, four.

And just space them out as much as you can, cos

we'll have to thin them out otherwise.

So we only need tiny little bits, you know?

So I'll leave you to it.

Yeah? Yeah.

We're sowing some late salad leaves because they'll go to October,

and we've got some soil space so we might as well use it.

And the weather's looking really good and hot,

so they should come up soon.

Getting an allotment has been the best thing to happen

to our family, period.

It's something that brings us together, it's the best

point of conversation.

And the sense of community is fantastic because everyone's kind

of in their natural habitat and it's really apparent, and everyone

is very, you know, at peace with themselves,

and it's definitely brought us all together.

So the sweetcorn's doing really well.

I planted these boys from seed months ago,

and it's just amazing that they're so tall and so healthy.

They get lots of sun down here.

So if you find a cob and look at the hair, it's sort

of browning and it's drooping, which means that it's nearly ready.

But the colour's not quite right yet and the size

is still a little bit too small.

So we'll wait a couple of weeks to harvest those and then we can

have sweetcorn on the allotment.

I'm just picking these beans now cos they're more than ready

to harvest.

We grew these from seed and they've just grown really well.

In some ways, it sort of marks the end of an era,

and, you know, we do get to do it all again, obviously,

but it's kind of months and months of prep and nurturing.

And just to know that we've made something that's

really healthy is incredible.

Look!

Great.

We've always got weeding to do. Weeding's an essential part

of gardening. It's actually my favourite thing to do -

I find it really satisfying and I love just cleaning the soil,

essentially, and making it a better environment for things to grow.

We do have mare's tail everywhere, which means that that's

a constant job.

This is something that I crave the most when I'm down in London,

cos your hands are never dirty other than your body feeling

like it's covered in pollution, which isn't the same sort of dirt.

Up here, you can roll around in the fields

and get your hands covered in mud,

and that's how you know you've had a good day outdoors.

And it wouldn't be gardening if you weren't messy.

It makes me feel incredibly calm

and I have a lovely sense of space

when I'm there. A sense of what's important and what's not. There's

not much else to think about but the practicalities

of your allotment.

And I find that helps larger ideas of emotion and struggle kind of go

away when you're there.

Nothing else is that important,

and that's the key to living.

It's, you know, making sure you're doing the living part.

I come up here when I'm feeling melancholic and I need

some form of joy.

You know, it's something that is so emphatic

and it really holds you in its space.

It provides total serenity and mindfulness for me.

I have no other option of getting that, and this place really provides

it for me.

When I moved to London, I found the fact that there was no horizon

really hard. The seasonal change was very subtle -

all you had was the leaves of the trees and not much else.

So I found it... I found it quite tricky, mental health-wise.

I need nature to survive

and I didn't feel like I was getting it.

At the beginning of lockdown, I was actually up visiting my parents

for a weekend, and on the Monday, that was the announcement, we got

told to stay at home and not move.

So I got stuck there and I actually stayed here for six, seven months.

And during that time, just before the announcement, I was actually

just on the precipice of having a breakdown and I wasn't happy

in music and I found the industry really difficult.

So it was actually a saving grace.

Coming up here, I kind of stopped all contact.

I was up here every day.

I was feeling creative again.

It was about regaining your sense of self,

and I found that nature and the natural world helped me

do that massively.

In all areas of life, I tend to love things that comprise of

nothing-to-something.

And songwriting is very much that. You know, you get

into a room and there's no words on the page and there's no melody

that you've written yet, and gardening is very much like that.

You know, the sense of achievement is really great.

And it could be something as simple as a verse or just sowing a seed.

They're both lovely forms of catharsis and also

forms of creation.

So I guess I put them in a similar vein.

My life's dream is just to have a nice bit of land

where I can grow things and I'll be happy.

Being up here, being able to walk up here every day, being able to use

nature as the backbone when life gets too much, finding inspiration

from it, getting physical fruit and veg from it - everything

about it is magical, wonderful and a gift that we have,

and people should use it at all times, you know?

That power of the natural world never ceases to amaze, does it?

I think, Billie, you had me at the moment when you said,

"I cannot survive without nature."

I got goose bumps at that.

And I love the fact as well that you and your family were getting

so much from the veg garden.

And on that note, I'm back in the Ornamental Kitchen Garden,

which I would say overall this year has been a success.

It's started to guide me as to what I'm going to do next year.

I think I'm going to use less in the way of annual veg,

definitely experiment a lot more with the perennial vegetables,

but more herbs in here as well.

And this little beauty is a silver sorrel,

and it's called Silver Shield.

And you can see why - the leaf has got that heart-shield shape to it.

And, actually, these shields just become more and more sort of mature

and silver and interesting,

but...

..it's also really got a real lemon tang.

And my oldest and I came up with a butter last year

that was this chopped and mixed with parsley, put on a butter

and then used on fish.

It was incredible.

But, actually, this is not just one for the herb garden.

Front of the border, beautiful.

The sort of silver foliage that scrambles around.

After that strong first flush, it gets a little bit tatty.

Cut it hard back and then it comes again,

so it looks beautiful and it's edible.

What's not to love?

And now we've been sent a film from just up the road from me,

from a lady that has had a lot of fun creating a pond.

Hello, my name is Claire.

I live in Rutland.

Welcome to my garden.

This is my happy place, where I come to relax and wind down.

And in February 2020,

we decided to turn an unloved area of the lawn into a pond.

Once we'd dug it out, we used hessian bags filled with plants

from around the garden to soften the pond edges. As lockdown came

and the garden centres closed, all we could do was dig up plants

from around the garden.

Thankfully, we also had lovely friends and neighbours who donated

some of their spare seedlings,

which all helped to get the pond going.

The rest of it was up to Mother Nature...

..and we just had to wait and see what happened.

So here we are in summer 2021.

I can't believe how much it has grown

and how much wildlife has made itself at home.

I remember last year, how desperate we were to find plants to put

in the pond, and we had a pitcher plant on the kitchen side

and we thought, "Well, we'll stick that in as well,"

and it just loves it here.

I've never seen one flower before, and it's so pretty.

Thanks to everyone who helped to make this one of the fabbest places

in the garden. I really, really love it.

BIRDSONG

Claire, that's a cracking pool you've got there.

So I think it proves, doesn't it,

that if you build it, they will come?

So what I'm creating here in front of me,

which has been this summer's big project,

is that idea of, actually, it's a wildlife pond but there's

an ornamental feel to it.

There's that idea of control with wildness within.

So, design-wise, this circle that I've edged the pool with is picked

up other places.

And I love the idea of a repeated pattern through any garden.

So then what I've done, as far as planting's concerned

at the moment, is I've put the verticals in.

So there's a bit of flag iris in there and there's a little

mini reed.

And then if we come over here, the next thing I've done

is I've added the water lily.

I want to really cover probably about 60% of the surface eventually.

And with water lily, what you don't want to do is put it straight down.

So what I've done is I've attached this line, wrapped that around the

pot, and I'm slowly layering that down. And I can lower

it down just a little bit over the coming days

and then just hold it in place with a block. Once it eventually

gets to where it needs to be, I can untie.

So what I want to do today is just add marginal plants

around the edge.

So, obviously, what I have done with the cobbles that work

all the way around, at places they're going to come right

up to the edge, and that means wildlife can get in around.

First thing I want to do

is add this water mint, and also

this little forget-me-not.

What's great about these plants is they'll scramble,

they'll cover ground.

Great for things like newts. What you're looking

for, really, with any of these marginals,

and you'll see it on the label, it

will tell you the depth for planting.

And really that means that how far the top of your pots or your soil

needs to be under the water.

So what I'm going to do here is just use the smaller cobbles

to try and build up just a little bit of a flatter area.

So, if you imagine, the pond will eventually be filled

up to here and I want this a couple of inches underneath.

Most of these plants obviously take their nutrients

and what they need from the water, so the soil or gravel or whatever

it is you use is really just to hold them in place.

So this is myosotis, which is a water

forget-me-not. Incredible in flower.

Slightly different planting depth. This only really wants

to be about 25mm, so about an inch underneath.

And one of the reasons that I'm putting them in pots is that I can

control how much they do spread.

So, over the years, what I'll do is I will pot them

on into larger containers.

Those plants that I've added are British natives and you know

they'll flourish. But there is one more thing.

This is an oxygenating plant called hornwort. And I know it doesn't look

much, but not only does this provide great habitat, but it puts oxygen

into the water,

so it's vital.

Now we're off to visit Toby at home in Devon,

and he's preparing for autumn.

In late summer, with the Tithonia and Gladioli still blooming

and the bees still buzzing,

it's hard to imagine the misty autumn

mornings to come, but the nights are definitely drawing in.

And that means just one thing.

I don't want to bring a downer,

but those first frosts are just around the corner.

But, hey, there are plenty of tricks that'll keep the summer flowers

going and the colour going in your borders, right

through the winter.

One cunning way of doing this is by recycling some

of the early summer flowers whose blooms may be over but still

have lots to offer.

A great example in my garden are the alliums, which now

have these wonderful kissed pink seed heads.

And you can see that they're in the border where it was sunny back in

June, and now they're completely subsumed by the late summer flowers.

But there's life in them yet.

Now some people use them as cut flowers for the house.

They last for absolutely ages. Years, in fact.

But I have a different plan.

All I need are a few lengths of bamboo.

Because the allium stems are hollow, you can breathe new life into them

with the bamboo canes by sliding them up the middle, and then you can

put them in the borders, exactly where you want.

Well, front and centre, where they deserve to be.

There you are. The bamboo's

like a stout little leg that goes in the soil.

There we are. Allium cristophii brought back to life.

Along with enhancing the borders to enjoy for now, this is the time

of year to safeguard your plants for the months ahead.

In my case, a much cherished, magnificent brugmansia,

or angel's trumpet.

Feeding plants is really important in the autumn, but you've got

to change your feed from something with high nitrogen in it

to something that's high in potassium. A tomato fertiliser,

basically. Because what potassium does is that it concentrates the sap

within the leaves.

And just like salting a road, the salts within the plant cells

lower the freezing point, which means a plant like this

brugmansia can take more winter cold.

The other thing I want to do is ensure I've got more brugmansia

for the future, and this is

the optimum time for taking cuttings.

What I'm looking for here is a sprig of stem

that doesn't have any flowers on it.

You snip off a sprig and then remove all the leaves, bar the tiny

little ones. Just get a little sprig like that. All I do is pop

that into the middle of a pot of compost, right up to its knees,

like there, and then cover with a glass jar.

And that little sprig, kept on a windowsill indoors,

somewhere shady to stop these remnants of leaves wilting,

this will start to grow away.

And as soon as you see those leaves start to swell again -

it takes about a fortnight -

the glass jar can come off and then, by spring, after the frosts,

this can come back out in the garden and guarantee

that I have these beautiful flowers for summers to come.

Brugmansia is a highly toxic plant,

so after handling it, make sure you wash your hands and secateurs.

With the changes that are about to come as summer gives way

to autumn, it's worth looking for any nooks or crannies

in the garden that could offer sustained interest

when you need it most.

You see this little patch of ground in the middle of the paving

around this tree?

Well, I was thinking this was a walk-by space.

I don't really notice it in summer because I'm looking at the flowers

in the borders in front of me.

But come winter, when there isn't much else going on down there,

well, its position by the house means that it wants to look good.

And I've got some nifty ways of making it look colourful,

right through till spring.

And in the spirit of making the most of what you've got, I'm going to

plant up my little micro-plot using a harvest from elsewhere

in the garden.

I've got three plants here that are brilliant for giving winter

colour. What I've got is a pheasant grass known as

Anemanthele. I've got Golden Lysimachia and

purple bugle. And all of them are irrepressible spreaders.

So it's not as if I'm robbing Peter to pay Paul by taking them

from here.

The Lysimachia is something I want to major on because in the new sunny

position... This area gets shaded in winter.

..it will keep this lovely golden colour. And the grass...

..what that will do is burnish a lovely red colour, or a bit

like a sort of bronze you get on bracken on the hillsides.

It's just lovely. Like the bugle. You can see

how this grows, a bit like a strawberry.

It has runners that spread across the ground and each one puts a new

little plantlet down. And where that touches the earth,

it roots away and grows as a separate individual plant.

This patch is quite purple and that's because it gets quite

a lot of sun.

The plants down the end there, they're greener

because they're in the shade.

So I'm going to take both to create a tapestry feel.

The other plant I'm after for my patch under the tree isn't actually

growing in the garden at all. It's in the gutter, right at the top

of the house. Sedum acre, brought in by the seagulls.

And it loves open, sunny situations that only get a moderate

amount of rain, so it pretty much

replicates the exact conditions I've got around my tree

down the base. And what a fantastic evergreen for free.

And of course, you don't have to get

all your plants for a little spot like this from the gutter.

Winter-flowering pansy from the garden centre is just as good.

Yeah, a lovely winter tapestry.

At the bottom of the garden is a plant that is struggling a little.

It's a tree fern, which I've got underneath a bay tree.

And while the bay offers welcome shade and shelter,

it takes up the lion's share of water.

You see, tree ferns come from the misty valleys of Tasmania,

and if they don't have that moist air around the fronds,

it can become very brown at the tips,

something that can see a whole tree fern off eventually.

So I've hatched a plan that will keep my tree fern very happy indeed,

and replicate its natural habitat.

Now, this bit of paraphernalia is a mist unit kit,

and I'm going to repurpose this from its usual home

above a propagation bench in a greenhouse

to create a misty environment that my tree fern will just love.

It's very simple to rig.

The trick is to get a mug of hot water and dunk the rubber pipe in

to soften it. Then it's just a case of cutting lengths and fitting them

into the mist units.

And when you've got enough, simply lace the pipe around the vegetation.

A bit like putting the lights on the Christmas tree.

The automatic irrigation system will

ensure the fern is regularly misted,

which to a fern lover like me, is a joy to behold.

And there we are, our little corner of Tasmania.

Nurturing, planting out, planning ahead -

with the last of the summer flowers taking their final bow,

the early autumn is a time of change in the garden.

But, for me, it's one to embrace.

ADAM: Toby is a treasure trove of ideas.

And he's right, I'm afraid to say,

we are going, as we know, into those colder months.

So what I've been doing is cleaning out the bird feeders, getting them

topped up, just to provide that extra bit of grub

through the winter months.

But, for me, as a gardener,

this time of year is as much about what I don't do.

Everything you see in front of you,

nothing in here will get cut back until maybe February,

even going into early March.

What I leave will create great habitat for wildlife.

And then the seed heads of things like the Eryngiums

and the hips on the roses -

those will provide food.

Actually, one of the other joys

that I've got from this border this year is my bee hotels.

You might remember last year I had a visit from leafcutter bees,

but they're back, using them.

You can see they've arrived cos you get these wonderful sort

of curved cuts out of the leaves.

Isn't that part of the joy of what

we're doing, is providing for wildlife in our gardens?

Now, still to come...

We visit a garden lovingly created to fit beautifully

within the surrounding rolling countryside.

The wild flower meadow now is a real source of pleasure for us.

It's exceeded our expectations and it's provided a really tranquil,

peaceful part of the garden.

And I will be creating a late September pot.

But, first, we've been sent a film from a young couple

who are gardening very much with family in mind.

Hello there.

My name is Rose. And I'm Sam.

And we live here in Suffolk with our three young sons

and we'd like to show you our garden,

which we've been developing over the last three years.

Although it's relatively small, I hope you'll agree that we've done

the best we can to fit in as much as possible and make the most

of the space that we've got.

When we first moved here three and a half years ago,

our garden was just lawn.

And since then it has changed quite a lot to adapt to what we need

as a growing family.

Over here is our children's section, with a home-made table for them.

My husband and I love flowers,

so we set up a seating area on our patio

and surrounded it with plants.

When we moved here, our front garden was just two large lawns as well,

and we've dug most of that up to

create more flower beds for us to plant in.

Either side of the path, we planted rows of lavender,

and now we've created what I call "Bee Alley".

Our lavender is just full of bumblebees.

Something I really enjoy doing in

the garden is deadheading the plants,

as I find it really relaxes me.

What is it?

Caterpillars. Wow!

Look at those ones over there. Whoa, there's a lot there. Yeah!

Thank you for coming to our garden, and hopefully we've shown you

that you can have not only a beautiful garden for yourself,

but suitable for children and for wildlife, too. Bye.

ADAM: So that, for me, is the way to get the kids in the garden -

either bugs or, I find, food.

If I can grow it and the kids can eat it,

they'll come out and join Dad.

So, we're going to set a scene first.

We've been to the garden centre or the nursery,

we've had a lovely cup of tea and a piece of cake. We've had a walk

around. We've filled the basket up with a load of goodies.

We then get home, we walk out in the garden and go...

"Oh, right, where am I going to put these?"

We've all done it. I still do it, even though I tell people not to!

I get sucked in.

What I'm going to try and do here is give you an idea

as to how you can experiment and play without committing

straight away to putting these plants in the garden.

But, also, it's the time of year for me when I'm thinking

about the colour I want to add for this time next year.

This starts to sort of inform spring planting.

The first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to build a pot

of old faithfuls, plants that I know and understand.

So, first of all, we've got the sedum,

and that's called Mr Goodbud, which sounds a bit like a song,

but when I'm looking at it, it's not just that flower,

it's that leaf shape. You know, the

shape of it, it's got that fleshiness to it.

Then you look at the flower, not just the colour,

but it's got this beautiful flat head.

And then when you start to compare that

to this rich sort of plump penstemon,

it's got a very different leaf.

But the stem colour picks up beautifully with the flower colour.

Now we're going to put in a Stipa at the back here.

This will bring in some froth

and a little bit of life.

Then the last one I'm going to put here is this ajuga.

And what's nice is the difference between the sedum leaf

and the ajuga leaf.

So that sets my seed for us to build off.

And then if I move over...

So this is my shopping basket.

This is a bit different. I'm not going to commit anything

to any of these pots at the moment.

So I've set them out in a rough design and then I'm just going

to start to introduce plants and see what they look like.

First of all, this Rudbeckia is called triloba.

It's a short-lived perennial, probably lasts about three years.

But the moment I've put that in, I can see the stem colour

is working well with the stem colour of the penstemon.

Now, if we go across to the other side here...

And this is Helenium, and it's called Short and Sassy.

This will only grow to about 2ft,

and we're going to try that in here.

Rich sort of orange in there.

But straight away, what catches my eye is the big old button

in the middle there. And that picks up again with the penstemon.

Let's go and get some more of that shopping.

And, now, this Molinia. And this is a grass.

There? What do you think?

No?

There.

Yeah, let's go with there.

Let's just take that up...

..so it's coming up through that sedum.

I love that airiness that picks up on the vertical here at the back.

And there's a little colour tone

that works well with the penstemon.

Now, this is a plant that's new to me.

So this is Chinese witch hazel.

It flowers winter and spring, so a cracker in that sense.

Starts off green with the foliage

and then you get this deep plummy colour.

Hopefully, what should be happening

is there more or less should be,

like, a nice rhythm of the dark

that comes up through here.

And then all these little sort of relationships start to reveal

themselves with the stem colours and the shapes and the forms.

But the best thing, you're not committed to anything,

so you can come back out, you can chop and change it.

All I'll have to do, because I'm not putting these up,

is make sure that the ones that are actually not in the pots properly,

that they get a little bit more water.

So, next time you go down the garden centre

and fill up your basket with an array of plants,

you bring them home, have a play with a few pots,

and you might come up with a scheme

that you put in your garden this time next year.

Now, we're off to Cow Close Cottage near Harrogate to meet two fellas

that have been creating a rather

beautiful garden over the last decade.

My name's William. I live here with my partner John,

and the garden is now in its tenth year.

Neither of us have a gardening background.

We've learnt, like most people, from reading, research

and actually visiting lots of other gardens.

I've been particularly inspired by some of the gardeners

who were introducing a more naturalistic style of planting -

Piet Oudolf and Dan Pearson.

They're the type of people who have inspired me with,

in particular, their combinations of grasses and perennials.

This is a great combination of plants.

We've got Allium sphaerocephalon here,

which is a late-flowering allium,

and it's combined with this grass,

Deschampsia Goldtau.

They're fantastic for creating movement in the border

and look really, really good at this time of the year.

The garden brings us a lot of joy.

When we try and summarise what's particularly special about here,

we talk sometimes about having the four 'S',

and the first 'S' is the stream running through the garden.

The second 'S', we're on a sloping site,

which gives us opportunities to plant where you can take

advantage of changing levels.

The third 'S' is we're south-facing,

which obviously, the sun gives us that opportunity

to actually grow things relatively well here.

And the final 'S' has got to be the scenery.

We wanted the garden to sit comfortably in the landscape

around us,

and Dan Pearson talks about a garden

having a sense of place.

Five years ago, we had the opportunity to buy some of the land

below the bottom part of the garden.

And once we'd bought that piece of land,

we began to think about how we could use it.

And we felt that a wild flower meadow would really complement our

planting and provide a nice link

between the garden and the landscape around.

The wild flower meadow now is a real source of pleasure for us.

It's exceeded our expectations and it's provided a really tranquil,

peaceful part of the garden.

We've got the oxeye daisies here, and the knapweed,

the vetch growing through here.

It's a nice blue-y colour that's changing

to a more pink-y, purple-y colour.

So it's a really attractive

wild flower in the garden at the moment.

We're gardening, if you include the wild flower meadow in that amount,

about an acre at the moment.

We've gone for quite a narrow range of colours -

predominantly pinks, blues and purples,

with the odd splash of sort of hotter colours.

This still has to be my favourite border.

This reflects what I set out to achieve when I started

to plant the garden.

It really does, for me, encompass

that naturalistic style of planting,

with the colours and the different way the plants

have been put together.

What's looking good is this particular dianthus -

Dianthus carthusianorum -

and how well it combines with the Molinia Poul Petersen.

And this is a great plant.

It stands well and it retains a really nice, dark-coloured,

interesting structure in the winter months.

Probably one of my favourite plants is in the corner over there.

Veronicastrum Erica.

It graduates from a very light pink to a darker coloured pink

up the spire. It moves very gently in the breeze,

so it's a really good plant for us to grow in the border.

Nine years after its planting,

it continues to delight me.

We're very, very fortunate to live in this particular setting.

The challenge now, for us,

is maintaining what we've created,

and there are certainly days when I come out and think

we've created a bit of a monster.

But then when you come out into the garden on days

and you can see the things, it does make it all worthwhile.

ADAM: William and John, I think your garden is an absolute joy,

but I'm with you.

At times I walk out here

and it feels slightly overwhelming.

But weren't they lucky to get that extra bit of space

and create a meadow?

And talking about meadows, I've been on a bit of a journey

with this little sort of orchard meadow, ever since we've been here.

But, interestingly, what happens here,

the further up the meadow you get, the light levels change.

So, colour-wise, this end is not great.

So what I'm trying to do now is I'm trying to connect this part

of the meadow with the edge of the woodland,

but pick up plants that'll work in both areas.

So what it's taken me to is Digitalis purpurea,

which is a native foxglove -

a mix of colours from white through to pinks,

but it's a biannual, so it completes

its cycle within two years.

So, first year germinates, plant comes up,

and then the following year it flowers, seeds,

and then that process starts again.

So, last year I collected seed from the woodland area,

germinated that, potted them up,

and all I want to do is work them into this space.

And then these will come up next

year and flower and seed.

But I'm not going to leave it there.

What I'm going to do is I'm going to collect the seed

and then I'll repeat exactly the same process next year,

and I'm going to do it for a third year as well.

And then I'm hoping, by the time we get three years down the road,

it's starting to do it itself,

with its own sort of natural process.

As I'm planting, I'm taking that plug out

and then just loosening the soil up around the bottom there.

I give those a watering-in,

just to settle the soil right around the plants.

If you have a look over my shoulder,

you can see the yarrow, lovely sort of white Achillea,

and that is just created by not cutting the lawn.

It's a bit mind-blowing that if you leave a small area of your lawn,

what will end up coming in.

And now we have a film all the way from America,

and I would say this man has got a

passion for one plant in particular.

Hello, Gardeners' World. My name is Ricardo, I live in Maryland

on the East Coast of the United States.

Welcome to my garden.

Today, I wanted to share one of my favourite summer blooming

perennials with you, the hardy hibiscus.

Here is hibiscus moscheutos,

a native hibiscus growing on a river near my home.

They're completely hardy and can be found all along the East Coast,

from Texas, all the way north into Canada.

They are a herbaceous perennial,

dying right back to the ground in winter

and putting on five-plus feet of growth during one season.

I have several hybrids of hardy hibiscus in my garden.

The flowers come in shades of white,

pink,

purple

and red.

This one is my absolute favourite.

It's called Hibiscus Perfect Storm,

and it has these lovely dark purple leaves

and these huge white flowers with pink edges and a red eye.

I just love how it complements the Echinacea and the Liatris.

I love this combination.

Hardy hibiscus are very easy to care for.

Plant them in full sun,

give them consistent water

and they'll bloom from midsummer, right through to the first frost.

The flowers, unfortunately, only last one day,

but there are always lots of buds coming up behind.

Thanks for letting me share my garden with you.

I hope you enjoyed it. Bye!

ADAM: Ricardo, you can see the joy on your face.

It must be incredible to be able to walk out of your back door

and out into that array of hibiscus.

And talking of morning walks,

I keep being drawn back to this spot

because this is Heptacodium miconioides,

or known as the seven son tree -

a plant that I came across, probably seven, eight years ago.

I grow it as a multi-stemmed tree,

but it's in flower

and it's the first time it's happened in the garden.

The scent...is incredible.

It flowers really late in the year,

it's related to honeysuckle,

but also the bark is superb when it peels

and it's got that coppery tone to it.

This will flower now, probably for the next six, seven weeks,

and then, as it loses its leaves,

that bark really starts to reveal itself.

Now, in the next few weeks,

we have a Gardeners' World special all about trees.

So if you have a tree that means

something to you, that you think you can make a film about -

why not? And then send it to us.

All the information as to where to send it,

how to make it, will be on our website.

So, go on, you know you want to.

I don't know about you, but I would describe this year

in our veg garden as interesting. CHUCKLES

Some things have been an absolute disaster.

Some things have been OK.

But I think that late start sent me back.

And then I've had slug's and I've had loads of snails.

And I feel like I've been playing catch-up ever since.

A few weeks ago, I sowed some kale that I thought

was going to be brilliant to plant now, apart from...

You know those slugs I mentioned?

They ate them all.

So I popped down the garden centre and picked up some

lovely Italian kale.

I've prepped this soil, so potatoes came out,

I've put in a load of organic matter,

but then really firmed the soil down,

and I know that's not what we always sort of recommend on raised beds,

but the key, actually, to most of your greens is good firm soil.

Get them quite deep.

More or less up to those leaves,

but I'm really, really firming in.

I've got my knuckles right in tight around that.

You don't want them rocking around.

What I'll do when I've done this is

I'll give these a really good soaking in.

Well, now we've got a beautiful red kite that visits the garden.

It doesn't seem to be putting off the huge population of pigeons

that live over there on that roof.

And the moment I walk away, if I don't cover this,

they'll be down and they'll pillage the lot.

So net them over,

and hopefully before the end of the year I'll be picking it.

But there is something that I can pick right now.

So, one thing that seems to have been all right...

He says! Famous last words until I lift them in front of you!

..has been the carrots.

So, actually, I've been growing these and lifting them quite small.

Actually, it's not too bad, is it?

Rainbow carrots.

That's tonight's tea sorted.

While I'm doing a few more of them,

here's a few jobs you could be doing at the weekend.

Having removed the top growth from

my main-crop potatoes a couple of weeks ago,

to help harden the skins, it's now time to lift and store them.

Carefully fork out the tubers,

making sure you remove any that have gone green or rotten,

and allow to dry off for a few hours.

Store somewhere cool, dark and frost-free,

in a hessian or paper sack.

Climbing roses can get in a bit of a tangle this time of year,

so it's worth tying in any new

growth before the autumn gales arrive.

Deadhead as you go, and where possible,

tie in each stem horizontally,

to encourage more blossom next year.

If you haven't turned your compost for a while,

now's the time to do it.

It will add air to the mix and speed up decomposition.

I like to move the materials from one bin to another,

but if you only have room for one bin,

just empty the contents and then pile it back in.

The Gravel Garden extension area's really sort of come on,

especially in the last couple of months,

and it's developing its own personality.

I tend to set my gardens up in layers, so the trees go in,

then the shrubs, and that gives you your framework.

Herbaceous perennials work their way through and provide life.

But, for me, the joy is provided

by the annuals, the biannuals,

and also the short-lived perennials.

I plant them initially, and then I let them self-seed,

and that's when you end up with these wonderful relationships.

At the moment the verbascum is sort of popping up through the agastache.

Behind me, it's intermingling with the Rubina.

And here with the miscanthus.

And I love that freedom.

But obviously, last year's seed has really started

to sort of get itself going now.

So all I'm doing is coming in and

just lifting the odd one out,

which frees up space around the existing plants,

but I know where next year's flower's going to come from.

I'm afraid there's no Gardeners' World next week,

but I'll be at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show in September.

I'm sure it's going to be exciting, so please join us if you can.

Monty will be back in a couple of weeks at Longmeadow at 20:30.

In the meantime, look after yourselves

and enjoy your gardens. Bye-bye.