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  • 6/5/2025
The Beechgrove Garden 2025 episode 10
Transcript
00:00Hello and welcome to Beechgrove garden on the program tomatoes and designing the perfect sit
00:19out spot. Coming up if you're growing tomatoes what you should be doing right now planting
00:29ideas for that corner where you relax and enjoy the sunshine we're in the Cairngorms in a garden
00:34for dementia therapy. It's just a very nice place to come to to feel relaxed and at home so I shall
00:42be gardening as long as I can. And time for some herb garden maintenance. But before all that we
00:55are trying something a little bit different here at Beechgrove. Yes I love to experiment a little bit
01:00and last year I drew some loofahs and got a really great crop from them so this year it's edamame
01:06beans and they are a great snack for kids. Now I don't know about you but my children trying to get
01:12them to eat anything green is a bit of a trial but you know they love these beans and a little bit of
01:19salt some pepper some chilli flakes they gobble them right up. A great nutritious snack which is
01:25high in protein. They are delicious absolutely and we did so some a couple of weeks ago not to much
01:31success which is fine it happens. When we've had a look it looks like they've probably rotted away so
01:38we're going to change our technique up a little bit this time where we are going to do a bottom
01:43watering so a basal irrigation and what that will do is just let the compost soak up all that water
01:49instead of us drenching the seeds from the top and what we are also going to do is then cover them with
01:55glass to really heat them up and get them going because they're not native to the UK. No they are
02:01not they are a soya bean crop and you harvest them early you wait for those little pods to green up
02:08and then those little beans to start to plump up and then you can harvest them. Now it takes about
02:15nine to twelve weeks but we are going to keep them in a greenhouse to prolong that period because they
02:23do need a long hot summer to mature. Now if you're living in different parts of the UK where you get a nice
02:30long hot summer then you could probably chance them as an outdoor crop but you know to ensure a good
02:39germination and a good crop we're going to keep them indoors. Yeah so we're just sowing them about
02:44four centimetres deep just following the instructions on the packet really and like you say after this
02:49we're just going to put them straight into the greenhouse and probably keep them there for the whole
02:54season. Definitely. Now remember when you are harvesting them make sure your kids are aware
03:02that you can't eat them raw it's not like a pea pod you do need to steam them or boil them for about
03:0710 minutes to make sure that all of those toxins have come out. But hopefully we'll have a lovely crop
03:14at the end of the season. Yeah to feed the kids. Well we have been enjoying some fantastic weather
03:26recently and all you really want to do is when the sun is shining is sit out in your garden and enjoy
03:32that sunshine. And this here is our situtory and what we have been trying to create is a really lovely
03:40space to sit out and relax in. Now the garden team have done an amazing job transforming this space
03:47because a couple of weeks ago when Brian and myself were here there was a really large hawthorn hedge at
03:54the back there. There was willow and all that has been taken out and it has really opened up this south
04:03facing sunny spot. Now they have replaced the hedge with this framework which we're going to grow
04:10some sweet peas up. They are going to scramble up here and create a huge amount of scent which is
04:16going to fill this seating area. Now down here is where we've got some creeping time and the tables
04:25and chairs are actually going to be sat right in this spot so that when you're sitting here and your
04:32feet brush against the time this scent is going to waft up into the air and it's just going to smell gorgeous.
04:40Now I've got another scented plant over here
04:46which is an English lavender. Now it is a white variety and that is pretty important in this garden
04:55because I have chosen white and greens as my theme but if you want to add more colour to your garden
05:03a good place to start is a colour wheel so if you are wanting to create a more harmonious look you're
05:11going to choose colours that are close to each other on the colour wheel but if you want to create a more
05:16dramatic effect you want to choose colours that are on opposite ends of the spectrum so like orange and
05:24blue or yellows and pinks and that's going to add that real pop and zing. Now this English lavender really
05:34likes free draining soil and it isn't as hardy as the purple variety so I'm doing a couple of things
05:42to try and ensure that it survives the winter at Beecher Grove so I've got free draining soil I've added a
05:51little bit of grit as well but it's also being planted next to this wall now hopefully the wall
05:59in winter is going to suck up all that winter sunshine and then the stones will release that heat
06:07into the soil at night when it does get particularly cold which will really help this lavender stay
06:15nice and healthy and it will protect it from that harsh winter. Now behind me I've got this beautiful
06:22peony called avalanche and it produces these beautiful milky white blooms that are absolutely divine.
06:31The peony gets to about 90 centimetres tall and the other thing that you really need to consider when
06:39you are planting out these shrubs and plants is their overall mature height. Now the peony like I said
06:46is going to get to about 90 centimetres tall but these hydrangeas over here are going to get slightly larger.
06:54Now this mop head variety from a series called black steel which have these lovely
07:00black stems which really make the white heads and blooms really pop it gets to about one metre tall
07:07and one metre wide whereas the polar bear the paniculata hydrangea over here it's going to get
07:14actually larger than this to about 1.5 metres tall so you really want to consider the mature height
07:22of your plants when you're placing them out. This is hopefully going to create a really nice
07:28crescendo effect going from the very small plants all the way up from the peony to the hydrangeas
07:37finishing off with the beautiful conical flowers of that polar bear paniculata hydrangea. But in the
07:45meantime to fill out the space during the summer months we're going to plant some lovely annuals like
07:52cosmos which are really going to fill the space and make this area want to enjoy. But at the moment I'm
08:00going to get planting. Now research has shown that gardening can have real and measurable benefits to
08:10people with dementia. Just outside Avon Moor there's a project that's helping dementia patients access the
08:16benefits of working and being in a garden. Alzheimer's Scotland run the outdoor dementia
08:23resource centre at Badagoosh Outdoor Centre. There's a range of activities for those with dementia and
08:29their families and one of them is gardening. There are lots and lots of benefits of spending time in
08:35gardens and green spaces for people living with dementia. It only takes about three minutes in a green
08:40space to see a reduction in things like blood pressure and levels of anxiety and particularly in a garden
08:48it's a very multi-sensory experience which is very good for people with dementia. So you'll hear the birdsong
08:54in the background here so it's sort of stimulating sound. You can see all the different colours in the
08:58garden so it's good for people to get that kind of dose of colour and and different kind of scenery. We've
09:04got a herb garden behind us here as well so we tend to try and plant things that have got a good strong spell to
09:09stimulate that sense and they're touching as well so you're getting to touch soils and different
09:14textures and things so very multi-sensory experience which is which is really great for people living
09:18with dementia. It stimulates the brain. Are we feeling green-fingered today? Sort of. First of all we're
09:31going to put some compost and gravel mix into this. Monka could you give that a little mix around?
09:41Myself and Andy who work in the project we are keen gardeners but we're not necessarily particularly
09:46knowledgeable but that's okay because many of the folks that are coming along to the sessions they
09:52know a lot about gardening so they're very much teaching us and we've also got a sweet pea expert here
09:59today as well. George is very involved in the project and sweet peas are his particular area
10:04of expertise so we we've developed the bed where we'll be growing the sweet peas for this year in
10:11particular. We're a bit more organised this year with our sweet peas I think George because you've taught
10:18us how to prepare this bed. Yes yes the plants that I've sown in the last week or two are all this sort of
10:26side so you just keep your fingers crossed because they're all right and they don't get pulled out by the
10:31hens. I mean I like meeting up with all the people who who lie in the same sort of areas I do at the
10:40beginnings of Alzheimer's but it's just a very nice place to come to to feel relaxed and and at home
10:50so I shall be gardening as long as I can. Another biscuit before these get taken away guys?
10:57The way we like to work is we have a bit of a team approach so we try and find a task that suits
11:06everybody in the room so we're doing everything as a team and we're playing to people's strengths that
11:10way. We've got them in the right spot. Right we'll put these aside now fantastic job guys they look great.
11:19Our groups are run on what we'd call a community model so the people who come along tend to come
11:24along with a partner or carer. Often people actually want to spend time with their loved
11:30one but in a supportive environment and I think that's something that we're providing here I think
11:34people who are supporting someone living with dementia are benefiting as well from the project.
11:42My name is Peter Evans and I'm here with my wife Rosemary who has Alzheimer's and we come
11:51regularly to sessions here. Today we've been planting things and having an enjoyable time. It's always
11:57a nice place to come to because the environment is so great and today is a beautiful day as well.
12:03You can look anywhere here and you've got a fantastic view, you've got hills behind you and you've got
12:09trees and there are just natures all around you really. I think that it's good for Rosemary to come
12:16and engage in an activity that she can enjoy and the social aspect of it is just as important because
12:23mentally people with Alzheimer's need to to get that communication with other people to keep that
12:29communication going and ensure that they're you know they're mentally stimulated by that but it's
12:36good for me to come as well because I can meet other people who are looking after people in a similar
12:41situation to ourselves. So yeah it's as important for me I'd say as it is for her.
12:58Tomatoes are possibly the most popular homegrown crop and here at Beechgrove I am doing a comparison
13:05between two different methods of growing. I have the grow bag in a greenhouse which is your typical
13:11traditional method and I'm comparing that to a passive hydroponic system. I've chosen Krakini
13:17as my comparison because this one is meant to be a really high yielding tomato producing hundreds of
13:23fruits so that would be a really good one to do some observations with. So my hydroponic system here,
13:30so this is filled with a nutrient solution so it has a liquid feed in the bottom and it is a passive
13:39system so there's no electricity required and what it does is it uses these wick fabric strips here
13:46and it draws up all the water and all the nutrients into the root system for the plants to take up. Initial
13:52observations, I think there's some that are quite evident. The first is the difference in the colour.
13:58You can see how deep rich green these leaves are and when we compare it to the grow bag which is
14:05looking a little bit lighter in colour and almost a bit chlorotic it looks like it needs a liquid feed,
14:11a lot more nitrogen because it's just not doing quite as well. My second observation is around the
14:18trusses so we are seeing fruits already which is fab. This one here, this truss is really elongated,
14:26you can see it covers the whole stretch of my hand. We have lots of flowers, nice even spacing as well
14:33and the flowers themselves are really big, open and doing quite nice. We even have some fruits forming
14:41lower down as well. On my grow bag what I can see is we have a truss too, however it's much more compact,
14:49the flowers are a wee bit smaller. We do have fruits though, which is good. So it's doing all right,
14:55but I think visually quite a difference already. Now the final one and this is where it gets really
15:02interesting. For the grow bag nine litres of water has been applied in six weeks and that's every two
15:09to three days the garden team are having to come in and get that plant watered, especially in this heat
15:14at the moment. Whereas in my hydroponic setup it was filled initially and it has been topped up after
15:21a month with four litres of water. So less water has been added plus also they haven't had to do anything
15:28for a month and even then it probably could have gone even longer without needing to be topped up.
15:33So if you are thinking about going away on holiday this might be a really good option for you in the future to try.
15:38There's a bit of maintenance that needs to be done on my tomatoes at the moment. So we can be nipping
15:44out side shoots, that's common practice and that'll just really encourage a nice flush of fruits to come
15:50on. However I'm not going to do that with these two plants here because I can see that this side shoot
15:56is already putting some flowers on and because I'm looking at the number of fruits I want to see what
16:02happens. Even if they're small it's fine. I just want to see what happens across the two plants.
16:08The second thing I'm going to need to do is start to change out my nutrient solution in here.
16:14I can see that I'm getting a little bit of nutrient deficiency, phosphorus and potassium, so I just want
16:19to change this from being a high nitrogen feed to a typical organic tomato feed. Now that'll have higher
16:27levels of potassium which will really boost the plant and a bit of phosphorus too to get it on its way.
16:32So I'm just going to open this up here and I'm using a fish tank siphon just to take all this out
16:42and it should just start coming out nice and easy and there's no waste with this. All of this that
16:47I'm siphoning off is going to go into the garden and it's going to feed all the containers around about
16:53and then I'll just get this up and running with its new feeding and hopefully another few weeks we'll have
16:59some fruit.
17:05Now after a dry spell we've had some more rain which means the weeds are thriving and one that is a big
17:11problem for gardeners in Scotland is ground elder. We visited a garden and met a gardener who was
17:17dealing with the problem. Jenna McDonald looks after the gardens at Rossi in Perthshire.
17:29It's a private garden with formal lawns and woodland area. It also has ground elder.
17:39So we've come to a tennis court garden and flanking the sides of the tennis court we have some
17:49box balls and we have some agapanthus otherwise known as African lily. So sadly there's a bit of
17:56an issue we have plenty ground elder growing in between the agapanthus plants. Now last year I
18:03painstakingly whipped off the leaves to try and weaken the plant and that has only given it much more
18:11vigour. So we've come to the bold decision to dig up the clumps of agapanthus and see whether we can
18:19save them or whether we need to burn them. So I've got my big digging spade here and I am working my way
18:27round the root ball and this will probably break some of the ground elder roots but I'll work into
18:35the soil to try and remove any root fragments and what we will do as well we're going to leave this
18:43fallow for a year. So if any ground elder does appear I'll be able to dig it out knowing that the agapanthus is gone.
18:55Formerly I was a jewellery designer and I had my own studio. During a one-to-one jewellery workshop
19:02I was teaching a lovely lady who had an allotment and I thought that sounds wonderful. So my fiance and I put
19:07her name down for an allotment and lo and behold we got one and that really ignited a brand new
19:13passion. Okay so now that we've removed half the clump and I've done that just to make it more
19:19manageable for myself this allows us to take a look at the roots. Now we would have two options here
19:27we can painstakingly wash all the soil off the agapanthus and that way we would be able to tell
19:31the difference between the roots and eradicate the ground elder. But for this sake because there's so much
19:37ground elder in this border we are actually going to pop this on the bonfire just to make sure that we've
19:43eradicated all the the ground elder. So that's that half, I'll get the next half and only eight more to do after that.
19:49So we're on the top lawn and we're under this wooded area which you can see he's got lots of lovely native
20:12bluebells however there is a couple of clumps well there's several clumps of allium arsenum otherwise
20:20known as wild garlic. Within this garden we've got lots of areas where we have let the wild garlic run
20:26through and it does look really pretty but we wish to keep this mostly bluebells. So today we're going
20:32to lift the little bulbs in the bulb bulbs before it sets seeds and well we might lift it and make some
20:38wild garlic pesto. So I've got my border spade here and I'm just going to dig in give it a few kicks.
20:45The soil's quite firm and I'm going to get down and lift out the bobbles and the bulb bulbs, the little
20:54babies. Also the root system here as well which is great so I know that all this has been removed and
21:01I'm going to pop them on my tarp here. My trusty piece of kit that I use every day and I can't recommend
21:06a tarp enough that's a really handy piece of kit and it can fold down nicely as well. So we know that
21:12wild garlic is a wonderful source of early nectar in the year for pollinators such as hoverflies,
21:21butterflies, beetles and bees but we know that bluebells are also good for pollinators so that's going to
21:29create some space now. So we hope that the bluebells will set seed and that'll retain this lovely violet
21:36colour running through this area.
21:54Well sitting here is just glorious and when I started this project 18 months ago this is exactly what I had
22:04in mind surrounded by beautiful herbs that are great smelling and have wonderful flowers that you
22:12can obviously see the bees are enjoying. You know herbs are a great plant for small spaces because you
22:19get so much out of them. I mean they're productive they smell great what's not to love but you know with
22:26all gardens there's always some maintenance to do and I've got a mint over here that is making an escape
22:35for freedom. This lime mint has started to layer itself over the pot, it's put down its stems, it's
22:44produced roots and now we've got a situation where we've got a couple of new plants of mint that are now
22:53just going to run free which is not what we want and the reason I put them in the pots last year was
23:02to stop this from happening. So we are going to dig this up and make sure that we get every last little
23:08bit of root out because we don't want this to become a mint to garden. Now we've got another problem
23:15here in the fact that this mint has spread itself out, it's shot out its runners looking for more
23:24nutrients and it's left this dead space in the centre here. So to reinvigorate it what we're going to do
23:31is we're going to take it out of its pot and we are going to divide it up into a few new plants
23:41so that we can repot it and get lovely new plants that are going to be really productive. So taking a
23:53nice sharp spade, now mint is so resilient so you can be really harsh with it. What I'm going to do is
24:02might cut it up again especially this bit. Now it's always great to give mint away to friends and
24:10family they'll really love it because I mean it just smells so great. Now I've got some peat-free
24:18compost here I'm going to use the same pot so that it fits nicely back into the hole where it came from
24:30but popping it in there like that and filling it up
24:40and hopefully in a couple of weeks time we'll get some nice new shoots
24:50and we'll be able to cut them back and use them in drinks and in teas and it will be perfection.
25:00So filling that nice and full right the way to the rim and I'm going to place that back in there.
25:15Now over here there is another job which needs doing too. Now this sorrel is about to flower which means
25:25it's going to go seed which means there's going to be a whole heap of little sorrel seedlings all over
25:32the place if we don't do something about it. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to be a bit ruthless.
25:38I'm going to cut it right the way back to the ground.
25:44Now I will probably after I've done this give it a really good water, give it a seaweed feed and hopefully
25:58it means that it's going to produce a whole new fresh lot of green leaves that we can use. But
26:08you know if any of your herbs are going to flower make sure you come and deadhead them or slip them at
26:18the base because you do not want seedlings starting to appear all over your newly planted herb garden.
26:25But now that is going to go into the compost heap.
26:42Time now for some handy hints. I thought it'd be a great idea to come back up to the vertical garden
26:46that I've been installing over the last few weeks. I'm sure you can agree it is looking fabulous. The
26:51flowers are coming on, the strawberries are fruiting, really lovely. But I have got a little bit of a
26:56problem with the recycled drain pipe that I've installed over here. So whilst we did install
27:03some of these stones on the end to stop the compost from coming out, it hasn't quite done its job.
27:07So I thought it'd be a good idea just to backfill with a little bit of gravel.
27:11So now is the perfect time to be deadheading your rhododendrons. Now you need to be quite careful
27:23when you're taking the flower faded blooms off because you don't want to disturb that flowering
27:31bud underneath that's going to produce that wonderful flower for next year. But doing this
27:35is going to keep your plant nice and compact and stop that leggy growth.
27:44Well that's almost all we have time for just now. But before we go, we are in this beautiful
27:49wildflower display. Isn't it gorgeous? The red campion and camacia are looking fabulous. And you know,
27:55camacia do like that heavier base soil, clay soil, as long as it's free draining. So perfect for that.
28:01And also perfect for pollinators. There's bees everywhere. Yeah, exactly. Callum and George
28:06are back here next week and they will be tackling one of those questions that we get asked a lot and
28:11it's how to keep those slugs and snails away from your hostas. And there's also a visit to a hospital
28:17garden that is a haven for patients and also the very busy staff. Remember you can watch all the
28:22theories so far on BBC iPlayer. Just search for Beechgrove. But from us, bye for now. Bye.
28:52Bye.