Monty makes a start on turning his ornamental veg garden into a cottage garden. He now wants to fill the space with flowers and veg. He's already made a start on it with roses but today is planting foxgloves digitalis - a variety called 'Excelsior'. He also decides on the colour scheme - he is thinking of going for the cottage gardening as having a softness of colour - lemon yellows, mauves and lilacs. Carol is at home at Glebe Cottage in Devon where she reveals a little of the fascinating history of one of our woodland gems, the trillium. Tri is the Latin prefix for three, and everything about trilliums is in threes - there are three petals, three sepals and three leaves. Francis Masson, a Scot, was the very first plant hunter appointed by Kew, who found on a trip to the north-east of the Americas, a pure white trillium - Trillium grandiflorum. Carol shows that where the seed heads have tumbled to the ground, they're replaced by little clumps of seedlings, which Carol digs up and then carries them off to the shed. From one seed head Carol has got scores of seedlings. She separates them all off and each one will have its own seed leaf - just a single leaf. Finally, Carol plants trilliums - glandiflorum and albidum in her garden.
This episode comes from the Malvern Spring Gardening Show at the Three Counties Showground. Monty Don, Joe Swift and Carol Klein go behind the scenes to meet the show garden designers and the nursery men and women who make this event so special. Monty takes a sneak peak at the floral marquee befo...
Monty is in his Longmeadow garden - he takes a moment to see the growth in the last few weeks. All hedges are now in leaf, the cops are full of bluebells and narcissi. The Jewel Garden is full of colour with tulips and euphorbias and the Spring Garden has cow parsley. This is his favourite moment...
Monty plants up a very large pot which he stands on chocks which will help with the drainage. The pot will have a lot of plants and will make quite heavy nutritional demands, therefore Monty advises that it is important to think about which compost to use. Monty uses peat-free potting compost, si...
