BBC - How to Be a Gardener S01 [8 Ep TV-Rip]
mp3, 44100 Hz, stereo, 128 kb/s | mpeg4, yuv420p, 720x400, 25.00 fps | 2.23 GB
Genre: Documentary

You wouldn’t dream of moving into a house without taking a look at the area. It’s the same in a garden. Before you can grow anything, you need to know what sort of conditions you have. Then you can choose plants that are suited to them. There really is no need to waste money on plants that will hate your environment.

You’ll need to know what sort of soil you have, how much light there is and the prevailing weather conditions. Is it a windy site, a particularly cold one, or is it sunny and sheltered? All the information you need to succeed is here.
Assessing your plot

Just like you, your garden is unique and has character. It is this character, a distinctive set of conditions that work together, which determines what you can grow successfully.

Understand your garden’s character and you’re well on the way to becoming a blossoming gardener. That’s what we’ll be doing over the next few pages.

We’ll look at the following range of conditions and show you how to discover what they are in your garden:

Light
Moisture
Temperature
Wind
Soil type

Light

Oh, and wherever you see this icon you’ll find plenty of suggestions for plants that will thrive in all the conditions we look at.

The importance of light

Put bluntly, plants die without sunlight. Sunlight is the ‘engine’ that powers growth – a process called photosynthesis.

In the wild (which is where most garden plants come from) light levels vary. Being cunning little chaps, different plants evolved to thrive in different levels of light. Clearly the amount of light your garden gets will have a big impact on what plants grow well.

Aspect

The overall amount of light received depends on aspect, the direction your garden faces. Use a compass.

• North-facing gardens get the least light and can be damp

• South-facing gardens get the most light

• East-facing gardens get morning light

• West-facing gardens get afternoon and evening light
Temperature

Garden plants come from all over the world and may be used to different temperatures to those in your garden. Knowing how cold your garden gets will help you to avoid plants that freeze to death!

• Southern Britain is generally warmer than the north

• The Gulf Stream makes the west warmer than the east

• As altitude increases, temperatures decrease.
Wind

The prevailing wind

The direction from which the wind most often blows will influence your garden’s character, and what you can grow. As a general rule, northerlies and easterlies are cold, while westerlies are warmer but stronger.

On a hot day, a gentle zephyr may be pleasant, but wind can also be a menace.

Wind worries

Long term, winds ‘deform’ – think of sideways-growing trees in coastal areas!
Sudden gales snap branches and stems
An unexpected cold wind may ‘scorch’ tender new growth, leaving it crispy brown
Even gentle winds can scorch plants that naturally live in sheltered woodland, for example, Japanese maples.

Moisture

Plants need water

Just like you, plants need water. There must be a constant supply because plants are like giant wicks. Water is sucked from the soil by roots, drawn up the stem and lost through the leaves.

Your ‘soil moisture content’

The amount of water in the soil is influenced by:

Local annual rainfall
Time of year
Soil type
Aspect
The water table – the point in the soil at which water drains away
Shady or north facing corners often have damp soil
Much of the rainfall tends to come from the south west. Easterly aspects, protected by the house, tend to be dry.
South-facing beds, or those in the ‘rain shadow’ of a wall, tend to be dry.

Plants have evolved to take advantage of variations in moisture content. So on wet soil you can plant a bog garden and grow moisture-loving plants; on free-draining soil you can create a gravel garden full of drought-tolerant species.

Soil is far from dull stuff. It is made up of humus (organic matter) and three different types of particle: clay, silt and sand. It provides a plant with an anchor for its roots, its water and its nutrients.

Did you know?

When you look at a border, all you see is ‘topsoil’. Dig down 30cm to 60cm (1ft to 2ft) and things change. You’ll see a clear boundary between the topsoil and ‘subsoil’ – mucky stuff that plants won’t grow in. In some new gardens, especially on estates built on heavy soils, that clay subsoil from footings etc, has been spread over the natural topsoil and then covered with a few inches of indifferent topsoil and then turfed.

It’s worth checking because if the topsoil layer is only a few centimetres thick, subsoil can cause problems:

If it’s clay – water logging in winter
If it’s sandy or chalky – dehydration in summer

But don’t despair, reach for the ‘old faithful’ – (well-rotted) bulky organic manure – and you can improve things greatly.



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