Ep1 Air date 7 March 2011
In this new series plantswoman Carol Klein shares with us a year in her garden at Glebe Cottage in north Devon.
Carol has looked after her garden for over thirty years and each year brings with it its own rewards and delights, as well as problems and challenges. Follow Carol as her garden grows, flourishes, dies and is reborn. The first episode covers January and February. The frosts have not yet released their grip on the garden and the devastation of a hard winter is scattered all around. There is much to do; cutting back, preparing the soil and garlic planting. The first green shoots of the year begin to appear, as drifts of snowdrops carpet the woodland floor and hellebores reveal their ravishing colours. A local woodsman joins Carol to lay a native hedge. Slowly the first signs of spring appear.
Episode 2 Air date 14th Jan 2011
March and April is a time of huge change in the garden, as the remnants of winter make way for the hope of spring. Carol is busy clearing away the last of the winter detritus to make way for waves of planting. There’s pruning to be done and she sows the first seeds of the year. Snowdrops are replaced by celandines and violets, and along the lanes and hedgerows, primroses abound. A local hedge pruner, who has come to cloud-prune Carol’s box hedge, finds his work interrupted as the lengthening days of April bring a nesting hedge-sparrow to the garden.
Episode 3 Air date 21th Jan 2011.
Spring into Summer. Plantswoman Carol Klein shares with us a year in her garden at Glebe Cottage in North Devon. In May and June everything in the garden is surging forwards, full of exuberance. Rather than sitting back to enjoy it all, Carol is planting out sweet peas, picking the first salad leaves and staking perennials.
Blossom drips from the trees, the woodland garden is carpeted with bluebells, and primal ferns begin to unfold. Carol’s opulent oriental poppies pop their hats in the early summer heat and as the welcome hum of insects returns to the garden, Carol and husband Neil take delivery of their first hive of honey bees.
Episode 4 Air date 28th Jan 2011.
In July and August the garden is building to a peak. Flowers are at their very brightest and most beautiful with geraniums abounding and the fragrance of lilies pervading the garden. To keep the garden looking glorious, there is staking to be done, roses to deadhead and cuttings of asters to take.
Carol sets to work in her Hot Borders. She plants out the castor oil plants, grown from seed, and places cannas, gingers and dahlias to create an exotic, hot, explosion of colour. Carol also takes a walk along the dunes of her local beach, Braunton Burrows to seek out the native sea holly, a plant she would dearly love to grow in her own garden.
Episode 5 Air date 4th Feb 2011.
In September and October the atmosphere in the garden is rich with the smell of ripening fruit and wood smoke. It’s harvest time so there are seeds to collect, pricking out to be completed and tidying to be done. Carol’s daughters Annie and Alice are home to help decide the fate of the cankered apple tree, and Carol has to prepare the garden for visitors to her Open Garden Scheme day.
Episode 6 Air date 11th Feb 2011.
In November and December, the first frosts have struck. It’s time to put away tender perennials, begin judicious cutting-back and sweep up the fallen leaves. The garden is laid bare but beauty is still found in the skeletal structures of fading plants. Holly, box and yew reveal their evergreen glory and the perfume of viburnum and mahonia tempt insects still bravely on the wing. In the Woodland Garden, under the leaf-litter, first snowdrops are already beginning to appear. As Carol plants her tulip bulbs, thoughts turn to spring.
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