Summer Gardening with Carol Klein

Summer at Glebe Cottage sometimes means changeable weather — sultry, showery and altogether typically British! But this never daunts Carol, who takes the opportunity to investigate one of our richest plant habitats: watery wetlands and bogs. The pond at Glebe Cottage is now lush with rich green foliage. Back in the spring, Carol added plants that would thrive in this shady, boggy area. Now, these are living up to their promise, and none will be more spectacular than the native yellow flag irises she had dug up and moved from elsewhere in the garden. Ubiquitous and easily recognised in the wild, she shows us how it frequents waterways throughout the British Isles. This moves Carol to celebrate the iris family — a group of plants that brings elegance and drama into the garden, from the uncanny hues of ‘Katharine Hodgson', which flowered in the garden in January, to Carol's new planting of bearded iris on her shed roof. Other members of the same family get a look in, including advice on how to plant and cultivate gladioli corms, and digging out an overcrowded row of hesperantha — all of them gorgeous additions to a summer garden. In the vegetable garden, this is a big week for salad, from planting out little gem lettuce to how to sow more summer salad to keep the succession going, including micro mizuna and rocket.

The horticultural expert welcomes viewers back to Glebe Cottage garden in north Devon, where, despite the challenging mix of intense hot, dry days and torrential stormy downpours, the garden is showing off a magical sea of flowers and foliage. Carol also discusses geraniums, and presents tips on how to care for pelargoniums.

Carol Klein welcomes us back to Glebe Cottage garden, where the hot summer weather is parching the open, sun-bathed parts of the garden while the shady areas remain enticingly cool. Many gardeners struggle to get to grips with those dusty, exposed, dry areas that never seem to work. But for Carol, these can be rich planting opportunities. She's even created a special raised bed at Glebe Cottage specifically designed to allow her to grow plants that need very open, sun-baked conditions. A quick visit to nearby Exmoor National Park makes the point. Here, amid one of Britain's harshest, most rugged natural environments, grows one of our most familiar and wildlifesustaining plants: gorse. This prickly shrub, festooned in globes of scintillating chrome-yellow, and emitting one of the most delicious plant perfumes ever, is a member of the pea — or legume — family. Back in the garden, Carol plants a less well known, but very beautiful shrub — a lespedeza, which, in spring, will complement her Judas tree handsomely. Both will be smothered in dark pink, pea-like flowers that give away their membership of the same family, along with lupins and sweetpeas. And in the veg beds, there are delicious legumes aplenty! Carol sows peas and demonstrates the best way to train your beans to twist their way up their beanpoles.

As summer reaches its climax at Glebe Cottage garden in Devon, Carol Klein introduces us to a group of plants that really provides the drum roll to peak summer time: the daisy. Whether it be the bold, hot colours of heleniums and dahlias, or others, like early flowering asters that display themselves more quietly, daisies thrive in the most surprising spots and mingle brilliantly alongside other summer treasures. There's a daisy to suit all types of conditions. Carol makes a visit to the wild and gorgeous north Devon coast to have a look at one particular wild daisy to find out more about its native roots, and she spots a few other fascinating wild plants that thrive in this dry, exposed and harsh seaside habitat. Among them is the brilliantly named Hottentot fig, with its succulent, flashy leaves and dazzlingly coloured flowers, as well as contrastingly spikey sea hollies. Back in the garden, Carol introduces us to the raised ‘seaside bed' she's constructed to allow her to grow a range of similar plants that wouldn't survive in her heavy clay soil, including the charming Mexican daisy. But there are a myriad of daisies that will thrive in Glebe's main beds and borders, and Carol undertakes a round of clearing, cutting back and planting afresh to revive the parts of the garden that are looking particularly tired and dusty. In the veg garden, things are getting wild. Carol catches up on some harvesting, and shows us her statuesque artichokes, now reaching for the sky — amazingly, these monsters are members of the daisy family! To keep the edibles coming, Carol sows some more brassicas and shows us how to protect them from the onslaught of the aptly named cabbage white butterfly.