Gardening Together with Diarmuid Gavin episode 1

Gardening Together with Diarmuid Gavin episode 1: Series encouraging everyone to get gardening together. Diarmuid Gavin takes calls, answers questions and offers great practical tips.

Diarmuid Gavin invites us into his own garden paradise, encouraging everyone across the country to get gardening together. He’ll be taking calls, answering questions and offering dozens of great practical tips.

This week Diarmuid helps design a garden for Mary Fitzpatrick, in County Wicklow, who has a challenging space at the front of her house. He also offers advice for gardeners with a bit of help from plant expert Helen Dillon, and creates a sunken fire pit and seating area in his garden.

Gardening Together with Diarmuid Gavin episode 1

Hydrangea

Shrubby hydrangeas brighten borders in mid to late summer with their showy, but delicate, long-lasting flowers in shades of pink, white or blue. Many have attractive autumn colour and leaf shape.
Climbing hydrangeas flower in summer and are well suited for covering north and east-facing walls. Most popular is the fully hardy Hydrangea anomala subsp. petiolaris. Evergreen Hydrangea seemannii and Hydrangea serratifolia need shelter as they are prone to cold damage.

Shrubs like hydrangeas flower from mid to late summer on the previous year’s growth. Mophead and lacecap hydrangeas will bloom satisfactorily with little attention, but regular pruning encourages new, vigorous growth that can produce a better display. Likewise, other species, including the climbing hydrangea, will benefit from a trim.

The pruning methods explained below are for individual types and species of hydrangea. The most commonly grown hydrangeas in gardens are lacecaps and mopheads – mopheads are identified by their full, roundish heads of large petals; lacecaps have tiny flowers in the centre of the bloom and an outer border of large petals.

The most popular and well-known climbing hydrangea is Hydrangea anomala subsp. petiolaris. Though slow growing to start with, it is a vigorous climber that can cover outbuildings or brighten up shady house walls. Hydrangea seemannii and H. serratifolia are vigorous evergreen climbers that are perhaps less known as they need to be grown in a sheltered spot and in milder parts of the UK.