Gardening with Carol Klein episode 2

Gardening with Carol Klein episode 2: The second of a two-part masterclass in which the horticulturalist shares her knowledge. From her potting shed at Glebe Cottage garden, Carol shows in detail how to sow seed, and then how to bring on the resulting young plants, caring for them until they reach maturity. Outdoors, she explains how to pant vegetables and how to combine edibles with ornamental plants in a tight space to make a colourful – and tasty – display. For more advanced gardeners, Carol gives precise instructions about how to make new plants from existing ones, by dividing them or by taking cuttings.

Carol Klein VMH is an English gardening expert, who also works as a television presenter and newspaper columnist.

Gardening with Carol Klein episode 2

Klein made her television debut on Gardeners’ World in 1989 and has since presented other gardening programmes such as Real Gardens and Open Gardens. Projects include Life in a Cottage Garden with Carol Klein which followed a year in the life of Klein’s garden at Glebe Cottage in North Devon, and Grow Your Own Veg. Each week the programme looked at a different group of crop plants or techniques suitable for home gardening. Both programmes were made for BBC Two. She has been a permanent presenter of Gardeners’ World since 2005.

Klein has been described as having a “weather-beaten face, forthright manner and fruity accent – mainly West Country but with hints of her native Manchester..”. In 2013 she was a joint presenter for two episodes of BBC’s Great British Garden Revival.

Born in Walkden, Lancashire, in 1945, Klein attended Bolton School but left school when she was 15. Interviewed for Lancashire Life in 2014 she recalled: “I think I was quite close to being chucked out. I loved art and biology but in those days you had to choose between the two subjects. I was fed up about that.” She wanted to go to art school but her father would not allow it and she ended up selling buttons and stockings at the Kendal Milne department store in Manchester. Her love of gardening was inspired partly by her grandfather, whose allotment she enjoyed, and partly by her mother.

Klein trained as an art teacher and taught in schools in Shepherd’s Bush, London before moving to Devon. There she lectured at North Devon College and taught art at South Molton Secondary School and Community College before setting up her own plant nursery, Glebe Cottage Plants. She exhibited at more than 200 Royal Horticultural Society shows and began exhibiting at the annual Chelsea Flower Show in 1990, where her displays won a total of six gold medals.