Great British Garden Revival episode 8: Sarah Raven explores the relationship between the British and their lawns. She visits Worcester College, Oxford, to catch a glimpse of lawn perfection and the winner of Britain’s best lawn competition. She also discovers a radical new approach to growing lawns, with the world’s first ‘floral lawn’ – composed solely of flowering and foliage plants and not a blade of grass in sight. With the help of a family, she road-tests three different types of lawn – a wildflower meadow, traditional grass and fake grass – with surprising results. Basing her revival campaign at Polesden Lacey in Surrey, Sarah shows how to keep lawns in tip-top condition; how to inject a splash of seasonal colour into grass by naturalising bulbs; and also how to deal with those irritating bald patches in the lawn, which are the blight of every gardener.
James Wong is determined for everyone to share in the sheer spectacle, thrill of innovation and sense of fun which tropical gardens can provide. Seen as unfashionable, expensive and too much hard work, tropical gardening has fallen by the wayside and James wants that to change. On his revival he meets like-minded tropical plant geeks, including one man who appears to have defied the laws of nature by creating a tropical paradise in his back garden in Norfolk. James gives his tips on how to care for and maintain tropical plants; explains which ones are best for sun and shade; and also reveals how to create a tropical look on a budget.
Great British Garden Revival episode 8
A tropical garden features tropical plants and requires good rainfall or a decent irrigation or sprinkler system for watering. These gardens typically need fertilizer and heavy mulching.
Tropical gardens are no longer exclusive to tropical areas. Many gardeners in cooler climates are adopting the tropical garden design, which is possible through careful choice of plants and flowers. Main features include plants with very large leaves, vegetation that builds in height towards the back of the garden, creating a dense garden. Large plants and small trees hang over the garden, leaving sunlight to hit the ground directly.
A tropical garden is one of the most difficult gardens to build or maintain, it becomes more difficult the more your local climate differs from the natural habitat of your plants. The keys to a healthy tropical garden are plentiful light and water. The large leaves that feature in tropical plants require the soil to be humid at all times, so irrigation might be a must-have for some gardens. Over-watering causes the roots to rot, killing plants. A tropical plant that is not cold-hardy should be brought indoors during the winter and returned to the garden for the summer.
