Better Gardening tips in 2025...With Two Badly Disguised Santas

It's become a thing for multi-award-winning garden designer David Stevens to drop in over Christmas with our resident horticulturist John Stirland over a glass of sherry for a gardening chinwag. The result is always educational as these two stalwarts trade wisdom and a few laughs.  The wisdom includes suggestions for Winter interest in an all-year-round garden, some garden design tips, a discussion about gifts for the gardener who has everything, and the one garden tool that neither of our experts could do without.

To watch the video of our podcast, visit our LYG YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/1oGPrvNO1Kk

Now that we have fan mail, please text in some feedback. Also, take advantage of John's fifty-plus years of experience in professional horticulture and send in any gardening questions you may have.

If you've not yet visited our LYG Facebook site, here's the link: https://bit.ly/3oIzVr9

And to sign up for our free subscription newsletter which this month features more of our Winter Plant suggestions, horticulturist Paul Maxey's demonstration of taking hardwood cuttings and a guide to building a hotbox from fresh manure, it's here: http://eepurl.com/iP4Wd2

To contact Loving Your Garden, perhaps with questions for John, it's:
rod@lovingyourgarden.org

Transcript

Rod Whiting (Host)
Hello, I hope you had a fabulous Christmas and are looking forward to a happy gardening new year. And to help you with that, I've got a couple of garden experts together just before Christmas for a bit of a festive gardening chat. None other than award-winning garden designer David Stevens and horticulturist and broadcaster John Sterland. We discussed all manner of gardening topics, including plants to give you winter interest, the one indispensable garden tool our experts cannot do without, and a host of other useful gardening tips too. Let's start then with those winter plants to ensure all year round interest in your garden.

David (08:20.06)
Come on John, you go first.

John Stirland (08:20.118)
Absolutely. Well, I'll go with the things I've got in the garden at the moment. I mean, you can now have clematis all the year round. Absolutely no problem. And my winter one is Wisley Cream. There's another one called Freckles. That's clematis Cirrhosa Whisley Cream. And Freckles is another one, beautiful one with flecks of pink in. I've got Mahonia out this year, I've got Winter Jasmine, which is growing up my summer rose. That's all cut back now. There's no way I want rose flowers at Christmas.

David (09:04.594)
Lovely.

John Stirland (09:19.17)
So everything's been cut back, ready for spring and the winter jasmine that have grown through it, that's flowering now. So using one plant to grow another. Yeah, absolutely.  Most important. Yeah. What else? hellebores. Christmas hellebore is going to be fabulous for Christmas.

David (09:34.108)
You're doubling up, aren't you? Yep.

David (09:39.589)
I've got the other

yes.

John Stirland (09:48.75)
You?

David (09:49.34)
Yeah, mine are in flower right now. It's not, it's not, Helleborus niger, which is the, the Christmas rose. but it's just full of flower. That's its third season and it's now, it's got better and better each year. and the other clematis I grow for winter interest is, Armandii, which again is an evergreen with a big leaf and wonderful waxy, creamy flowers, creamy white flower, which smell wonderful. It's a really very, very fragrant plant.

John Stirland (10:07.245)
Yes.

David (10:17.734)
I've got Winter Flowering Jasmine, same as you Jasmine Nudiflorum. The other wonderful one that was very trendy a few years ago, Fatsia Spiders web, which is the variegated Fatsia, which is looking brilliant now because it's really standing out,  and Euonymous Silver Queen, I've got a big one at the bottom of the garden. And of course that wonderful Viburnum, Viburnum Bodnantense, which is flowering right now. And I've got a big one, we inherited it, it's enormous, it must be, I don't know 14, 15 feet high and as much across and it's just full of flower. Absolutely gorgeous. 

Rod Whiting (10:52.835)
and such a beautiful scent as well.

John Stirland (10:52.726)
Yeah, yeah, if you can get this mixture of a few evergreen shrubs and some of the hamamelis and things like that, and then on the ground, cyclamen coum, things like that, you can have a fabulous display. Also, Iris Unguicularis - I love that name.

David (11:05.734)
Yes, and that's fragrant too.

David (11:19.346)
Yes, yep, good one that. And the other one people forget, the people forget that of course Hardy perennials they think are all deciduous and die down in the winter. But think of all the euphorbias, all the spurges, which are looking absolutely gorgeous now, give you so much winter interest. I've got this one called Humpty Dumpty, which I wasn't sure what it was, so I sent a picture down to our good friend Rosie Hardy and what she doesn't know about plants isn't worth knowing. She says, that's Humpty Dumpty, which is a lovely name because it is very dome shaped. It's an absolute beauty, but it's looking fabulous at the moment.

John Stirland (11:53.27)
Yeah.

Yeah, I mean it is; it's fabulous. And they've got the berries, cotoneasters, and things like that. Although the birds are going at them this year.

David (12:01.158)
Yep. yes, yes. And I've got a wonderful malus. Actually, it's not ours. It's in the verge opposite, but it hangs over our boundary. And it's full of wonderful red crabs, crab apples. And of course the birds and blackbirds and the pigeons and everything else love it. And they're feeding off it low end. They really are.

John Stirland (12:20.226)
David, what do you call that when you're borrowed landscape, is it? Yeah, borrowed landscape somewhere. 

David (12:23.75)
Borrowed landscape, yeah absolutely. Yeah, yeah. And the secret with borrowed landscape, if you've got one on the other side of your boundary, birch or whatever, bring a couple into your garden and then screen that boundary out and looks as though your garden goes on into the next area. It's a really good way of increasing visual space.

Rod Whiting (12:26.521)
Yeah, yeah.

Rod Whiting (12:45.105)
And for smaller gardens, skimmias I think are really good value as well. A couple of good skimmias. The Reevesiana is the self-fertilising one, isn't it? The hermaphrodite, yes.

David (12:48.828)
Yeah? Yeah.

John Stirland (12:56.755)
Yes, yeah, yeah, that's it

David (12:57.744)
Hermaphrodite, I think, is the technical term for it. yeah, in other words, it's incestuous - Ha Ha.

John Stirland (13:03.278)
Yeah, and rubella is a beautiful male, the buds are fantastic. And of course, it's great if you've got females for pollinating. Yeah. Yeah, they do well drained acid soil.  The thing is with my hydrangeas, I've got alkaline soil.

David (13:17.754)
Yep. But they do like a bit of an acid soil, don't they? So that's the secret. Yep. Yep. Yep.

John Stirland (13:33.002)
slightly a neutral alkaline but I use sulfur chips and just spread sulfur chips underneath, tickle them in and that just makes it acid enough to keep my aspera and my quercifolia going because to me one of most important things to know is the pH of your soil. If you find you've got neutral or alkaline soil

David (13:33.136)
Yes. Yep. Yep.

That's it.

David (13:54.414)
Exactly.

John Stirland (13:58.37)
Don't start planting rhododendrons because you'll watch them go backwards.

David (14:00.272)
No. And if you move into a new house, new property, very often the builders will have made a mess as they do, but they often bring topsoil in and spread it over the garden or in a different part of the garden. And of course the acidity or alkalinity, the pH of that soil may be totally different to the underlying soil in the garden. So always test your pH in half a dozen places in the garden depending on the size of the garden just to see what you've got.

John Stirland (14:31.854)
It is worth it, David, yeah. One of the best things when you move in, just check. Just do that and you'll save yourself a fortune.

David (14:41.426)
And you get these little soil testing meters now and they're surprisingly accurate. They really are and they only cost, I don't know, six quid or something like that. And they last forever. But it's a really good guide. So do check it out because there's more plants wasted just through not checking that. And the other thing I always say to people with plants, do read the flipping label when you buy the thing because it gives you the basic information there. How big does it get? Is it like sun or shade or damp or dry or whatever?

John Stirland (14:46.584)
Yeah.

David (15:10.65)
and it'll give you a good clue as to how to get it started. you know, just do a bit of your homework first.

John Stirland (15:17.324)
Yeah, exactly.

Rod Whiting (15:19.171)
Any thoughts about... what do you give a gardener for Christmas? Because surely they've got everything, haven't they?

David (15:26.77)
I tell you what, we're all in that situation. And our kids said, you know, you're pushing on a bit, granddad. You know, must have everything. And I say, there's one thing a gardener always wants, a good pair of gardening gloves that are tough and you can tackle good pruning jobs. And if you're doing pruning jobs, another pair of secateurs is always welcome. It really is. So those are my two have to go to presents, certainly. I know I've got a couple of them under the tree at the moment.

John Stirland
Well, I mean, exactly the same, yeah, the tools are to me the most important. if you, again, that pH kit, if somebody is just starting gardening and just tell them to check the soil and it'll save them a lot of money.

David (15:56.209)
Yeah.

Rod Whiting (15:58.576)
Yeah.

David (16:14.27)
And I know the other thing that I always want are plant supports. And I know a very good market in a certain East Anglia town that sells them at really good prices. I've already bought about 30 of this chap and I'll be up again John, I need more!

John Stirland (16:19.348)
yeah.

Rod Whiting (16:19.824)
Yes.

Rod Whiting (16:44.977)
So let's think then about the new year, particularly for members who need that little bit of inspiration. You get to the end of the year, don't you? You sense spring is not that far away now. It's only a month or so when we get into sort of January. And maybe we should, this is the year we're gonna do that gardening project. What are the sort of things we ought to take into account?

John Stirland (17:11.056)
for a project, I'll leave that one to David. I've been out there tidying up, tidying things that aren't ornamental. You know, there's some nice ornamental things, seed heads and things like that, to leave those. But other things I love to tidy up, go through with the fork and tickle the soil up, get a bit of air in there. And I always look forward to...

It's getting to know your plants because sometimes, you know, people go out there and they throw in fertilizer around and things like that and end up the plants grow so well and they lose out on flour and etc. So if you are going to use a fertilizer, if your plant's looking okay, I just say give it a bit of potash.

David (17:57.766)
Yes.

John Stirland (18:07.214)
And I can tell I could go now and show you a box of sulfate of potash I think it's it's one of the best things and Bonfire ash and things like that is good because you've got the carbon in it as well sweetens the soil Yeah, so Yep Go and go and constant go and get out there and look at the plant and find out everything you can about it because it's fabulous when you do get it right.



David (18:40.048)
It is, isn't it? The question you often get is, my plant has got tons of leaves on it and no flowers. And you say, do you feed it? And they say, yes, lots and lots. I think it's right, John, that plant flower to reproduce, obviously. And if they're too happy, they don't bother. You know, that's, yeah. Yeah, exactly, exactly. But...

John Stirland (18:58.656)
No, why reproduce when you're enjoying yourself? Well, mean, our soil in Norfolk generally is not that great. It's not got a lot of nutrients in it. The flower, the blackberries this year, the hedgerows were black because they're struggling and a plant that's struggling wants to, well, I must reproduce myself. And the reproducing yourself is flowers and fruit. Yeah.

David (19:22.022)
That's it. That's it. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, no, absolutely. Now I think the thing with me, Rod, is I often tell people, not to say that people get fed up with their garden, but they get to a point where they don't know what's quite right and what's quite wrong. And I often say to people, go out with a fresh eye, as though it was in your living room. What would you do to decorate or redecorate your living room? And I often say, move some of the furniture about. People think about a garden bench, they'll always leave it in the same place. Put it somewhere else.

Paint in a different colour, it'll look totally, totally different. You'll have a different focal point, it'll take your eye in a different direction. I also say, think about, don't have to spend fortunes in a garden centre to buy pots or containers or statues or whatever. I'm always on the lookout for what I call found objects. And you can find those anywhere, from a builder's yard. I've got a couple of big, long logs. I dragged one down off the fields, took me hours to get it home.

John Stirland (20:23.928)
Ha ha ha!

David (20:24.302)
I've set it into board and it's a wonderful shape. It looks a bit like a dragon and I've got plants around it. It cost me absolutely nothing. And the number of people say, gosh, that looks, that's really clever. It ain't clever, It was just finding something, thinking of somewhere to put it, eyeballing it up and then putting it in place, let the plants grow around it. And you've got a wonderful focal point. If it's big enough, you can sit on the thing as well. And you don't have to spend a vast amount of money to bring...beauty and a bit of change into your garden. So have a fresh eye, look at things, think of what you might utilise to produce a new focal point. I remember, without dropping names, was over in South Africa working and we did a little garden or a part of a garden for a farmer. And you're countrymen, John, aren't you? I wouldn't say farmers are mean, but they're very careful with their money, usually anyway, which is fair enough.

John Stirland (21:15.66)
Yeah, exactly. Have to be.

David (21:18.258)
And he said, give us a feature by the front door. So we went around the yard, we found an old milk churn, which we took an angle, grinded the two and cut it in half. We put it on the wall. We had found an old force, it had a big old tap, which we plumbed through the wall, put a big bowl underneath it, which was a cattle trough as well, switched the water on and it water flowed into this thing. And he said it was the best feature he'd seen in his life. And it cost nothing at all, except a bit of labor.

John Stirland (21:35.438)
Ha

John Stirland (21:41.038)
Yeah. Yeah.

David (21:43.834)
So, you know, imagination, I think, is one of the key elements of garden design. Try and think out of the box a little bit, and you can use very little money to do that, but it'll make your garden look totally, totally different.

John Stirland (21:56.726)
Yeah, and talking about imagination, talking about studying plants as well, there comes a time when lots of plants get too big. what basically to me, when you're pruning somebody and getting them back to shape, somebody should be able to go past after you've done it and not really know it's been done. OK, they might see where it's been nipped, but they shouldn't. You should be able to prune that.

David (22:07.399)
Yes.

John Stirland (22:26.926)
Plant back as near as possible to how it should look anyway And one of the worst one of the things I hate most is when spring comes along and you see the council or they've woken up and they go around a lot I don't like that word heavy pruning great big branches off trees and things like that and it just cut back and dear it really does my head in.

David (22:45.904)
Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

David (22:52.988)
No, quite agree. If anybody wants to learn about pruning plants, have a look at Rosie Hardy's videos on YouTube. They are absolutely first class, know, just simple techniques, nothing fancy about it. But you know, taking out the old wood, thinning plants back, all of those sort of basic things that rejuvenates a plant.

John Stirland (23:02.667)
Yeah.

David (23:16.646)
Stops it from overcrowding itself take out you take out the crossing branches and the one that's go back into the ploughed all that basic stuff And it makes such a difference, but to see it on YouTube you can actually Bring it alive and Rosie's brilliant. She chats away and she's the one that I love one of her videos is she's she's repotting or she's repotting perennials and she says take a saw to it and to start with you think bloody hell take a saw to it, but you saw the bottom of the roots off and  all those new capillary roots will then break through and get going. Such a basic thing but she brings it alive so happy Christmas Rosie and Rob hope you have a wonderful time.

John Stirland (23:57.944)
Hey, yeah. Yeah.

Rod Whiting (24:01.017)
Right, well, goodness, there's a few things to think about there, isn't there? If there's one skill, if people are relatively new to gardening, perhaps they've been doing it a few years, but they just want to sort of step up a bit, what's the one skill you think that they should really master? Is it pruning? Is that the one skill that makes a massive difference to a gardener?

John Stirland (24:24.226)
Well, personally, I do. I mean, I've always said if the government gave you a job and says, we'll pay you to do that, but you, you know, I would have picked pruning. I would have gone all over the country just pruning. I'd have learned. I don't think I'd have used a chainsaw. To me, once it gets a certain height, it's a skilled job for an arborist. But anything lower than that, I love.

David (24:49.02)
Yes.

John Stirland (24:52.872)
I love pruning. Absolutely love it. Yeah.

David (24:55.954)
It rejuvenates plants and it really gets them going again. But that'd be fun. One of my first, well, my first real boss was Percy Thrower when I was working down at Zion Park at Brentford. And of course, Percy was originally Parksman, proper Parksman, head of Parks.

John Stirland (25:11.214)
Yeah, absolutely.

David (25:12.242)
And unfortunately, there's very few decent park departments left now. They've all been cut back. And Percy said, do you know how to prune roses, boy? We all shook our heads and he went out and showed us properly how to prune roses. know, two or three buds from the bottom, outward facing bud. And if you've got a pair of Felcos with that rolling handle on them, which the expensive ones do, you can prune all day almost and still be able to move your fingers at the end of it.

John Stirland (25:16.142)
Yeah.

David (25:42.148)
And there's great satisfaction out of pruning a plant properly. You're giving it years more life very often. It'll flower better. It'll flower more. All of those things together. And the other, with tools, I always say to people, get stainless steel if you can. They may cost more, but a stainless steel spade will just slide through soil.

David (26:04.242)
Stainless steel and the best fork I think is a border fork. Often go with ladies fork which is slightly sexist which is wrong. But a border fork slightly narrower and you can get in between plants and fiddle about and get your annual weeds out and all that stuff.

John Stirland (26:10.414)
Yeah.

Rod Whiting (26:15.377)
John Stirland (26:17.07)
And it's also better when you're getting a little bit on in the ears. When you're getting on in the years it's also a little bit easier to use. But you're right, it's tickling through when you've got a plant close together. Just tickling away, it's marvellous, yeah.

David (26:43.27)
Yep, exactly. And of course you can for it, you know, top dressing in spring, the wonderful plant growth, compost, something like that. You top dress it on, just fork it gently in. And with a border fork, that's perfect, it really does.

John Stirland (26:51.96)
Mm.

John Stirland (26:56.91)
In fact a fork is one of the most important. You can dig with it, you can use it as a rake, you can take drills out with it. yeah, yeah, all that sort of thing, yeah. It's a great tool is a fork.

David (27:02.726)
Yep. Yep. Exactly. Leaf gathering, leaf clearance, all that thing. Yeah. Yeah.

Rod Whiting (27:13.137)
Well there you go, there's a Christmas present right there! Get a border fork for the gardener in the house.

John Stirland (27:15.594)
Yeah.

David (27:16.434)
The thing that always amuses me, you go around some of the garden shows, but say Gardeners World where they've got a huge indoor section of every pool, every tool you can buy, and there's always three or four completely nonsense tools, aren't there, that won't really do anything. Years ago I was at Gardeners World and somebody gave me what they call a spork, which is a cross, a cross between a fork and a spork, and it's bloody useless.

John Stirland (27:39.022)
yes.

John Stirland (27:45.26)
Hahaha

David (27:45.65)
It won't do either thing properly. It's stainless steel, looks lovely. Looks like a proper tool but it doesn't work, you know.

John Stirland (27:52.962)
Yeah, I think somebody once told me you can garden with a fork, a knife and some string, a ball of string and you're well away. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it probably was, yeah. dear, yeah.

David (28:02.108)
That would be Geoff Hamilton. That would have been Geoff. Yeah? 

Rod Whiting (28:11.151)
Well there we go, think we've sorted just about everything then for next year now. All we need now is for spring to arrive.

David (28:20.402)
Well, I'm down at my daughter's garden and they've got this lovely National Trust property, they're tenants of a little house, and out the back there's like a, be two or three, don't know, 100 meters square of snowdrops. And they're just poking through, in, give them another three weeks to a month, they'll be out, just about anyway. Lovely.

John Stirland (28:20.637)
it closed!

John Stirland (28:39.158)
Yeah, were just, yeah, Cheryl was just mentioning, she walked past the church the other day and there's someone underneath a tree and they are actually, she said they've just got the buds on. Just got the buds on. So, yeah, when we...

David (28:50.15)
That's it, just poking up, got the buds out, yep, yep, lovely. And you know spring's coming, don't you, when you see the snow drops out.

John Stirland (28:56.79)
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it really is. And you can get snowdrops from autumn onwards. I always remember going to Nigel Colborne's and he'd got snowdrops that came out in autumn. So, you know, if you get into something like be a galanthophile, crawling around on your knees looking for something that's a little bit different.

David (29:24.754)
Well,  my rhodos are budding up furious. And the camellia's full of buds and rhodos are full of buds at the moment. But we're just acid, where you're just alkaline, John. So I get away with it, the rhodos are fine. I don't need to acidify the soil anymore at all.

John Stirland (29:29.87)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Stirland (29:37.666)
No, I don't try to grow them. If I wanted to grow a rhodo, I'd grow it in a pot. Yeah. 
Rod Whiting (30:47.653)
So, well listen, gents, I wish you a very, very Merry Christmas. Thanks so much for coming on and we'll get this out to our members almost immediately. That'll be my next job. And I wish you both the happiest of Christmases and New Years. And here's to a really happy gardening year next year. Decent weather, not too hot, not too cold, just right.

John Stirland (30:53.966)
you

David (31:11.732)
Ha

John Stirland (31:12.238)
We'll make do with what we've got right, whatever we get right, and I'll play you out with Santa.

David (31:15.826)
Yeah, whatever lecture. here we go.

Rod Whiting (31:26.767)
Have a Merry Christmas everybody. All the very best.

David (31:28.252)
Merry Christmas, Rob. Well done. Well done. Thank you.

John Stirland (31:31.694)
All the best, folks!