A Journey through a Garden Designer’s Own Garden – with David Stevens

Take a walk through the personal garden of multi-award-winning designer David Stevens.

In this episode of Loving Your Garden, I’m joined by Boom Radio’s gardening expert John Stirland as we explore multi-award-winning designer David Stevens' own 100-foot suburban garden — a space full of ideas, inspiration, and practical lessons for gardeners of all levels.

From clever use of space and planting for year-round interest, to working with soil, structure, and light, David shares how he brings together design and plantsmanship to create a garden that feels both natural and constantly evolving.

Along the way, we discuss:

 • Designing a garden as a “journey.”
 • Making the most of space in a typical suburban plot
 • Choosing the right plants for sun, shade, and soil
 • Creating structure with trees, shrubs, and borders
 • Encouraging wildlife and working with nature
 • Practical tips you can use in your own garden

This is a relaxed, insightful walk around a real garden — with plenty of ideas to take home.

You can watch the accompanying film of the garden here: 👇
https://youtu.be/BGWATXrFF84


💬 Got a question for John? Or fancy sending us some fan mail? Drop us a line: rod@lovingyourgarden.org

📘 Join our thriving Facebook group: LYG on Facebook

Transcript

Speaker 1  •  00:00
Welcome to Loving Your Garden with me, Rod Whiting. Each episode, we explore real gardens, real ideas, and practical inspiration to help you get the very best from your own space, whatever your level of experience. And today, we're taking a walk around the garden of multi-award-winning designer David Stevens, together with my co-host, John Stirland, starting with David himself. 

Speaker 2  •  00:32
it's a lovely place to live not far from the dales either - derbyshire dales - or within striking distance and it's near our son but we've got this lovely garden it's about 100 foot long it's a proper suburban garden and you don't get so many of them these days which gives you room to actually garden in them. Yeah. 

Speaker 3  •  00:50
And the thing is, David, I look at it, and I look round, and David Stevens, the garden designer, I class him more of the plantsman, really, because we've had a quick look round, and some of the plants you've got, David, are fabulous. But, of course, that designer can put them in the right place, can't he? 

Speaker 1  •  01:09
Well, what is immediately striking is that we can stand at one end of the garden and look through. Your eye is always catching something new. 

Speaker 2  •  01:17
And I think with your own garden, which you can't always do with a client's garden, you can be slightly indulgent. And you can get plants that may be a bit difficult, but you know how to look after them. And you can always go to the Red Cross area and garden centres, and I'm fatal for that. I always say you shouldn't go out and binge at garden centres, but we fall into that trap. It's always changing. There's always something to do. And that's half the fun of it. 

Speaker 3  •  01:40
Absolutely. I love working with shrubs, doing some pruning. In fact, whenever I walk around the garden, I've always got my knife. Or I've got a pair of secateurs. 

Speaker 2  •  01:51
I've got my Felcos on the bench just up the way. 

Speaker 1  •  01:54
So we're up on the decking at the moment, which looks very nice. It's composite decking, so you're not going to have a maintenance problem with this stuff. It's going to last probably a lifetime, for gentlemen of our age at least. So as we stumble down these steps, we're into the garden proper. Now, I mean, what are we talking about in terms of dimensions here, David? 

Speaker 2  •  02:16
We're actually 100 foot long in old language, so just 33 metres, something like that in new language. And across the garden, it must be about 30 feet, something like that anyway. So it's a fairly long rectangular garden. And what I've tried to do is to give it a feeling of space and movement, so you actually walk from place to place. And I think Johnny was saying that exachorda down there, you wonder what's around the corner. Yeah, exactly. And that's half the secret, and that actually makes a garden feel larger than it actually is, because you're playing with space. Get the spaces right, and then the plants bring that alive and give you that third dimension and all those things. But a garden, you're saying, a garden is a journey, and you walk around it. So this garden, 

David, did you put it on your little sketchboard? 

Yes, you've got to get it to scale, and you've got to get the proportions right. You can do it by eye, but I'm trained as a landscape architect and designer, and it's what I do. So I got it on the drawing board, and that worked out. Basically, we've got the old path that runs down. Now, that was probably put in when the house was built in the 1930s. Now, a few years ago, we'd have skipped that. But I thought, well, no, it's part of the history of the place. A, it would be a big job to dig it and put it into skips. B, it's actually not very environmentally friendly. you know, the carbon footprint of doing that, and then you'd have to lay something else. So what's the point? Use that and base the design around that, and take all your cues from it and build it in. 

Speaker 1  •  03:48
Well, there's nothing wrong with it, is there? It's a perfectly decent concrete. And what's nice about it is that the person who laid it has got a bit of imagination because it meanders through the garden. It does. It's not a straight line. 

Speaker 3  •  04:00
It takes you on that journey. And, of course, that gives you a border on the other side with different depths, isn't it? So you've got potential there. Exactly. 

Speaker 2  •  04:08
and you know you've got it defines the border, and also if you've got plants that romp about a bit, keeps them in check as well, and there are a few of those. Rosie Hardy, bless her, always says - I said some of these plants are brilliant but invasive - no, she said they're enthusiastic! 

Speaker 1  •  04:22
Yes, like the lysomachia, I mean, look at that, I mean, that's extraordinary 

Speaker 2  •  04:28
Lysomachia firecracker and I planted that with the golden um smoke bush there, which is lovely and again with that golden carex, the two colours work really well together, yeah, lovely. 

Speaker 1  •  04:39
Well, that's a big thing of your your garden design isn't it is getting colors that work together.

Speaker 2  •  04:45
Exactlyn and I always say to people flower is almost a bonus you know flower may be with you maybe four weeks six weeks at the most apart from roses which can go from may until christmas so you're really working with the shapes of foliage the colors of foliage uh all the i was just saying floral arrangers understand how to put plants together okay it's on a smaller scale and very often the garden we should be thinking about shape texture form and all those things in the phone and the habit of the plant itself you know that lovely upright silver birch and that's set against much lower foliage underneath it so all of those things are working together and setting each other off and that's the important thing.

Speaker 3  •  05:21
 Yeah, I noticed the other thing, David on the other side, using one plant to climb up another, so if you've got small gardens, this is where you can, if you've got an Amonagawa, for instance, I had a winter jasmine growing through it the leaves come off in winter, you've got that gorgeous yellow flowers.

Speaker 2  •  05:39
 So use one plant to grow another it's an old old philadelphus and really i should be cutting half of those old stems out each year whatever it is but i've grown this golden leaf top which actually grows up it conceals all the dead stems at the bottom the foliate at the top is fine and again it's a lovely colour break i've got that against the the purple leaf elder there the sambucus and that works really well so we're playing with these colours all the time.

Speaker 3  •  06:07
 I think  in the modern day we've got so many plants now to choose from in the garden but i always i always careful because you've got acid soil, and to me, for youngsters and people like that who are going to go to a garden centre and buy, get to know your soil i don't know whether you think the same?

Speaker 2  •  06:26
Yes, don't just check it in one part of the garden. If you've got a soil test kit or a soil test meter, do it in four or five different places because it can change quite dramatically within a garden 

Speaker 3  •  06:35
of even this size, it really can, and often they bring soil in as well, don't they, from another site.

Speaker 1  •  06:41
Let's just talk about the fact that a lot of new garden or a lot of gardens nowadays particularly modern properties are much smaller and so it's really important to talk about the scales you've talked about but also using every potential piece of space so low growing plants the medium growing shrubs and then this canopy that you've got around your garden of these tall trees and and some smaller trees as well that beautiful magnolia which is just magnificent and forms a great big canopy under which you grow all of these other plants. 

Speaker 2  •  07:18
That's right. So the plants in the garden are creating their own microclimate underneath it. So basically, I've got woodland planting underneath the magnolia. Up at this part of the garden, it's in full sun. It's south-facing, so you're using things like cistus, which love the sun, and most of this planting will do just that. So you're tuning your plants to the situation that they're in, and that gives the garden greater interest because if you like, you move from one climatic zone to a climatically different zone again, and that gives you more opportunity. 

Speaker 3  •  07:46
Yeah, because you can choose more plants. If you've got a few trees and you've got that canopy, shrub layer, field layer, then you've got the choice of a lot more plants because some plants do not like the sun. Exactly. Some love it, some do not like it. So you can choose the plants together. 

Speaker 2  •  08:07
The more plants you've got, the more diverse the garden is, and the more wildlife and insect life you can actually bring into the situation as well. And this garden is full of wildlife. It really, really is. 

Speaker 1  •  08:18
And the other thing that I think I notice, certainly, is the size of your borders. And I know it's something you've always said, David, is make your borders big enough to actually be able to do something with. The mistake so many gardeners, particularly as I did when I started, is that you put these little borders around the edge of the garden, and so you end up with a nice big lawn but not much else of any interest. 

Speaker 2  •  08:42
And the problem is that, you know, most garden owners or gardeners go to a nursery or a garden centre and they see the plants, they're small. They don't realise how big things get. I mean, a medium-sized shrub's going to grow two to three metres across in the same height. Now, that means you've got to have a border two and a half metres or three metres. So you need that space to grow your plants in. And I've got to go, if you go to good gardeners' gardens, the lawns get smaller, and the borders get bigger. And in the end, the lawns are just paths going through the borders. 

Speaker 1  •  09:17
Yes, exactly that. 

Speaker 3  •  09:18
I always like a bit of grass, though. I really do. 

Speaker 1  •  09:22
Well, you've got a lawn here. And, I mean, you've got this massive border, which is a beautifully curved area to one side of the garden. And then you've got this path down the other side with borders to the other side of the path, but you've left room for a lawn. It's not massive, and it's not a bowling green, but it's beautifully practical, and it looks great. 

Speaker 2  •  09:45
I don't use chemicals in the garden, I have to say. A lawn that hasn't got daisies is a poor thing. I mean, our grandchildren are growing up now, but if you can't make daisy chains for your grandkids, but a lawn is just that. I mean, in the summer, the kids will come round, and we'll sit on the lawn, and we'll have a barbecue down there or whatever, and a lawn is part of the garden. It's a floor of the garden, or one of the floors in the garden anyway. 

Speaker 1  •  10:09
All right, let's take a stroll down. Something I've noticed here, David, this beautiful foliage. You've got these mounds, that's the way I would describe it, of really dark green foliage. Some form of Alstroemeria. 

Speaker 2  •  10:28
Alstroemeria, called Indian Summer. A great friend of mine, Peter Seabrook, who's passed now, but he gave them to me at Gardeners World because Pauline was helping him in a display they were making. He said, oh, you can have those. In fact, there were two, so I've divided them. That was four there now. But the great thing in a garden is, particularly with Hyder Perennials, you can split and divide and increase your stock, can't you, John? There's so much opportunity. 

Speaker 3  •  10:51
Yes, absolutely. And I can see already that, you know, we've got the bluebells and things out at the moment, but you can see that over time you've got flower buds there, You've got the foliage coming on your hibiscus at the back. It's just going to be a gradual change. And that's, to me, as you go through the seasons, that's what you want to see in your garden. You're looking at something now and thinking, God, that's going to be nice in September or whenever. 

Speaker 2  •  11:20
Successional planting, and you've got to think about that. And the winter is, I mean, we'll have a look in a sec. But think, I've got the big hellebore bed, wonderful in the winter. And all the plants, and we've got the big old Eonyumous. At the bottom, a wonderful cloud for the winter. So all of these plants add a dimension, and they flower throughout the year. 

Speaker 1  •  11:38
You also mentioned movement, David. I noticed you've got a few grasses. You've potted them because some grasses do become rather thuggish. Yeah. But you've kept them in pots. But you've got that. We can see them moving now in this quite stiff easterly wind we've got this morning. 

Speaker 2  •  11:56
It's a Stipa Tenuissima, which is wonderful because it's such a fine leaf. It just does move in the wind. It's a lovely plant. The only thing we do do is pots and containers, and they're so useful. It's another dimension. Somewhere else you can put more plants, you know. So I do use them for summer bedding. People say, oh, summer bedding's a lot of work. It's not a lot of work. And to be quite honest, I'll go down to one of the supermarkets like Morrisons, and Morrisons are actually quite good, and you can buy a whole raft of plants. John will propagate his own, I don't. But it costs about 10 quid, and you've got plants for the whole summer. You know, wonderful. 

Speaker 1  •  12:30
They really are good. Something else, you've got benches all over the place, somewhere to sit and enjoy your garden. In fact, there are five separate sitting areas in the garden.  

Speaker 2  •  12:42
We've got the deck, obviously, as you come out from the house, you come down the steps, and there's a little tucked-in sitting area beside my sister's called Berientis, which is just about to come into flower. Across the other side diagonally, we've got a bench there that looks back across a different view. So each sitting area has a different view. Some are in shade, some are in the sun. And of course, the sun and shade swing around the garden throughout the day. So you don't have to sit in the sun or the shade. There's always somewhere to sit. And that sets up a different view as well. 

Speaker 3  •  13:11
This is a lovely area. We're just getting to a lovely area now, going past the great... Come on, David, tell us about this. It's a wolf and eye, is it? 

Speaker 2  •  13:19
Well, it's a Wolffenei variety and it's called Humpty Dumpty. And you can see it's that sort of Humpty Dumpty shape to it, isn't it? It's an absolute beauty. 

Speaker 1  •  13:29
Euphorbia, I think people sometimes look at euphorbia and think, oh no, it's a bit ugly. But the architectural shape of a great euphorbia like this. 

Speaker 2  •  13:39
I do like it. I've got this lovely Geum underneath it, which is a coppery orange. And that colour with the bract of the Euphorbia is looking super. That's only a young one. As soon as that geom grows a little bit higher, it's going to look absolutely fabulous, really well. 

Speaker 3  •  13:53
Now we're getting to an area, David, which is quite shaded because I think, isn't this the reason you bought the house? 

Speaker 2  •  14:01
Yes, it is. It is a beautiful magnolia. It's just Solangiana. I say just, but Solangiana is a beautiful plant. And I had my eye on it. Pauline did as well. I had my eye on this house. And, well, I actually bought the magnolia. The magnolia cost me £365,000. And the house came free with it. 

Speaker 3  •  14:20
I thought that was a good deal, actually. But it's given you a certain amount of shade, and underneath you've got rhododendrons. Yes, it's... And they are looking splendid. Well, it's a mixture, isn't it? Rhodies, your hellebores as well. They're in good shape, aren't they? 

Speaker 2  •  14:38
A lot of the different brunneras, and a lot of the brunners have got a lovely light pale leaf, and that lightens the area because the magnolia's not in leaf quite yet, it's just coming into leaf. But when it is in leaf, that's really quite a dark area underneath it. You need plants that are going to reflect light and bring, you know, it just lightens it up nicely. I've got my water bowl in the middle. 

Speaker 1  •  14:58
I was going to say, right in the middle of that, you've got a man-made feature, which is a certain kind of steel, isn't it? 

Speaker 2  •  15:06
Yes, Corten steel, which is really rusty steel. That's basically what it is. Now, I've got my big hostas just bursting out now. Yeah. And because the bowl is there, all the blackbirds come down and drink there. There is not a slug or a snail on those hostas, ever. There are no holes that they'll go right the way through until September, October, without any damage on them whatsoever and that, if you'd like, is biological control because you're encouraging the birds to come in, the birds then drink and then they feed on any slugs, or whatever that may be underneath, so it's a good thing to do.

Speaker 3  •  15:40
 Yeah, it's wonderful when you're talking about designing, David, you often mentioned borrowed landscapes, and I notice with your garden, you've got trees on both sides, you've got a bit of a thug on one side, haven't you? Big eucalyptus it must be 50 or 60 feet high by now.

Speaker 2  •  16:01
 I think something like that, but we're lucky in that there's a little housing development beyond us, but in the summer, you can't see any of it at all, we're in a complete we're living in a woodland in effect which is wonderful.

Speaker 3  •  16:11
 Exactly, you are aren't you and many many of these plants that you've got down there do like that little bit of shade. 

Speaker 2  •  16:21
yeah because we got the the exochorda obviously there then we've got the camellias down beyond that then we've got the Euonymus at the bottom all those are shade tolerant plants and underneath the magnolia lots of ferns lots of hostas things like persicaria which grows fine in those sort of situations but really do your homework first and look mr google now, it'll give you plants for sun, plants for shade, plants for dry shade, so there's no excuse really, although I still like looking in gardening books, for me the gardening books work a lot better.

Speaker 3  •  16:51
 Yeah, it's interesting because I was talking to Rod the other day on Boom about when seedlings come up, leave them alone just to see what you get. Exactly. And you can find, you get some fantastic plants, can't you? Oh yes, not ours. Obviously, you've got forget-me-nots here, just come through the path.

Speaker 2  •  17:09
 yes i just let them seed around you know and it's the same with it with many plants and and i i use that i've got i grow that fox and cubs uh pelosa is it the fox and cubs which does romp around and i just tell where i don't want to take it out but it seeds in the path and it's that wonderful strong orange color flower quite low it's only about what six inches high something like that but it's a little stunner really but you've just got to if it romps take a spade to it don't be afraid to get down to grips with your garden isn't it that's yeah absolutely 

Speaker 3  •  17:42
Now, then, there's a different path, yes, and I think this one it was when you were creating the garden. This is all the stuff you dug up. 

Speaker 2  •  17:56
well you could say it's homegrown because again when we moved in it looked half decent the garden it looked fine but then you know i put a fork in bang then i put the spade on though i wouldn't do half a spit and that was it and i've dug all of garden and down at the bottom in our work area down there there's loads more stone as well but i didn't skip it we've used it and upcycled it and because i've laid it um basically it's a membrane underneath it but that's it i've not bedded it on cement or mortar and then plants will grow in the cracks and little times and all sorts of things grow in there and it comes alive, that's the main thing.

Speaker 1  •  18:27
Right, well, look, we've just had a little wander through this, and in fact if we go down to the bottom... You're not afraid of Spanish bluebells, I notice, David. They worry me because they just get everywhere. 

Speaker 2  •  18:48
They are invasive, but you can take them out and, you know... What's that? These are Spanish bluebells. But they're a lovely colour. I mean, like an edging like that, they take your eye around the curve as well. is lovely but there we are in the woodland basically we've got hellebores down there we've got brunneres in there um we've got um persicaria firetail i've got this lovely one which i do love uh which was jeff hamilton's favorite tree circe diphthilim japonicum um he's beautiful so it's called the burnt sugar tree because in autumn i've never never smelled it yet the first frost on it was supposed to smell like burnt sugar well that's true or not but it was Geoff Hamilton's favourite tree, it's got a big one up at Barnsdale. 

Speaker 1  •  19:32
And I notice you've got a number of hydrangeas just sort of dotted around in amongst, you know, which is nice. 

Speaker 2  •  19:39
Shade planting, they're ideal in shade, edge of woodland, basically. 

Speaker 1  •  19:42
So we've come down to the bottom of the garden, and this is the other test, really, of a well-planned garden, because now you've got a view going back up to the house, looking through the magnolia tree. 

Speaker 2  •  19:55
Yeah, and you look under it. The magnolia almost acts as a frame for the view. I always say, because I'm teaching students, I always say, yeah, your primary view, perhaps from the house, is important. But if you go down the garden and look back, your secondary view must be just as good. There's no point in looking at a corrugated iron shed on next door. So frame your views, work out where you're going to sit in the Vera sitting area, where you can just see one of the benches up there, which looks in a different direction, across the garden. I love this. In the evening, you can come down here in the summer, look back up the garden, and it's lovely. The robins will be out singing, and, you know, absolutely lovely. But you're in, basically, we're in the woodland here. So there's a rhodo there, we've got azaleas there, a euphorbia robii, which is in deep shade, our cuba chaponica shade again. So it's all real woodland planting that can look after itself. 

Speaker 3  •  20:44
And I notice we've got a few ferns as well. 

Speaker 2  •  20:47
Loads of ferns. 

Speaker 3  •  20:47
There's some fantastic ferns now. 

Speaker 2  •  20:50
Love them, love them to bits, really, really. and just get a glimpse of the choisia coming into flower just beyond the magnolia there. Again, a lot of the plants that I've put in, I've just got from the garden centre in their Red Cross area, where they dump the plants. And you get them at a fraction of the cost. And normally they've got a big root ball inside them because they're the second year on. Take a saw to it, one of rosy hardies tips. Get a saw, chop them in half or even in thirds if necessary, and you've got two or three plants out of one you bought two quid. 

Speaker 1  •  21:25
Marvellous, well, let's stroll back up through as you this is the other thing you've done, is is although you've got very large borders, I mean what's that at least four meters by by six meters isn't it?

Speaker 2  •  21:36
That's a border, yeah, but it's pretty full in the summer 

Speaker 1  •  21:41
oh yeah, it's around for the plants but what i like is you've you've you've put some flagstones down through the middle. 

Speaker 2  •  21:51
Yes, to create a stepping area to walk through the plant, and also you can get to the plants and tend them if necessary. 

Speaker 1  •  21:53
Exactly. 

Speaker 2  •  21:53
So it just sort of has it in the border. Yep. 

Speaker 1  •  21:55
Yeah. And this magnificent magnolia tree, where you've got the sort of gnarled look of these branches coming out, creates a fantastic framework. It's what I call an Arthur Rackham tree. 

Speaker 2  •  22:09
And if anyone knows about their boxin artists, they know about Arthur Rackham. He drew these wonderful dark woodland scenes with these trees with gnarly bark and twisted habits and forms to them. Beautiful. Unless you've got to duck and dive a bit to get under the big branches, but that's half the charm of the thing, really. 

Speaker 1  •  22:25
But you, and I think you've put your finger on it when you said you bought this house for the tree, because the tree cost you £365,000 and the house came free. Because it's a feature, and you need a feature in your garden of some description. 

Speaker 2  •  22:41
And the nice thing about it is that it's actually offset. So if it's right in the middle, it would have been totally different. But having it to one side, actually, almost the garden pivots around it, and that's quite important in visual terms as well. That was pure luck. That was there. It had nothing to do with me. But if you're thinking of planting a tree, don't just put it in the obvious place. Have a think about it. Position it so that it can be a pivot or it can be a focal point that leads you across the space, rather than being static in the middle of it. 

Speaker 3  •  23:09
I must say, when I buy a house, it usually has to have an old apple tree. Apples get so much character as they get older, and you also get that crop as well, which is wonderful 

Speaker 1  •  23:23
And don't plant them on the outside of the gardeners, that's the other trick, isn't it? I've done it myself, you put them right on the edge of your garden, and then it gets bigger, and then the neighbour gets hacked off.

Speaker 2  •  23:39
The magnolia, yeah, I keep an eye on it because it does spread, and you know I've taken off one or two of the limbs from time to time, but you've got to retain the shape. That's the important thing. And this we've got one, two, three, four, five, about six different stems, actually, main branches coming out from it. And that gives it a lovely character, really does. 

Speaker 1  •  23:55
It really does, yeah. It's fabulous. Well, there we are. I mean, in terms of size, this is not a lot of gardens, long, relatively narrow. That's it. But you don't get that feeling because of the way you've planted it and planned it, and you've got a journey through the garden. 

Speaker 2  •  24:13
Exactly, it's the shapes that are important, and that does take you on a voyage, really. 

Speaker 1  •  24:18
Yeah. 

Speaker 2  •  24:19
A voyage through the garden. And it's, again, it's part of this garden, but being on a slight slope also gives you opportunities with changes of level, and that changes the view. So looking back this way, we're looking slightly uphill, whereas looking from the house, we're looking downhill. And each view is totally, totally different. It really is. 

Speaker 1  •  24:36
Yeah. So, John, to finish off, it's just nice to come and look around a garden like this, and David talks to us a lot about design, but now we can see how he's done it. 

Speaker 3  •  24:47
Yes, but always remember that your back garden is your little bit of England, and you can have it how you want it, really, can't you, David? Absolutely. But it is worth, yeah, look at the plants, check the plants, check how big they grow. What you always say, check the soil. Yeah, checking the soil is one of the most important things first, because you can waste a lot of money. 

Speaker 2  •  25:09
Good soil equals good plants, and I do dig in a lot of compost. A, it frees the soil up, but it just enriches it and gives your plants a boost as well. I put it normally in spring, some in the autumn as a mulch, but during the spring, it's ideal just to get things moving. It does give them a boost. 

Speaker 3  •  25:28
Yeah, we've noticed, David, that you've got a little area, the working area, where you've got a compost heap and all that sort of thing. 

Speaker 2  •  25:35
You've got to. I mean, the garden needs that. And I've got loads of old stone that we dug up. I'll find somewhere for it eventually. 

Speaker 1  •  25:42
And something else I see is a great big stack of plant support. You can't have enough of those, can you? 

Speaker 2  •  25:49
So they're all stacked there at the moment. But of course, as the season goes on, you slip them in around things to give them support. And if you're a gardener, there's never any problem with presents for Christmas or birthdays. Because people say, " Oh, you give him some plant supports, and you'll be happy with them. You know? Yeah. Really important. 

Speaker 3  •  26:05
Yeah, the worst thing is when a plant goes over, and then it gets to 90 degrees, where it turns, and then you put it back up, and it won't. 

Speaker 1  •  26:13
No, it won't go. If you haven't got it there quick enough, you've had it. Yeah. Marvellous. Well, it's such a pleasure to have a look around and just see everything you say put into practice, really. I think that's the main lesson for me. 

Speaker 3  •  26:28
One of the things, Rod, is that we're in April. 

Speaker 1  •  26:32
Yeah. 

Speaker 3  •  26:32
And you want to see it in May. 

Speaker 1  •  26:34
Oh, gosh, yeah. But this will change all year, won't you, David? That's the thing, yeah. 

Speaker 2  •  26:38
At the moment, it's in its growth period, really. And you can see soil. Come June, there won't be any soil visible anywhere. That's the thing. Don't be afraid of plants. Don't be afraid to have your big borders, which Rod said, which is absolutely right. But the main thing is it gives you so much enjoyment at all those different times of the year, even in the winter when you see the bones of the garden. It looks fabulous, and that's what it's all about. It really is. 

Speaker 1  •  27:05
Well, there we are. Thank you very much indeed, David. It's been a treat, and I think probably now it's lunchtime, isn't it? 

Speaker 2  •  27:11
It is. It's been a pleasure having you two chaps here as well. I've always asked John technical gardening questions because I don't know them all. 

Speaker 1  •  27:20
I hope you've enjoyed our little trip around David's Garden, and we'll show you the pictures as well, and I'll give you a link to the page so you can have a look around David's Garden as well and join us for the next episode of Loving Your Garden and of course look up our Loving Your Garden site on Facebook and do join our lovely group. Thank you for listening. Music