Gardening Special: Expert advice to make the most of Spring

A little bit of everything: herbaceous, fruit, veg, wildflowers, woodland plants. In short, I like to grow my favourite plants, particularly ones that have memories attached to them.

When I was an apprentice in the 1990s, my head gardener let me have a couple of shrubs to take home. Prunus Kojo-no-mai is an early spring flowering cherry, but what I love about it is its unusual zig-zag branches. It's now over 1.5m tall and has had three homes with me.

I have an Algerian iris given to me by good friends at St Andrews Botanic Garden and I grow delicate mountain bulbs and alpine plants, something that I developed a love for from my time at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh. These plants remind me of good people and good times.

It's April. What are the key jobs?

Planting: Lots of seed sowing and planting of favourite vegetables and annual plants in your greenhouse. Add a one-season summer splash of colour to fill in gaps in your border. You could try to grow some herbaceous perennials that will come back year on year.

Lifting and splitting: Every three years or so it's good to lift and split your herbaceous perennial plants. It's around this time these plants begin to get tired. Doing this and improving the soil in which they grow with a bit of organic matter will give them a whole new lease of life. It's a great way to multiply your plants for plugging in gaps around your own garden or sharing with friends.

Mulching: One of the key springtime jobs. A simple task of applying a 5cm layer of compost around your plants can have so many great benefits. It feeds the soil and healthy soil means healthy plants that will leave them strong enough to fight off any pests and diseases.

Applying when the soil is wet will help trap moisture, stopping any new plantings in particular from drying out and helping them to establish more quickly. It will also help smother those annual weed seeds, blocking out light that they require for germinating.

An extra bonus is it freshens up the look of your border too. You can use home-made compost, leaf mould made from composted leaves collected in the autumn (a process that can take three to four years), spent compost or buying bags of composted bark.

What's happening in your own garden?

Now that the sun is getting higher, the days are getting longer and temperatures are (hopefully) rising, the grass and weeds will be growing strong. At the moment, I am attempting to look after the large gardens at Scone Palace on my own, so I'm having to use all my experience to cope.

Grass cutting on the formal lawns is being done fortnightly and I'm not collecting grass which saves valuable time. We already leave large sections of the grounds with uncut grass which is great for wildlife.

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The most valuable tool I have in my shed is a hoe. Going out on a sunny and windy day, lightly hoeing the soil will bring young weeds to the surface where the foliage will fry in the sun and the wind will dry out the roots. Little and often.

Top tips for aspiring gardeners?

One good thing about everyone spending more time at home is the renewed interest in gardening. With all the spare time, it could be tempting to try and recreate a Chelsea Flower Show-style award-winning designed garden, but it is important to be realistic.

At Beechgrove, we like to show our failures, of which there are many, and that's by gardeners with many years' experience. Start off simple, grow a few potatoes, lettuce and runner beans, get a few successes under your belt and then move on to more challenging plants as your experience and knowledge grows.

And, of course, watch Beechgrove every week where you can learn from our mistakes and hopefully get some good ideas, hints and tips in the process.

What are some common gardening mistakes?

Buying plants that are not suitable for your garden. Learn what kind of soil you have. Is it heavy and wet or light and sandy? Is your garden exposed to the winds, such as on the coast, or does it struggle to receive any sun?

Although plants in full flower on the stands in garden centres look colourful and may seem too tempting to refuse, it's very important to read the label and make sure your garden has the right conditions required for it to grow.

Shopping from a local plant nursery will pretty much guarantee you are picking a plant that will grow in your own garden. They wouldn't be selling it otherwise and you'll get some great advice from them too. Shopping locally to support them is especially important at this difficult time.

What easy projects can people do at home?

I'm loving all the creative upcycling using materials where the growing of plants is not the primary function. Sections of guttering for collecting rainwater can be suspended with shiny metal chains or secured to walls and painted to grow vegetables or foliage plants in.

I was doing a bit of research work for a piece on Beechgrove where I came across an old, wooden A-framed ladder with a plank of wood put across the steps to be used as a shelf for sitting plants on. So simple, yet absolutely brilliant.

Best advice you have been given?

Slow down, focus solely on the job you are doing and enjoy it. The time spent outdoors helps me relax and before I know it, I've cracked on through the jobs.

What projects are you working on?

Bringing the old four-acre walled garden back to life at Scone Palace. These are such sacred spaces to gardeners with amazing history as I have been finding out.

At one time more than 30 gardeners worked here, growing veg, fruit and cut flowers. Grapes and peaches were grown in one of the first cast-iron glasshouses of its kind, designed by the head gardener of the time. I call myself a head gardener, but I couldn't lace their boots.

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Today, we have an apple and pear orchard where the trees are being trained in pyramid forms. We have created a formal garden separated by a pleached lime hedge to create a private space to enjoy.

Planting includes roses in obelisks, Osmanthus burkwoodii with lovely scented white flowers trimmed as topiary balls, and herbaceous plantings of Veronica, Agapanthus and purple Alliums to provide an ideal setting for an outdoor wedding.

Choose a fruit, vegetable or herb: why would you grow it and what is your key tip?

A blueberry plant. Primarily for its crop, which my kids can't get enough of, but also because I have my own in among a border where it has amazing autumn colour. Proper tight Scotsman, me.

Beechgrove is on BBC Scotland, Thursdays, 7.30pm and repeated on BBC Two on Sunday mornings.

Scone Palace and Gardens is currently closed to visitors due to the ongoing coronavirus situation. Please follow government advice regarding non-essential travel. Visit scone-palace.co.uk for updates on future opening.

SARAH FRASER, GARDENER AND EXPERT FORAGER, BRIDGE OF ALLAN

How did you fall in love with gardening?

My grandparents and mother were gardeners. My mother dug up next door's garden to grow more veg in order to feed three kids. A love for growing led me to study orchard management and permaculture when my own daughter was little. I can generally be found sitting on a bag of soil finding the last rays of sunshine.

I set up Sarah's Garden TLC to help people maintain their gardens and to educate on wild foods and how to reconnect with nature. I developed a lot of knowledge about edible "weeds" and launched the foraging side of my business Pick it with Pickles.

What are your favourite things to grow?

There's something about watching seeds come up which I always find so inspiring, whether it be in the garden or starting nasturtiums on a warm windowsill. I love putting vegetables in. My daughter is mad for her vegetables and would have the whole garden covered with peas if it was up to her.

What are the biggest challenges?

At this time of year, I'm normally doing a lot of pruning and clearing of fruit trees and other plants. I have to be flexible around the weather. Mother nature decides when I can go out.

Top tips for aspiring gardeners?

Plan and learn to think perma-culturally about how food would grow and create food forests, so that you're not needing to dig rows. Plant what you can, where you can. Leaving bunches of wild strawberries, bushes and trees will mean that you're not needing to weed endlessly – they are your ground-cover friend.

What easy projects can people do at home?

Blackcurrants are the first thing I planted in pots when I only had access to a small, concrete outdoor space. These gave the joy of fresh berries. When pruning, you can replant any of the clippings in the autumn – make sure each clipping has two nodes where the buds are.

Can you explain how foraging works?

I teach people at events in my garden, on guided walks and plant tours where we can create identification papers, gather where the plants are in abundance and learn to preserve them for using in pesto or pickles.

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Go out into your local area and see what is there in abundance. Don't pick too much and always pick where you have permission. Remember to leave enough for the other animals and wildlife. And don't ever pick something you aren't positive you have identified correctly.

Right now, there are so many foraging finds available, with dandelions, cleavers, nettles, wild garlic and my favourite, scarlet elf cup mushroom. I found a huge patch of wild leeks last year on my daily walk. You will be surprised at what you can find.

Best advice you have been given?

Begin with what you can see daily for a positive mental boost, whether it's the path to your front door or the view from your kitchen window.

What projects are you working on?

I have put bark chips down the path in my garden with the hope that I get mushrooms growing in the damp bark. I'm also developing my wild food area. There were two quinces growing there already, so I'm encouraging them into a natural arch and hoping to graft a pear tree onto them.

I'm putting in blueberries, thyme, three-cornered leek, comfrey, onions, raspberries and gooseberries. Dandelions are my favourite thing in the whole world. They get an unfair, bad reputation. You can eat the flowers, buds, leaves and root – what's not to love?

Choose a fruit, vegetable or herb: why would you grow it and what is your key tip?

Potatoes. I was able to grow them in a concrete, communal area by planting them in sacks. They are good for limited space and you can move them into the sun when they are in flower. This helps the potatoes underneath to ripen.

The Scottish Wild Food Festival has been postponed, with a new date to be announced. Visit scottishwildfoodfestival.co.uk

ANNE WEBSTER, ASHBROOK PLANT NURSERY AND GARDEN CENTRE, ARBROATH

How did you fall in love with gardening?

I was called upon to help my dad plant peas when he had hurt his back. He was also an enthusiastic grower of bedding plants and chrysanthemums for cut flowers.

I studied Botany at Oxford – largely because I just loved those old botanical illustrations. One summer as a student, I worked at the Botanic Garden there and developed the idea that I would like to be a curator of a botanic garden or a National Trust garden.

I spent a year working as gardener to the Queen at Windsor Great Park, which has the most amazing gardens and plant collections – the perfect place to develop one's knowledge of garden plants.

I returned to my scientific interests and headed off to Aberdeen to research "Clubroot disease" in a laboratory with plants. It was there I met my future husband Joe (a Scotsman with a large garden).

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After we had married and started a family, I began selling surplus bedding plants and cut flowers to local florists and corner shops. We opened Ashbrook Nursery in 2000.

What are the biggest challenges?

The weather in Scotland ranks up there. You can't start putting out half-hardy bedding until late May which makes for a short season. We're in Arbroath on the east coast where the cold winds are a problem for many plants.

Rabbits are a recurrent disaster. They just love the pinks we grow for cut flowers and show great ingenuity in getting into the tunnels.

How has the coronavirus pandemic affected what you do?

We're facing a challenging time like all other garden centres across the country, with millions of plants potentially going to waste. The Horticultural Trades Association (HTA) has said that plants, shrubs and trees worth £200 million will have to be binned if they cannot be sold in garden centres that have closed because of the Covid-19 outbreak.

We grow our own plants and have been gearing up for many months, ready for the start of our busy season. With so much stock available and in demand but unable to open our doors, we've have had to act fast to minimise waste, keep our staff safe and customers happy.

We already delivered locally but have extended this wider, across the Angus area. Our social media and phone have been red hot as people enquire about stock, delivery and plant advice.

We're working around the clock and have pared back the staff to just the family so that we're not asking people to leave their homes unnecessarily. The HTA is calling for Government support for garden centres like ours. We hope for the sake of our business and our plants that it's forthcoming.

Top tips for aspiring gardeners?

Be patient and don't try to do too much all at once. And before you begin planting, prepare the ground well.

When choosing plants, visit a garden centre throughout the year. The eye is always drawn to what is flowering, so if you do all your plant shopping in one go, for example in May, then your garden will look lovely in May but may be quite dull for the rest of the year.

What easy projects can people do at home?

Successional sowing of carrots in a window box. The thinnings are delicious eaten raw or sweated in butter.

Best advice you have been given?

Never sow seeds as early as one can but as late as one dares.

What projects are you working on?

Thinking about how we can landscape the garden outside our newly built cafe at the Garden Centre – yet to be opened thanks to the coronavirus situation.

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Choose a fruit, vegetable or herb: why would you grow it and what is your key tip?

Chives. They are easy to do and lovely in a potato salad made with tatties grown in your own patch or a tattie bag. I once bought some chives and I thought it must have been a bunch of grass in the packet because they had so little flavour compared to our own.

Visit ashbrooknursery.co.uk

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