The Beechgrove Garden

Beechgrove is back! Spring-loaded and raring to grow. The sun always shines in Beechgrove, but how has the sunniest winter since records began affected growing conditions? Jim McColl, Carole Baxter, George Anderson and Chris Beardshaw find out. Carole and Jim know that people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones, but there is an air of competition as they take on neighbouring greenhouses and pack them full of food and flowers all year round. George visits the Scottish Rock Garden Club's show in Kincardine. Who has grown the best bulbs, perfect primula or the iconic iris and how? Gardening lights up our lives, but in Glasgow Botanic Gardens they have taken that to a new level. George experiences the eerie elegance of the Electric Gardens.

In the Beechgrove Garden Chris dons his safety gear and whips off 50 shades of green (conifers) in a chainsaw-pruning frenzy. Meanwhile, in a much more sedate fashion George starts off a bite-size project to see how productive he can be in just one square metre of space. And keeping it small, Jim and Carole return to their neighbouring greenhouses to start growing. Carole also makes her first visit to Aileen Snowden's garden in Newport-on- Tay. Aileen and family moved to their new home from a flat and have never had a garden before. The garden is mature and overgrown and Aileen doesn't know where to start. Carole will work with Aileen throughout the season to tame and claim and love the plot she's got.

You will certainly have your five a day with Beechgrove this week. Jim is testing temperatures and hoping to sow early broad beans while Carole and Chris take a look at the fruits of their labours from last year with their containerised peaches. Staying small, George is in the fruit cage planting a new mini orchard. Hoping to prove that the fruit of your own labours is the sweetest, Jim is helping Carol Cocker in Inverurie to learn how to grow her own for the first time. Jim is like a child in a tree sweet shop as he visits an awesome arboretum in Kippen.

In the Beechgrove Garden Jim is plants 'heirloom vegetables' to compare performance with contemporary interlopers. In the first of several monthly visits to Scone Palace garden, head gardener Brian Cunningham unveils his plans for a tribute to local plant hunter David Douglas. When Euan and Jenny Maclean moved into their new build house in Linlithgow it was the house of their dreams. Over the course of this series, Chris is going to guide the new to gardening couple to turn a nightmare of a space into a garden to match their dream home.

It's daffolicious in the Beechgrove garden as Jim takes a look at his trial of new versus old daffodils to see if traditional beats contemporary in the daffodil world. Meanwhile George further tests that theory as he visits Backhouse Daffodils near Auchtermuchty who have daffodils that are the origins of many of the modern daffodils in use today. Chris reviews his climbers for every aspect and to complement them he adds roses to the cutting garden. Pruning is sometimes a thorny issue and so Carole and Jim are pruning their way around the garden to show us how to take the mystery out of it.

Seed scattered and sown, and lawns grown and mown. Carole shows us an easy way to sow flower seeds while Jim toils away on the lawn. Then it's sweet pea planting - scrambling v cordon-trained. Chris is back with Jenny and Euan MacLean in Linlithgow for a second visit to their nightmare plot and this time it's dreamy breakfast-and-teatime terraces and the perfect pergola. George is still in a tight corner tending his small-space vegetable garden. Carole visits Hamish McKelvie and his prickly friends in Houston, Renfrewshire. Since boyhood, Hamish has built up a huge collection of cacti.

n the Beechgrove Garden, Jim is in the conservatory showing how to prune camellias, while Carole puts together hanging baskets with some new plant introductions. This is Carole's second visit to new gardeners in a mature garden, Mark and Aileen Snowden, in Newport on Tay and this time, Carole creates a fruit border for the family. Carole is also treated to a spectacular spring show in the 'auricular theatre' at Rumbling Bridge Nursery.

In the Beechgrove Garden, Jim hopes to catch up with the veg planting that he wasn't able to do last week in the torrential rain. Carole and Jim are also back in their side-by-side 6 x 8 greenhouses pricking out and planting. George helps Josine Atsma in Glendevon to create a new bog garden and plants it up with moisture-loving perennials. Carole visits Peter and Gill Hart in Fife. They have 20 acres of woodland, the floor of which at this time of the year is carpeted with bluebells, hellebores, trilliums and wood anemones - as well as a collection of rhododendrons.

Jim and Carole are preparing for the seasons to come as they show how to overwinter a whole range of vegetables so that they will be ready for harvest early next year. Jim is also preparing plants for the winter months and shows how to put begonias to bed. Also in the programme, Carole and George taste test Carole's spaghetti squash and her greenhouse-grown aubergines while Jim and George revel in the late fruit harvest. Chris visits Greywalls Garden near Gullane. Built in 1901, Greywalls is a stunning example of an Edwardian arts and crafts garden. Although this is a grand garden, Chris finds planting combination lessons for all of us - but particularly appropriate for those who garden in exposed conditions.

Jim and Carole walk around the garden pointing out plant combinations showing colour at this time of year. Jim prepares half hardy perennials for winter, whilst Carole enjoys the gloxinias which are still flowering well and shows how to dry off amaryllis bulbs. In Coldstream, George Anderson meets Alec West who has an orchard jam-packed with apples, pears and plums - his fruit collection is said to be the biggest in Scotland.

The team enjoy the autumn colour in the Beechgrove garden. Carole and George plant various combinations of bulbs and spring bedding plants to see which of these make the most attractive displays, while Jim has a big clear-out in his greenhouse. The programme catches up with Brian Cunningham at Scone Palace Garden to review the progress made to the David Douglas trail, and Carole also visits Tillypronie Garden near Tarland and delights in the swathes of heathers.

Although this is the last in the present series, gardening is a year round activity and so Jim, Carole, George and Chris have a long list of jobs that we could and should be doing that will keep us all busy for the foreseeable. This is also a perfect time to be planting and Chris and George are starting off a new project to create a 'sub-tropical' garden that although will look exotic and jungly next year, it will be created with super hardy plants. Carole visits Tom Taylor in Drumoak who lives on an estate where 30 years ago, the front gardens were all planted with 'dwarf conifers'. Those conifers have all grown into massive trees. Tom became interested in the Japanese art of Niwaki training and sculpting of trees. Tom shows Carole how to be more creative with conifers.