CUTTINGS

The thrill of taking Getting new plants for free from your old ones is easy and hugely enjoyable – give it a try!

Taking cuttings for the first time is an exciting though sometimes a daunting process. If cuttings don’t take root it can be disappointing but when they do and turn themselves into new plants it's exhilarating.

The first cuttings I ever took were from hydrangeas. Several were successful and were duly potted. Sadly though, they had no protection during the winter (this was the first year here before we had a greenhouse) and although a couple scraped through, sadly the rest died. Since then most of the cuttings we’ve taken here have survived and many of the successful results have taken up residence in the garden and themselves provided material to take more cuttings still.

Why grow plants from cuttings? Surely growing from seed is a more straightforward method and gives you many more plants. However, some plants can't be grown from seed; they're sterile and must be reproduced vegetatively and because you're using material from the plant, the new plants will be clones, exact replicas of the parent plant.

Seedlings are all slightly different and though they may take after their parents, there's no guarantee they'll be the same. Cuttings taken from the same plant will be identical.

At this time of year cuttings root rapidly and, with a bit of care and prompt potting on, they may take just a few weeks to make roots and form decent plants. For BBC Gardeners' World we recently took a bunch of cuttings from a lovely salvia, ‘Wendy’s Wish'.

It was during hot weather and we were fearful they might wilt and fizzle but with frequent spraying with water we managed to keep them adequately hydrated and were able to show viewers the next stage when they were turned out of their pot, separated and potted up individually.

They've now made fine little plants and because we nipped out their growing tips initially, they've bushed out. It's very tempting to take cuttings from our cuttings but instead I’ll pot them on once more and in a few weeks they can go into their final positions, mostly in pots and containers around the gardens.

Meanwhile we’ve taken more cuttings starting with a few from a white penstemon, when we used both tip cuttings from the first few inches of growth and a couple where we detached sideshoots with a little heel (a slither from the stem to which it was attached). This was filmed for our upcoming new programme for Channel 5, probably entitled

It was shot entirely at Glebe Cottage by two intrepid director/cameramen and promises to be absolutely beautiful, not to mention informative and inspirational. No dates for transmission have been announced as yet – watch this space!