Monty Don welcomes us to Monty Don's British Gardens Episode 5 The South West.
Monty starts by telling us he has been to gardens all over the world and been a gardener and made gardens his whole life. Gardening is his life just like he needs air to breath.
Now its the turn of Great Britain for Monty to explore and to explore why gardening and gardens are so popular here.
From large gardens where you can do anything you want to them or small gardens where you can imagine and create in too.
We all love a garden and they can be made just about anywhere.
Is this to do with being British, where we live or just that as a nation, we love gardens and gardening.
Monty has spent a year travelling and filming as many gardens as he could, new gardens for him, gardens with climate problems and of course the British eccentric gardens!
His quest was to find out what really is a British Garden or does it not exist?
Presenter
Special Guests
Andrew and Jordi Doman
Koos Bekker
Alasdair Forbes
Cyril Harris
Keith Wiley
Sir Tim Smit
Clive and Will & the Graveyard Volunteers
Darren Dickey
Christina Shand
Gardens visited
This is the final episode of the series and all that left to visit is the South West of the country.
Monty starts his journey at Rousham in Oxfordshire, and it also one of Monty favourite gardens as well as being very influential world wide.
The garden is full of colour like you would get in a English Country House Garden but this is only a small factor and there something else that makes this garden special.
The house and gardens originate from 1635 and consists of formal gardens and a bowling green and in 1720 the King's Gardener, Charles Bridgeman made the garden less formal. This changed again when in 1730's William Kent was hired to design the garden.
William Kent was a jack of all trades from designer to painter and also a unreliable and irresponsible genius.
He embraced the new style of landscape gardening so it was included into the garden scheme.
A network of paths were created spreading out the garden and creating different scenes, like the Greek Gods, taking in ideas from the Grand Tours that were becoming popular.
Rousham is famous for its Rill which is different because it curves and creates a stream of water from a spring at the top, through dipping pools into bigger ponds.
In the 18th century most people saw the world through paintings and drawings, but William Kent used stages sets to bring the garden to life, taking people on a story telling journey through the garden.
In the garden is a memorial, which is beautifully made at great expense but its for a dog!
Monty says the reason the garden is so influential is because of how William Kent uses the whole landscape in the garden.
Next stop is Oxford and the Worcester College Gardens where the lawns are so green with geometric patterns on them all mown by battery operated mowers to keep the noise minimal.
Passing through a small doorway Monty comes across a huge mixed planted border full of not only traditional perennials but also Bananas and Roses.
The long border is a good example of the evolvement of the variety of plants from when the plant hunters went all over the British Empire then into the 20th Century where trees and shrubs were included.
The College unusually also has a park with a huge lake at its centre which was only created 200 years ago and also includes an orchard much to the delight of the ducks eating the windfalls.
There woodland walks through the trees and all this space in the grounds of a college which makes it a retreat from the busy world outside.
The landscape movement in the 18th Century was growing and the surrounding landscape was ideal with the rolling hills and Monty next stop is the parkland of Bowood House.
in 1762 Lord Sherbourne commissioned Lancelot Capability Brown to design the parkland and what has been created looks completely natural.
The lake and parkland are all part of the design and Capability Brown has created the best example there is of a British Landscape Garden.
Capability Brown would travel around the country on horseback surveying and designing landscape saying which site was 'capable' of improvement and this is how the name stuck.
As part of the plan for Bowood he levelled part of a hillside and re-routing 2 streams to make the lake and shipped in so many trees and shrubs.
Lord Sherbourne provided the tools and the exotic trees and a total of 300 workman took 5 years to complete the project.
A whole hamlet of cottages had to go leaving just one as they needed to flood it for the lake.
In the next 15 years most large house had a Capability Brown Landscape so to keep on trend a new Designer Charles Hamilton was employed to add some decorative features.
He added a hidden cascade at the end of a pathway using the lake's overflow to then go into a river.
This was only possible due to the design for the lake that Brown used as he included a sluice that then fed this new design feature.
Capability Brown even though he was so successful worked entirely on his own doing the designs and is responsible for 100s of gardens.
Monty says he has to be the influential Garden Designer in the way we think about the British Garden.
Bowood has remained mostly unchanged and is a lasting legacy to Capability Brown even to today and modern Garden Designers who are using the same technique of integrating the garden with the landscape.
This next garden is a private garden on the edge of the Salisbury Plain and it is West Lavington Manor.
The house was constructed in the 16th Century and to the front has the traditional lawn and borders but the rest of the large garden is very different.
There a stream that runs into the lake surrounded by meadows and connected by a winding path.
The owners are Andrew and Jodi Doman who originally came from Adelaide in South Australia but have made a very English Garden.
Monty feels the garden is very much done for the owners with everything they like and wanted included.
It has a Japanese Garden, Meadows, Topiary and they especially seem to like cloud pruning.
Jodi says she likes the fact its different around every corner so it is not boring.
Monty asked what do they think makes a British Garden and Andrew said the climate means you can grow a wide variety of plants and the huge range of flowers we have and also how green the gardens are.
Monty said the couple gave him a real insight as to what we take for granted from a British Garden, the greenness of the grass, the climate the plants we do tend to take for granted.
Monty next stop is a very well known garden The Newt who South African owner has changed it completely with the use of modern technology.
Koos Bekker and his wife have owned it since 2013 and they saw the House when they were on holiday in a magazine and bought it.
Koos whizzes Monty round his estate in a golf buggy and the garden they have created is inspired by the 18th Century Baroque movement and the first stop is the grotto.
The Grotto is one of a number of follies and it is 'extraordinary' according to Monty complete with fake bats.
It was created using a concrete outer shell and wood inside for the stalactites to hang from and then crystals made by hand and they also have a Wyvern (dragon) in the pond.
Koos has even moved the lake from up the valley to its new position, he says Capability Brown changed the landscape at its easier than you think, if it is with modern diggers!
The garden and parkland are over 900 acres and he also introduced Heritage animals like cows, sheep and deer to graze the parklands.
Near the house are the formal gardens and he has also moved the Victorian pond to align better with the house.
The gardens although they have an old history now feel modern and at the garden heart is the Parabola Garden which was the fruit and vegetable garden.
It now has 700 apple trees of 330 different types.
Koos says he likes having the freedom to create a garden on this scale for his own pleasure.
Monty says the site has layers of garden history mostly by the Hobhouse family who owned it for centuries with Penelope Hobhouse being the most well known for gardening.
Monty remembers her and he also visited in 1990s when Nori and Sandra Pope leased some of the garden and created their famous Colour Garden.
The Cottage Monty in front of was the Gardener's Cottage and the Gardener in question had 8 children all in the tiny house!
What strikes Monty most about the garden is that Koos had the inspiration to do this because of being in Great Britain and this is on an enormous scale only seen a couple time a century.
Monty is leaving Somerset and heading Southwest to visit Plaz Metaxu in North Devon a garden which has a lake right in the centre of the garden.
The garden is 29 acres in total set in a valley and it is a garden of the mind!
Art Historian Alasdair Forbes bought the farmstead 30 years ago and Monty met him in his garden.
Alasdair tells Monty originally there was just a stream down the middle and they made the lake in just 8 days with the use of several diggers.
The rest of the garden is made up of interconnected Conceptual gardens that look like the surrounding fields and contain inscribed stones.
Each part has its own story to tell getting the inspiration from Ancient Greek Myths.
The garden was challenging to make and helping Alasdair he had Cyril Harris who has a neighbouring farm and has been there from the start.
Cyril says he had no idea how it turn out but luckily Alasdair had the vision for the garden and the design is amazing.
Cyril glad to be a part of the garden and people love to come and visit it. He says its just a garden to him and he does not get the abstract side, Alasdair says thats fine however it is working for him is fine.
Monty heads to the other side of Dartmoor to visit Wildside which is famous for the range and amount of plants all planted in a natural style.
Monty met with Keith Wiley who has been there since 2004 when it was all just a flat field and he had his own Nursery that supplied 40,000 plants so they certainly had plenty to start the garden with.
They did not have much funds so he completed all the work himself which included moving 150,000 tonnes of soil with a digger.
Keith says he creates shapes of landscapes he has seen elsewhere and then he has recreated them.
The garden is 4 acres which is divided into 3 areas and Monty starts at the lower garden which has places like a Himalayan style hillside, wooded dells and an open meadow which are all richly planted.
Keith says the flat part was a Cider Apple Orchard and he just kept some of it and used the shape of it around this part of the garden.
He uses plants like Maples and conifers to mimic the shape of the apple trees so they are all pruned to the same shape.
Beside the house there is a Mediterranean Courtyard and going to above the house is a wild area with sweeps of Agapanthus and Crocuses.
Keith likes the garden to be everchanging and to grow old gracefully with him.
Monty says the garden is about energy and emotion and demonstrates how everything below his chest height in this section of the garden has been dug out.
Keith then used the soil to create height in the garden with the tallest part being 24 foot high and made this part of the garden look like the entrance to an old quarry.
This then leads into the newest part of the garden The Memorial Garden because Keith wife Ros sadly died in 2019 and the couple had been together since they were students.
Although the garden still very new its not like the rest of the gardens that are different parts of the world, this garden all about love and loss.
Monty says he finds comparing this garden with Plaz Metaxu as both have moved lots of earth to create but ones about placing ideas and this ones about a fantasy landscape.
This garden has changed the landscape from before to create the right environment for the plants he has brought in.
The gardens using the same technique are completely different.
Monty heads into Cornwall which has the best climate in the country that is warmed by the Gulf Stream and gentle rain, which is ideal for a exotically planted garden like the Lost Gardens of Heligan.
The award winning garden is one of the most visited gardens in Great Britain and Monty wants to find out why.
He starts in the Jungle garden which had previously fell into complete disarray but during the last 30 years the gardens have been cleared and rediscovered.
They have been owned by the Tremayne Family since the 18th Century and it is 200 acres in total and was once open parkland.
There used to be 22 Gardeners looking after the exotic plants but during the 1st World War, 16 of them left to go to war, with sadly just 4 returning.
The garden then started to overgrow and in areas completely neglected until 1990 when Sir Tim Smit by a descendant of the family to come and look at the garden.
Monty meets with him in the garden and he tells him there was 5 metres of brambles in places and they had cut through laurel hedges to get in.
Just the tops of the Chusan Palms were visible and on cutting there way through they came to a door painted green that was ajar and he discovered the Glass Houses held up by Ivy and it was frozen in time.
Sir Tim started the garden restoration and the story of a lost garden got people interested straight away.
The cost was quoted at 40 plus Million but ended up costing about half a million because they had gangs of people wanting to take part in the dream of restoring Heligan.
People were coming from all over to work for free and some just wanting expenses to rebuild the garden.
30 years of dedication, skill and romance is revealed in this glorious valley and the 2 acre kitchen garden has also been reinstated.
The wall garden is back at full productivity like in the 19th Century and the work all done by hand and is like a living history of how things were done and is a huge draw for people to visit.
Monty next going across the Roseland Peninsula on the King Harry number 7th ferry to visit something quite different the Saint Just Graveyard.
This is maintained by volunteers at the 12th Century Church of Saint Just in Roseland and it has the most beautiful setting by the water.
Monty meets with a Volunteer who tells him she is part of the congregation who also volunteer and work alongside gardeners Clive and Will who supervise all the work.
Volunteers rotate shifts and anyone can join the team and he speaks to someone thats been here 24 years and the graveyard hasn't changed and everyone keen to keep it the same says another volunteer.
People walk through it all the time with dogs and children as well as visitors who all love been in the peaceful place.
They reckon they get up to 40,000 visitors a year Monty says that must be some pressure to keep it nice and they say thats why they have the 2 gardeners in charge to keep the volunteers on track.
Monty speaks with Clive and Will and they explain they do the main part of the gardening and the volunteers work on the lighter stuff.
There no set plan for the graveyard other than for it to look natural and its a pleasure to work there.
Monty says these 3 gardens are connected by Seeds businessman John Tresidder who in the mid 19th Century went to Australia to work and collected seeds and plants.
On his return to England he started a Nursery which is now part of the graveyard and he brought some of the plants with him.
He also supplied Heligan and Trebah of tree ferns and plants he grew on this site from Australia.
Monty is at the far end of Cornwall to visit Trebah, famous for its range of plants and the garden runs into a valley from the house right to the sea.
The 26 acre garden been there for 180 years and was started in the1840s by Charles Fox and along with his 2 brokers were Quakers who all designed gardens nearby.
He started by planting trees to create a sheltered valley and then he could plant more exotic plants.
The garden evolved right up to the mid 20th Century after changing hands several times and each adding there own plants it then became neglected to the end of the 20th Century.
The garden now been restored back and Monty says looking out you can see that nearly everything in the garden is not a native plant.
The garden is expertly looked after and Monty meets with Head Gardener Darren Dickey and he tells him the garden benefits from being by the sea and also the surrounding shelter.
In the Winter the garden gets lots of moisture and then the long summer days and gives the garden a wonderful microclimate.
Monty asks about Charles Fox and him collecting all the plants and he says he would have been well connected with the plant hunters and what was popular at the time.
This included the Rhododendrons and Monty says in the late 19th, early 20th Century these were a must for gardeners.
The conditions at Trebah were perfect for Rhododendrons to thrive and look glorious in Spring and some are as old as 140 years.
The garden is still changing with new plants being added and Darren shows Monty a huge Bamboo thats only 7 years old.
Trebah is a great example of the huge range of plants the climate lets us grow.
Monty now at his final garden in this series and for this he is going back to visit Dyffryn Fernant which is on the further western edge of Pembrokeshire by the sea.
It very exposed and a hostile climate to garden in but with all that a lovely garden has been made.
The garden adapts to the conditions as you get further into it and this includes a bog garden in the soggy ground and its taken a lot of hard work to make it look this good.
The 6 acre garden was created by Christina Shand who Monty meets in the garden and she came here 28 years ago when it was all just farmland and a ruined farm house.
Christina says she was always looking on how to become creative and then she discovered gardening.
She originally lived 4 miles away and had brought all the plants with her as she was short of funds and then started planting where she thought would look good.
Christina says she mad about plants but its what you do with them and she has respect for the conditions and not tried to make things grow where they will not.
Monty says that he can tell the garden given Christina real pleasure to create but she also very skilful in making it grow in the conditions.
Monty on his way home after visiting 60 gardens and he says the British make the type of gardens we do simply because we can.
He then recaps about seeing tropical plants in Scotland like in Cornwall and all the history that in Scotland around the buildings and gardens.
He also saw how youngsters are learning about gardening.
Then in the next programme it was regenerations of the back alleys of the city and the looking after of our gardens.
In the third programme it was allotments and what an important part gardens have for everyone.
The fourth programme he learnt about the changes needed for climate change for how we garden and how we can be creative and eccentric in our own spaces.
The final programme showed us how the 18th Century Landscape designers have really shaped the idea of the British Garden for here and the whole world.
Monty says gardens are important to us however they are and are a sense of who we are and his children and grandchildren will inherit the love of gardens, gardening and its history and get that sense of satisfaction like British people do every day from their gardens.
As Monty arrives home to Ned and his family all I can say is what a cracking series, it could have been a lot longer in parts, and thank you Monty!
All Photographs are copyright of BBC.com
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