Monty Don welcomes us to Monty Don's British Gardens Episode 3 The Middle, Wales to Norfolk
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
Lesley Jenkins
Lawrence Edwards
Val Turton
Tony Taylor
Jake Croft
Nabila Winter
Adrian Bloom
Cel Robertson
Sir David the Marquess of Cholmondeley
Gardens visited
Foggy BottomForever Green Flower Company
Monty says this garden represents an unique period of time when there was new technology, huge wealth and a belief in what you were creating and it did not end well and Bateman spent all his money leaving the garden to overgrow and be neglected.
Monty starts his journey this week in Snowdonia, North Wales and this week its the Middle of the Country in rather an odd route, visiting a whole range of gardens.
Travelling from North Wales, through the Midlands and ending in East Anglia.
Monty is in North Wales to visit a garden by the banks of the River Conwy and Bodnant one of the world's great gardens.
The garden was created by Henry Pochin in the 19th Century who was a Chemist and made his fortune making soap!
He bought the land in 1874 and then got Edward Milner a popular Landscape Designer to do the garden to match the magnificent house he had built.
80 Acres were transformed with no expense spared to create the landscaping and woodland.
There are many famous features in the garden but the 5 terraces coming down from the house were constructed from 1905 - 1914 and they are stunning.
At the top on the 1st terrace is the Rose Garden laid out in an informal way as of its time.
Pochin died in 1895 and the estate went to his daughter Laura McLaren who gave it to her Son Henry to do what he liked with it and unlimited money and he created the terraces.
He was only in his 20s and it was such a huge project to take on and they were all dug by hand and there a Croquet lawn on one as well as a huge lily pond on another,
At this time and up to the 1st World War at Bodnant they started growing more and more unusual plants.
Henry knew a lot about Horticulture and also financed all the plant collecting as well as actually collecting buildings!
The stunning Pin Mill actually dates from 1720 and it was originally sited 150 miles away in the South and by the late 1930s it had fallen into disrepair.
He spotted it in Gloucestershire when going past on the train and wanted it but Lawrence Johnstone a famous Gardener also had his eye on it so they competed for it.
Henry won and moved it all to the garden and is one of the most iconic features.
At the other end of the lily pond inspiration came from the Italian Renaissance Gardens which were popular again and added a Green Theatre but Monty thinks the bench is out of proportion.
Monty goes as far as to say its completely wrong for the setting and even though it may upset some people as its well known but its still wrong according to Monty, and he passionate about that!
Now he thinks the hedges are not tall enough but a Green Theatre to put on performances is a fantastic addition.
Bodnant is an iconic 20th Century Gardens and when it was built Britain's Empire was Global and plant hunters went everywhere this means there is an eclectic mix in the gardens.
There is even a bathing pool with Tropical plants to amazing Woodlands making this an outstanding garden and when it was all finished he gave it away to the National Trust.
This was before Henry died and he did this not to evade Tax, as they had money, but to get the National Trust to value gardens as a British asset, and that started off here, in this important garden.
Monty now heads as far West as possible in North Wales to the Llyn Peninsula to visit Plas yn Rhiw and there has been a small Manor House on the site since the 17th Century which was left abandoned by the 1920's.
A family from Nottingham who holidayed in the area bought it in 1939 and they were the Keating family, 2 sister and their widowed Mother and the house was a ruin.
The grounds were so overgrown with brambles, the only entrance was through a window, after restoring the house they discovered the garden under the brambles, so they revived it.
In front of the house is a small formal garden which is made up of terraces of hedges and informal planting overlooking the bay view.
It is sheltered from the winds and has the Gulf Stream coming from the bay means it has a mild climate and can grow a wide range of plants, which are hardy without protection throughout the Winter.
There are also ruined buildings in the garden that have been covered by plants and Monty likes the way the garden is a mixture of a seaside garden and a small cottage garden all set with the lovely view of the bay.
Monty finds lots of these personal gardens, grown and planted how the owner wants and the last Keating Sister sadly died in 1981 and they loved this part of Wales and made a garden that would only survive in this particular area.
Monty has left wales and is back in England and in Shropshire to visit Wollerton Old Hall which he has only ever seen photos of and it is a 16th Century timber framed Manor House.
He arrives at the front of the house with its attractive planting and spots a small sign to the garden and through a door in the wall to a magical garden.
The garden taller than he thought with lots of hidden views as he makes his way through the hedges and Topiary.
There are 14 different areas and is 4 acres in total all surrounded by hedges and Topiary with pathways running throughout connecting them all.
Each garden is themed with its own planting scheme but you can get glimpses of them all walking round the garden.
The garden was created by Lesley Jenkins who grew up there and as an adult bought it in 1983 and back then it was just a field with cattle in it.
Monty met with Lesley in the garden and she made the garden by starting with the avenues and she wanted a theatrical garden.
Lesley had 2 sons that used the garden to play sport in and she got them to swap sport for marking out the garden with baler twine.
The garden was a team effort with her Husband John also loving plants and Monty tells her as a visitor is that the garden full of drama, intimacy and Theatre.
The garden is very personal and British Gardeners have such a wide range of Perennials and planting available that we can make some outstanding combinations.
Gardens are not only creative spaces we strive make but somewhere to show off our achievements.
In the next garden the owner actually bankrupted himself to do this and he is in North Staffordshire to visit Biddulph Grange which was built in 1840 by James Bateman on the site of a Rectory.
He was a Horticulturist and plant collector and he used this to make an amazing but quirky garden!
James and his wife loved exotic plants and he wanted the garden to put them all in and Monty shows us an example of his work a walkway with Dahlias which were new in 1840 and he already had a huge collection.
The beds against the wall of hedge are on 2 levels so you can see them all like a display shelf and at the time there was really competition in gardens about what you had growing.
Dahlias were fashionable as a new exotic plant and this amount of Dahlia meant he had an exceptional garden,
Monty warns us the garden now gets strange as he walks into a Renaissance tower and comes out into a huge stumpery!
This seems a dark place with walls made of uprooted trees this isn't horticulture and as he carries on it changes again there now crumbling walls that remind him of a Medieval City.
Round the corner there a Chinese Pagoda with his bright red paint and in front a red and gold bridge.
Bateman spent a fortune on this garden to create a Surreal dream like garden representing different Countries and period of time.
Each area was to house his plant collecting in the correct landscape but he had not visited this places and went from engravings and paintings o recreate the scene.
Monty says it looks like a 'theme park of China' with a mixture of Victorian gardening and his ideas of what China was like.
The garden took tons of stones and earth to build so he had to build a railway for the heavy stone from the moors.
The different areas also made their own microclimates and he on a Himalayan style hillside and the stone and dense planting makes it feel a lot cooler.
Bateman was then further inspired by the Great Exhibition of 1851 and created a odd Egyptian courtyard and had stone Sphinx were made and created a Yew Pyramid.
Going through the tunnel in the Pyramid you come out of a traditional doorway of a Tudor Cheshire cottage in a forest of pine trees.
Monty says this garden represents an unique period of time when there was new technology, huge wealth and a belief in what you were creating and it did not end well and Bateman spent all his money leaving the garden to overgrow and be neglected.
It has been restored and now well maintained we can see it in its quirky Victorian style and splendour.
Monty heading to Nottingham to visit a whole group of gardens which you do not need a lot of money to create at St Ann's Allotments which also has the title of the oldest in the country.
It is over 75 acres also making it the largest in the country and the plots here are all surrounded by hedges.
The allotments here are for local people to grow their own produce as at the start the wages for people were very low.
Now its more than that its a huge green space in the busy City and Monty is following a map with has each plot on it and there are over 700 and he visiting just 3.
The 1st one belongs to Lawrence Edwards who is one of the longest Allotmenteers and Monty meets him on his plot and is amazed he does it all himself as its huge.
He been here 35 years and its only been for vegetables and a few flowers and some borders around the lawn.
He just dug up his onions that are on the soil drying and has some huge Cabbages and pumpkins growing.
He is here every day for 4-5 hours and he really enjoys gardening and Monty says he very good at it too!
Lawrence says its all down to luck and the love of what he is doing.
Monty asks him is there a typical British garden and Lawrence says its creating something that is your own.
Monty also loves all the alleyways at this allotments with all the doors not knowing what magical thing is behind them all.
He finds his next allotment door and it is a Communal space run by owner Val Turton who is an Artist and during the pandemic moved her studio from the city to here in her allotment in a studio built by her son.
When she was at work elsewhere she offered her friends to use it and they told their friends and before she knew it there was a community of Gardeners and Artists all using the plot.
There was a shed here when she came which was once a dog kennel and now the central part of the plot and she really enjoys sharing as it would be too much for 1 person to have alone.
Monty been told the next Allotment is one he has to visit and its owned by Tony Taylor and Monty is speechless when he meets him at his amazing garden.
The whole plot is a Cottage Garden and nothing like your normal allotment and when he took over the plot it was a mess and even the building had collapsed.
The garden was just a clay slope and he has done every part of the garden and he wanted a cottage garden as he lives in a high rise block of flats on the 12th floor with no garden.
He had not gardened before and this is his first garden, he made mistakes along the way but slowly the garden came together with him adding different colours and textures.
He also kept mystery in the garden, not knowing what is round every corner and the high hedges are cut once a year by a third in height and this keeps it private and enclosed.
Monty says its a 'sanctuary' and he finds the garden 'very moving' its a nurturing garden as well as an amazing achievement.
Monty likes the differences in the Allotments and how they are personal to the people maintaining them.
Monty now in Northamptonshire in the Midlands to visit a garden that had an unusual restoration at Lamport Hall where the Isham family lived for 400 years.
The 10 acres of garden and park has been restored since the mid 20th Century and he meets with Head Gardener Jake Croft in the part of the garden with its conventional lawns and borders.
He is taking him to the Walled Garden which once the Kitchen garden but now it is completely different to every other walled garden.
There are rows and rows of plants, Perennials planted to mimic vegetables, Monty seen cut flowers grown in rows but nothing like this before!
This makes for blocks of colour and texture and unlike how these border plants are usually grown.
Monty likes it and asks Jake if anywhere else does this and he says no except for Commercial Nurseries.
Lamport Hall history is unusual with Sir Charles Isham being a vegetarian and teetotal, a spiritualist and also a Gardener he inherited the Hall in the 1840's.
Jake takes him to the Rockery which was designed to look like a natural crag and this was one of Sir Charles designs but it contained normal garden plants like dwarf conifers and assorts of pine trees etc as well as......Gnomes.
Monty looks shocked and this was the first time Gnomes had come to Great Britain!
Sir Charles imported them from Germany and the whole Rockery was theirhome and he created little scenes.
Sir Charles thought they were real little people, Monty is finding it all too weird and he asked where did they all go?
Rumour has it that on Sir Charles death, his 2 jealous daughters were annoyed at this waste of money and the 50 years he spent looking after it, they threw parties where people came and shot at the Gnomes!
There is only 1 survivor which had fallen into a crevice and its now kept on display in the house but Jake brings it out to Monty to hold and its tiny and then he finds out its worth 1 million pounds!
Monty headed East to Cambridge and he was a Student here at Magdalene College and he had access to Backs and the many gardens of the Colleges.
Its exactly the same as it was in 1976 and back then he took the gardens for granted, not realising how they improved everyone's life living at the Colleges.
Monty not come for that but to visit a project in Mill Road at Cambridge Central Mosque which opened in 2019 and its the City's first Mosque with a Garden thats been purpose built.
This garden is not hidden away but goes right into the street to the bus stop outside and are looked after by Volunteers from the community.
Monty joined a group of them on a tea break and they tell Monty this is all they do drink tea and eat.
Monty tries some made of spinach, lentils, carrots and chilli and the chilli's are home grown.
Most of the group have their own gardens but its the bringing of people together they come for and a recent event of a plant and seed share and sell went very well.
In front is the formal symmetrical garden based on the Paradise Gardens of the Koran and the garden has used familiar British plants like Crab apples to replace date palms and even the building structure is based on a tree.
Monty meets with Nabila Winter who been involved with the Mosque from the very beginning and before it was built they met with local residents and they wanted gardens to come to and they were happy to oblige.
Monty asked about the gardens on the street do they get vandalised and how do they maintain them and she tells them every Wednesday Morning the Gardening team work on the garden clearing it up.
The garden made a big difference to this end of Mill Road and everyone that uses it.
Monty heading East to visit the World famous Beth Chatto's Garden and its situated near the dry coast of Essex and the garden has had a huge impact on the way millions of us garden.
Beth Chatto created the garden at her home outside of Colchester and she was an influenceable Gardener.
Monty remembers visiting 25 years ago and walking down the steps with Beth as she gave him a tour of the garden.
Monty was in awe of her but also a little bit afraid of her as she could be quite feisty and he was worried she would think him a fool but she was lovely to him.
Beth was a brilliant gardener and the garden she made was resilient to the climate problems of being so dry.
The garden is divided into 5 different areas and is 7 1/2 acres in total and every one has a different growing condition.
Right in front of the house is the Water garden and when she started in 1950's this was an abandoned bog and her philosophy was to to look for the right place for the right plant.
So she planted the bog with plants that were suitable to grow there and this grew into several ponds surrounded by the water loving plants.
She would use unusual plants and put them in suitable locations that people at the time were not growing in their gardens and now people are growing them all the time.
Beth made the Dry or Gravel Garden in 1991 and made it on the old car park and then added more gravel and just planted into it and left it, the plants have never been watered.
She was before her time in designing such a garden and showed how plants can be grown anywhere and in any conditions if you pick the right plant.
The plants she used educated the British Gardeners on plants they had never seen before to use when you have such dry conditions.
Climate change is now an important topic and affecting more and more gardeners across the country.
Beth Chatto sadly died in 2018 but her influence on Gardeners lives on and will continue to as we face more problems from climate change in the future.
Monty says we take for granted that we are a nation of garden loving gardeners being part of our lives and he thinks it due to our industrial history and our opens spaces became more important especially to the growing middle class as a status symbol.
Monty off to another garden influencers garden in Bressingham, Norfolk called Foggy Bottom and the garden was started over 60 years ago by Adrian Bloom.
Adrian family has run plant nurseries since the 1920's and it was his father Alan Bloom, that invented the concept of the Island bed as until then borders were formal and symmetrical.
Foggy Bottom is actually next door to his fathers garden and Adrian chose to display the plants he loved which were conifers and alpines.
The garden is 6 acres and jam packed full of large Island beds growing these much loved plants.
It was made in the 1960 when these plants were in fashion and the public loved it and he met with Adrian in his garden to hear more.
Adrian started his garden just when Garden Centres were becoming popular and a conifer and alpine garden were relatively trouble free to grow and looked impressive all year round.
In 1966 he had 6,000 plants and by 1985 it was over a million conifers in the garden.
People still visit but maybe know less about the plants but people still get pleasure from it and its good therapy.
Monty making a detour between Cromer and Holt to visit a cut flower grower and its really tricky to find from the busy main road but he has found Cel Robertson who been running her business Forever Green Flower Company for 10 years
The site is only 1 acre but its filled with flowers grown in blocks and rows and there every shade of colour you can think of from bright pink Cosmos to apricot Dahlias and she grows then in an environmentally conscious way.
'Business is blooming' she tells Monty and over half of her business is selling direct to Florists and the rest is people buying cut flowers for Weddings etc.
Over the last decade people taste in flowers has changed to much paler and they are growing up to 200,000 stems annually.
It is not just the growing they have to pick them and pack the flowers to go out to the retailers so it is a lot of work.
The more bigger industrial side of flower growing is not good for the environment but if more can be grown locally in this country the better it is for the environment.
Cel says for example foliage you can grow 12 months a year.
Flowers are a big part of our significant life events like getting married, having a baby and at funerals.
Monty says business is tough and they are selling a product that has to be in bud form or not yet at its best so it is at its best when the buyer needs it to be.
He says her carbon footprint is a lot smaller than commercially produced flowers.
Monty ends this episodes journey at a grand garden at Houghton Hall in North Norfolk and the garden has undergone a lot of restoration as well as new areas being added.
The Hall was built in the1720's for Great Britain's first Prime Minister, Sir Robert Walpole and this huge mansion is a symbol of the great wealth and power he had.
The house was unchanged for 300 years and was fully restored just after World War1 by Sybil Cholmondeley who was the wife of the Fifth Marquess of Cholmondeley, she was a patron of the arts and society beauty.
She only concentrated on the house and it was not until her Grandson David inherited it in 1990 that the restoration of the grounds started especially the Walled Garden.
Monty says the garden is 'broken up' and you cannot see or figure out where to go due to the large Yew hedges which divided it even though there are doorways and they are sculptured.
You get just glimpses of the garden but you do not know what through every doorway.
The walled garden is a total of 5 acres and is divided into different gardens, like the formal Rose Garden, an Italian Garden complete with Pleach Limes and the fruit and vegetable garden.
There also a Mediterranean Garden and lastly a Rustic Classical Temple with Antlers from the White Fallow Deer that roam the Estate.
The garden fits well for a modern design in the Estate and Monty find the long vistas very striking.
The parkland also has huge vista that go on forever and he does not know if this was meant to mimic those.
When it was first built the Walled Garden was used by Robert Walpole for his hounds and had then been abandoned.
Monty meets with Sir David the Marquess of Cholmondeley who began transforming it in 1991 and he wanted a memorial to his Grandmother and thought she would approve of the change.
She had wanted to develop the garden and had a fruit and vegetable garden and one for cut flowers other wise it was all just left fallow with just a dividing hedge.
David has reinvented the garden as there was nothing much to restore after it had left alone for generations after Robert Walpole died.
David said Robert son and Grandson had no interest in the grounds and it came through marriage of Robert daughter that the Cholmondeleys from Cheshire inherited it and didn't really want it.
The house had remained completely untouched with only the garden falling to neglect.
Monty says the thing with these great houses is that they have all survived periods of grandeur then neglect with things evolving and changing without losing their place.
Us as the public get to share these places which are way beyond what we have at home in our own houses and gardens.
Monty is at the seaside at Holkham as far North as he can get in Norfolk and he come all the way across from North West Wales and this weeks programme been a real journey from 2 very different Walled Gardens.
Monty says in Great Britain thorough the ages our gardens fulfil our own dream for them whether its a big or small dream and sometimes our gardens even bankrupt us!
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