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I believe that a really good way
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to understand a culture is through its gardens.
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This is an extraordinary journey to visit 80 inspiring gardens from all over the world.
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Some are very well known like the Taj Mahal or the Alhambra.
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And I'm also challenging my idea of what a garden actually is.
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So I'm visiting gardens that float on the Amazon a strange fantasy in the jungle.
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As well as the private homes of great designers,
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and the desert flowering in a garden and wherever I go,
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I shall be meeting people that share my own passion for gardens
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on my epic quest to see the world through 80 of its most fascinating and beautiful gardens.
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200 years ago, this was regarded as the most remote and the strangest place on the planet.
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And I shall be taking a journey across this vast continent,
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looking at its landscape and above all its gardens,
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to see how it's evolved from colonisation
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to gradual use and acceptance of the native flora,
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to become the independent, modern society that it is today.
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My journey begins in Sydney, where the British first settled over 200 years ago.
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I'll then head inland to Alice Springs and a garden in the heart
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of the continent's vast burning desert,
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before I turn south to the garden city of Melbourne.
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Finally, I'll cross the Tasman Sea
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to New Zealand to look at gardens filled with their native plants.
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By the edge of an unremarkable beach on a huge natural bay in
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the South East of the country, is a very special plant.
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This is a banksia, and its strangeness to British eyes
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and its name acknowledges the beginning of Britain's colonial occupation of this continent.
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The stone obelisk behind me marks the spot where Cook made
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his landfall after his epic voyage.
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And the bay that he stopped in, he called "Stingray Bay"
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because he found so many of those fish in these waters.
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But travelling with Cook was a young botanist called Joseph Banks,
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who went on to be the first curators of Kew, and one of the great figures in botanical history.
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Banks found so many new and extraordinary plant species here,
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around the edge of the bay, that Cook renamed it in his honour and he called it Botany Bay.
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The banksia is only one of the many thousands of spectacular native plants
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that thrive nowhere else on earth but here.
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It was the sheer number of unique species that made the plant's namesake, Joseph Banks,
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realise that this was more than a new island, this was a whole new continent.
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They went back home with news of this extraordinary discovery,
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and 18 years later, the first fleet of settlers and convicts arrived.
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I'm arriving on the same route today on the Manley ferry.
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When the fleet landed in Botany Bay, where Cook had landed,
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and then they discovered there was no water, they had to decamp and move.
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They came up knowing there was an entrance, but they didn't know what they would find.
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So they came in here out of the open ocean, hopefully to find a more sheltered place to land.
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And 200 years later, we know this as Sydney.
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HOOTER BLOWS
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Unlike those first settlers, my boat docks in a large modern metropolis.
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But, despite the skyscrapers, Sydney's past remains close to hand,
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and my first Australian garden is slap in the middle of the city.
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Behind the Opera House are the gates to the Royal Botanic Garden.
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What I particularly like about this garden is that you have this juxtaposition of this fabulous
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natural harbour on the one side, and then on the other side, the city right on top of the garden.
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And its 74 acres are packed with extraordinary plants.
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But this is not just a botanical reserve.
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It is in one of the most spectacularly beautiful urban positions in the world
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and has always been at the heart of Sydney's life.
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It is constantly used by Sydney's citizens,
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either for their rather relentless exercising or just to relax.
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One of the reasons that I've chosen to visit the botanic gardens is not just because it is beautiful
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and interesting, but because of its importance in the history of the entire occupation of Australia.
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What the first settlers needed most urgently of all was fresh water.
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They came up the coast and found a creek
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fed by fresh water, and this pond is fed by that same stream.
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So, famously, they created a small farm nine acres of wheat.
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The bay out there is still called Farm Cove to this day.
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The modern botanic garden is rich with healthy lush plants
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of every variety, but it wasn't always so.
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In fact, life for the original settlers was almost unimaginably hard.
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To clear the farm land, they had to clear wood and forest and scrub.
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It blunted their axes, they couldn't dig out or get rid of the trunks,
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so they sowed their corn in amongst them.
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This is a recreation of that first crop.
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Which is really hardly a crop at all.
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We're filming this on the 1st of December, the first day of Summer, which is near harvest.
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This is what they would have had to feed them.
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It doesn't really look like a crop at all but their lives depended on it.
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And they had to sow into this very, very thin soil.
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This has had 200 years of improvement but then it was practically pure sand.
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But they had little choice because any convict trying to escape the colony and its struggling crops
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faced almost certain death by starvation in the dense Australian bush,
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which was also filled with unfamiliar and sometimes dangerous creatures.
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The most astonishing thing for me in the botanic gardens is not a plant but the fruit bats.
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They hang from the branches like sacks,
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occasionally extending a vast wing or the whole tree at times
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can be fluttering as they move to cool down in the sun.
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It's like bellows expanding and contracting.
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You can imagine for the first settlers
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seeing these strange animals, either vast versions of what they saw at home, or completely different.
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It must have been an extraordinary thing.
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As the colony developed, the farmland became the Governor's garden,
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and then in 1816 the Botanic Gardens were officially founded.
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But that original settlement, by the shelter of Farm Bay,
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is still at the heart of the garden and is the symbolic beginning of the modern Australian nation.
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As Sydney became established, it deliberately recreated
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the appearance and style of the homeland.
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These mixed borders of Government House
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could be part of any British stately home, albeit on the other side of the world.
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This represents a kind of homesickness and it's that urge to create a reminder of home,
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that's key to the next wave of Australian gardens further inland.
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The first inland town took shape here, in Mittagong, in the hills south of Sydney.
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Mittagong, means 'small mountain' and has a much cooler and wetter climate
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which was perfect for those early homesick settlers, who started building modest pioneer homes.
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Initially all settlements were in Sydney itself.
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But, gradually people began to leave the city and create lives themselves in the country.
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MUSIC: "Waltzing Matilda"
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But nevertheless, despite the almost unimaginable hard work involved,
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there would be time to just plant a little bit of colour.
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Just a token bit of gardening to lift the spirits if nothing else.
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And this modest splash of colour to relieve a brutally harsh existence
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in the countryside, heralded a new wave of Australian gardens.
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By the middle of the 19th-century, people in Sydney were becoming
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wealthy enough to consider moving out of the city during the baking summer months.
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They came south here which is much cooler
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even on a summers day like today, it's positively chilly.
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They were buying up the simple little shacks and enlarging them and converting them into
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summer homes, country houses and wherever you get a country house,
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you are gonna get a country house garden.
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The garden at Kennerton Green began its life in a modest way in 1860,
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but since then it has grown to spread over five well-tended acres.
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It includes a rose garden, a tightly clipped Bay Tree Garden, a silver birch wood and, almost inevitably,
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a "potager", all divided as a series of garden rooms,
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centred around the original settler's cottage.
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The thing that immediately strikes me about Kennerton,
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is that here we are, an hour or two south of Sydney,
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and yet this is a garden that really wouldn't feel out of place in the Home Counties in England.
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It's an English country garden.
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This was a deliberate thing.
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Apparently the first settlers, once they had overcome the sort of hostility of their terrain,
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and got to the luxury of making a garden as opposed to just surviving,
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sent home for familiar plants.
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Apparently violets and snowdrops, even song birds were shipped out
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so they could recreate the gardens they were familiar with.
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It was a distinct homesickness, a nostalgia, and they built around them spaces
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that they could think of as home, not their new homeland,
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but a distant home that they would probably never see again.
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From this point of the garden, I can't see a single native plant.
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It's worth stressing that Kennerton is not a historical recreation,
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it is a modern garden, but it illustrates so many
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of the tendencies of those early Australian gardens and this area, the Bay Garden,
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shows how that with the tightly clipped bay trees,
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it's conquering nature.
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It reminds me of the 17th-century French and Dutch gardens
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where you use formality and topiary
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to show man's mastery of a hostile natural world that lay beyond the garden's edges.
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Kennerton is a series of garden rooms
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and as you come out of the Bay Garden, you walk into this wood.
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It is made up just of the white trunks of birch and grass.
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I think it is the loveliest thing in the entire garden.
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Kennerton is undoubtedly a very beautiful garden.
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But it is a beautiful fantasy.
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It is an attempt to create a little piece of England in a very foreign land.
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The reality just on the other side of the garden hedge, or at least just down the road is this.
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This is the real Australia.
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It is a completely different world which the early gardens turned their backs on.
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Before I leave the Sydney area, I'm going to visit a 21st-century garden
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that celebrates its Australian roots.
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When I chose this garden, it was really because it was modern
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and I'd heard about it, seen pictures of it .
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I thought it looked really interesting.
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When you walk in here, the first thing you notice are these
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great jagged angles of rock pushing out at you. It's almost quite aggressive.
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But the way that they're balanced, actually it's not hostile, it's not threatening.
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You start to look further and see that the plants work really well with them, with that colour.
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This tiny, private garden in Sydney's fashionable Mossman district
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has been created for its owners by Czech designer, Vladimir Sitta.
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'It nestles in the right angle of the building, and, with its large sliding glass doors facing onto it,
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'is an important part of the living space.
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'The rock, all 33 tonnes of it, was quarried in Alice Springs, the red heart of Australia.
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'The owners commissioned the garden to display their collection of drought-resisting succulents.
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'However, not all the plants are Australian although this magnificent
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'ponytail palm, with its dangling water-storing roots, most certainly is.'
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What is an Australian garden?
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I wish to know. The garden is a culture concept to me.
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First you have to define what the culture is.
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I don't think there is even a demand for creating an Australian garden,
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it's not, people think that when they stick Australian plants into some space that it's an Australian garden.
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That's a load of rubbish.
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- There's hardly anywhere in the world that relishes the outdoors so much.
- Because you have such good weather..
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So you would think it was the perfect place to make gardens that could be relished all the time?
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If you see the garden as a stage set for your hedonistic pursuits, absolutely.
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But it doesn't have to be a hedonistic pursuit.
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It doesn't have to be a swimming pool, tennis court, barbecue.
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But this is what most of our gardens are here.
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In those richer suburbs of course.
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I think the garden ideally should touch you emotionally.
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Unfortunately it became, in many ways, just another commodity.
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In terms of just making your own and creating,
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then I think we've just barely scratched the surface in Australia.
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'Despite Vladimir's middle European gloom,
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'I think his garden is the closest I've come so far to feeling a real spirit of Australia.'
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These jagged angles have a tectonic energy that I like,
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and are pointing me to that burning red heart of the continent.
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That's where I'm going next, the outback, near Alice Springs.
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It couldn't be less like Sydney.
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DIDGERIDOO PLAYS
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It is a staggeringly harsh, grand, bright orange landscape
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but I can see echoes of Sitta's design immediately.
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Although this vast 'Sand Country' is classed as desert,
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it is actually full of life and empty only to the untutored eye.
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I'm visiting a completely different type of garden.
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Alice Springs Desert Park, which I hope will help me to understand the outback a little better.
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The park opened in 1997,
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and is designed to introduce people to the plants, animals and aboriginal culture of the outback
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with spinifex grasses, dried creeks, sand country and even a large salt pan.
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All painstakingly recreated to mimic the conditions of the outback in its true setting.
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It is a vast site with over 100 acres of cultivated garden and over 3,000 acres in all.
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I was shown round by Gary Dinham, the Curator of Botany,
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and he explained to me how the spinifex, the spiky grass that grows in the sand country,
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is perfectly adapted to the conditions.
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It's got these very spiky leaves which in fact used to be
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flat leaves which have rolled around to try and reduce water loss.
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I tell you what, that is as beautiful a grass
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as in any garden, isn't it?
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It's fantastic. We're trying to get people to use them more in gardens
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because it doesn't use much water and it is very easy to manage.
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You'll find plants which are less suited to the desert often grow beside rivers.
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So the River Red Gum, is a euycalpyt, Eucalyputus camaldulensis.
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They're very beautiful with their bark off.
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Look at this. This sort of clear white.
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The desert doesn't really have rivers or at least if there are, they don't run very often do they?
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They're ephemeral rivers - the upside down rivers of Central Australia,
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where the sand's on top and the water flows underneath.
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It's only after the heavy rains that you'll get the river flowing.
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It was interesting with my children in Central Australia,
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when they saw a river with water in it they were wondering what it was!
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MONTY LAUGHS
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'Away from the river, either underground or overground,
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'the harsher environment of the red desert sands means all plants have to be highly adapted.'
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These are only very young desert oaks.
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They're probably 8 or 10-years-old, very, very slow growing plants.
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You can see they actually photosynthesize through the stem.
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That little point there is just the remnant leaf.
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Under cultivation that is probably 6 or 7-years-old.
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In the wild you'd see one of those would probably be 20-years-old.
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Its root system is probably going down 10 metres.
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- 10 metres?
- Yeah.
- Wow!
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So they grow a lot more under the ground than above ground.
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Like every bit of this beautifully made garden,
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the park's artificially created salt pan looks completely natural.
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Do you get visitors assuming this is a natural landscape?
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That's one of the greatest compliments to the staff when people think that
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we are very fortunate to have all these habitats sitting in this small area.
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We've fooled them into thinking they're in a natural environment.
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The staff really love that. That's a great compliment to them.
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You've created this place, there is no other word for it.
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You've made it with your team.
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Does that make you a gardener?
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Well, this is a fantastic garden, it's one of the best gardens you could ever create I think.
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Recreating the environment, is an incredible challenge.
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It's not that easy, but I think we've managed to do that here to get it across.
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I think you have too.
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The aboriginal population co-habited with and used this flora
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long, long before Europeans arrived.
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I've met up with one of the Desert Park Rangers, Doug Taylor,
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to learn about his people's subtle relationship with the plants of the Australian outback.
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This is one of the most useful plants - the Mogga Tree.
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You could obtain food from here, tools.
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So the seed would be very small, wouldn't it, on those cones?
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Yes, this one's lost its seed. It would've been seeding a month back,
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but there are quite large pods and this is the seed that it produces.
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And this could be used by ladies ground up
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into like a flour or paste and baked into what we call Damper or bread.
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'This tree's timber is perfect for making boomerangs too.
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'This is a non-returning variety!'
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Very good to bring down a medium-sized kangaroo, stop an emu with this.
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Really?
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One of the strangest of all desert plants
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is the grass tree, Xanthorrhoea, which grows incredibly slowly.
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These plants are hundreds of years old.
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The land and the people, the traditional people were as one.
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Where our people
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didn't try to control the land, but live with it, and everything on the land had its place -
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in our people's culture
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and had a right to be there.
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It was useful too.
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The flower spike was used to carry a glowing ember for fire-making
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which is fitting for a plant that will regrow after being burned.
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Using fire to manage and regenerate the land
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was perhaps the closest that Doug's people came to gardening.
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It involved a highly sophisticated relationship with the land.
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Each family group had a seasonal cycle of moving from one camp
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to another within their territory, which they would use as a base for hunting and gathering bush tucker.
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They would use small controlled burns to flush out game and once
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they had hunted out one campsite, they would then move on to the next.
286
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By the time they return to this site, the burn done previous which
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may be 6-8 months' later say, but the burn would have then created regrowth and regeneration.
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Old expression in Australia here - aborigine going walking about,
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which was basically talking about this type of thing which is what our people used to do.
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I like to say, "Aborigine went on controlled seasonal movement."
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MONTY LAUGHS Sounds a lot better too!
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Now this is the shade of a desert oak which is a good size tree, but not vast, but it is very old.
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Oh, yeah. Very slow growing, desert oak, this one's quite mature, the one we're sitting under here.
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Probably anything up to 400, 500 years.
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Because these trees are so old, generations to generations of
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people see these trees and the stories attached to them.
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It's like looking at the old men and old women from the past.
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You sit amongst the desert oaks, and a light breeze comes through and it's like a...
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HE BLOWS
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If you sit down in the quiet long enough it sounds like you can hear voices whispering.
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That's where a lot of our people believe that the old people are still
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with these trees, and their spirit's still there.
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00:25:00,000 --> 00:25:04,280
As I travel back to Alice Springs, I thought about what Doug had told me.
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I can see just how perfectly the native people lived in
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00:25:07,480 --> 00:25:10,800
harmony with that seemingly wholly hostile environment.
306
00:25:10,800 --> 00:25:16,560
It was clear that the key factor to this, for plants as well as people, was drought and how to manage it.
307
00:25:20,120 --> 00:25:26,160
However, I am not sure I expect this to be the case in my next destination, which is Melbourne.
308
00:25:26,160 --> 00:25:29,760
Melbourne is often referred to as Australia's Garden City
309
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and it has a much wetter climate thanks to its position on the southern tip of the continent.
310
00:25:35,160 --> 00:25:40,200
This was my first visit and I was surprised to see European plants and trees everywhere.
311
00:25:40,200 --> 00:25:43,360
Its leafy, green avenues and flower-filled yards
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make a dramatic contrast to the parched streets of Alice Springs.
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Along with the skyscrapers and trams, there still survive quaint,
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ornate and now very select, Victorian streets.
315
00:25:58,680 --> 00:26:03,760
During the 1880s, Melbourne was the second largest city in the British Empire
316
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and many of the opulent homes from that period still survive.
317
00:26:07,480 --> 00:26:12,520
My next garden is the pinnacle of the grand Australian establishment,
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00:26:12,520 --> 00:26:16,320
and my host is Dame Elizabeth Murdoch.
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00:26:22,360 --> 00:26:25,280
Got into Melbourne when it was dark last night.
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Driven to a hotel, went to bed, got up, and come out here first
321
00:26:28,200 --> 00:26:33,200
thing in the morning, and I have to say it is a vast culture shock, I could be in another world.
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00:26:39,360 --> 00:26:42,320
Hello, Dame Elisabeth, how nice to meet you.
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- How are you?
- I'm very, very well.
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00:26:44,080 --> 00:26:48,120
- Good, how nice to see you.
- And with your beautiful garden..
- It's looking not bad.
325
00:26:54,840 --> 00:27:01,040
At 99, she and her garden are almost half as old as the nation.
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00:27:01,040 --> 00:27:05,000
She's the matriarch of Australia's great media dynasty, and the guiding
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spirit behind Cruden Farm and its 20-acre garden, which Dame Elisabeth began in the 1920s.
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00:27:11,280 --> 00:27:16,120
There can be few people on this planet that have gardened
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continuously in the same place for over 80 years.
330
00:27:23,840 --> 00:27:28,480
That's one of my great prides, my copper beach.
331
00:27:28,480 --> 00:27:33,760
I mean, it's fantastic to think I planted that only 52 years ago.
332
00:27:33,760 --> 00:27:38,360
Of course far too close to the house, but never mind, we manage.
333
00:27:38,360 --> 00:27:41,880
Are copper beach fairly unusual in Melbourne?
334
00:27:41,880 --> 00:27:43,640
In Melbourne, yes.
335
00:27:43,640 --> 00:27:45,440
When we were planning to put that in,
336
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I said to Michael my gardener, "It's ridiculous, I'll never see this Michael really."
337
00:27:51,840 --> 00:27:54,360
He said, "Of course you will, you're gonna live forever!"
338
00:27:57,280 --> 00:28:01,280
But part of the pleasure of planting a tree is watching it grow.
339
00:28:01,280 --> 00:28:05,400
- I know, wonderful.
- It's not necessarily the finished article.
340
00:28:05,400 --> 00:28:08,080
So you've created a landscape,
341
00:28:08,080 --> 00:28:11,680
that is sort of like Capability Brown in some ways.
342
00:28:11,680 --> 00:28:16,640
You've done it in a lifetime rather than over generations.
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00:28:16,640 --> 00:28:20,080
Yes, well I think you see everything grows so fast here.
344
00:28:20,080 --> 00:28:24,640
'That's the point. In England similar trees would take a couple of centuries to grow this big.'
345
00:28:24,640 --> 00:28:28,680
I love the purple stems - the purple touch on the stems.
346
00:28:28,680 --> 00:28:30,400
It's lovely, isn't it?
347
00:28:30,400 --> 00:28:32,280
I see you've got a good eye.
348
00:28:40,240 --> 00:28:47,080
This is surreal for me, here we are looking at hostas, having 12 hours ago
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stepped on a plane in the outback where the thought of a hosta is...
350
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I know, the contrast is fabulous, isn't it?
351
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- Really amazing.
- It looks marvellous.
352
00:28:58,840 --> 00:29:02,120
They are beautiful, they are beautiful hostas. I love them dearly.
353
00:29:02,120 --> 00:29:06,440
That's quite a young denudatus, it's amazing.
354
00:29:06,440 --> 00:29:13,600
It's very protected in there. You see the possums eat everything, so we've put an electric fence on the roof.
355
00:29:13,600 --> 00:29:16,280
So they can't come across.
356
00:29:18,400 --> 00:29:21,120
- Mind the bump.
- Right.
357
00:29:21,120 --> 00:29:24,760
- It's rather lovely, isn't it?
- Beautiful.
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00:29:36,520 --> 00:29:42,520
'I have never been in a garden which has reached such maturity within the life of its owner and creator.
359
00:29:42,520 --> 00:29:46,600
'I don't think I have ever met a gardener who has quite so much personal charm.'
360
00:29:51,680 --> 00:29:55,880
I confess that when I walked down the drive here,
361
00:29:55,880 --> 00:30:02,360
I thought this is so different from Alice Springs and the outback that there's no connection.
362
00:30:02,360 --> 00:30:09,560
But actually what this garden has is a sense of place, a sense of self-confidence.
363
00:30:09,560 --> 00:30:14,440
So you've got your rose garden, you've got your alchemillas and all the sort of English plants
364
00:30:14,440 --> 00:30:21,160
that might seem a bit odd here in Australia, but it also has a real sense of place and identity.
365
00:30:21,160 --> 00:30:23,920
It's grounded.
366
00:30:23,920 --> 00:30:27,520
At heart this is a European garden,
367
00:30:27,520 --> 00:30:31,640
but one that is very happily married to its native landscape.
368
00:30:34,080 --> 00:30:38,880
However, that cross cultural connection is under serious threat.
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00:30:38,880 --> 00:30:43,360
Climate change is increasing the already serious problems of drought in Australia.
370
00:30:43,360 --> 00:30:49,520
This means that the classic English flowers and lush greenery just won't thrive.
371
00:30:49,520 --> 00:30:52,960
The situation can only get worse.
372
00:30:52,960 --> 00:30:57,960
But having seen how the tough Aussie native plants thrive in the outback,
373
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I wonder if they are the key to Australia's gardening future?
374
00:31:05,760 --> 00:31:09,040
My next garden could answer that question.
375
00:31:09,040 --> 00:31:10,960
It is the Garden Vineyard,
376
00:31:10,960 --> 00:31:15,800
created by Di Johnson and now extended by her daughter Jenny.
377
00:31:15,800 --> 00:31:20,200
The garden is set amongst vineyards in the gently rolling countryside south of Melbourne.
378
00:31:20,200 --> 00:31:24,480
It began just 11 years ago, but already, it is one of
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00:31:24,480 --> 00:31:28,840
Australia's most exciting gardens because it is a fusion
380
00:31:28,840 --> 00:31:35,600
of traditional English design and planting, with a contemporary use of native Australian species.
381
00:31:35,600 --> 00:31:39,760
It's a story which started out with an attempt to make an exact copy
382
00:31:39,760 --> 00:31:45,520
of a very English garden until Di was confronted with the inescapable realities of the climate.
383
00:31:45,520 --> 00:31:47,840
I think that's a perfect example
384
00:31:47,840 --> 00:31:51,080
of how one has to adapt, because I love that little geranium.
385
00:31:51,080 --> 00:31:54,320
I've tried to grow it for three years, it looks fabulous in winter.
386
00:31:56,280 --> 00:32:03,080
I should give up, because look how wonderful the sedum by comparison looks.
387
00:32:03,080 --> 00:32:07,520
We went to a brick yard in North Melbourne,
388
00:32:07,520 --> 00:32:11,120
and these are convict bricks - there's a thumb print in one.
389
00:32:11,120 --> 00:32:14,600
Every 1,000 bricks they had to mark with a thumb print,
390
00:32:14,600 --> 00:32:17,760
every 10,000 I think it was with two thumb prints.
391
00:32:17,760 --> 00:32:21,000
But these bricks were all hand made by convicts.
392
00:32:21,000 --> 00:32:24,280
- No doubt those convicts were from England.
- I'm sure they were.
393
00:32:30,520 --> 00:32:35,560
The next stage of the garden shows the true scale of Di's ambition.
394
00:32:37,960 --> 00:32:42,120
The first thing that strikes me, these are socking great borders.
395
00:32:42,120 --> 00:32:45,080
- It's great!
- I'll probably never be able to sell it.
396
00:32:45,080 --> 00:32:46,800
Well, that's another matter..
397
00:32:46,800 --> 00:32:48,720
Nobody wants this much work.
398
00:32:48,720 --> 00:32:54,640
The giant borders mark the very first introduction of Australian natives into Di's garden.
399
00:32:54,640 --> 00:32:57,880
Tightly clipped green pillars of the gloriously named lillypilly,
400
00:32:57,880 --> 00:33:02,720
which she uses for structure in the border much as we might use yew at home.
401
00:33:02,720 --> 00:33:06,680
The lilypillies came in at what stage?
402
00:33:06,680 --> 00:33:10,360
- Pretty early on.
- Not straight away.
- About the second.
403
00:33:10,360 --> 00:33:12,720
Was it your first entry into indigenous planting?
404
00:33:12,720 --> 00:33:18,920
Yes, absolutely. I think the thing is they take the heat as well as the dryness.
405
00:33:18,920 --> 00:33:24,880
Follow the path round the corner and there is a quantum leap away from the traditional English garden.
406
00:33:24,880 --> 00:33:30,000
It's a composition of tightly clipped native shrubs in balls and
407
00:33:30,000 --> 00:33:35,080
billows set around the peeling white trunks of lemon-scented eucalypts.
408
00:33:35,080 --> 00:33:37,080
It looks fantastic.
409
00:33:37,080 --> 00:33:40,960
It's a bit English, but it's got a lot more Australian feel about it.
410
00:33:40,960 --> 00:33:45,360
This rhagodia is a brilliant thing. I know it is looking a little drab
411
00:33:45,360 --> 00:33:50,920
because we have just had to severely prune it, but it comes back, and it is totally drought tolerant.
412
00:33:50,920 --> 00:33:55,960
It grows in the sun or shade and we've used it all over the garden.
413
00:34:02,600 --> 00:34:05,680
After that cool modernism,
414
00:34:05,680 --> 00:34:09,480
there is a return to a European heritage with a much more formal
415
00:34:09,480 --> 00:34:12,360
and rather grand Italianate garden,
416
00:34:12,360 --> 00:34:17,040
using clipped coppery lillipilli lollipops - I've been dying to say that -
417
00:34:17,040 --> 00:34:20,920
under-planted with a sea of agapanthus and heliotropes.
418
00:34:20,920 --> 00:34:23,960
MUSIC: "The Flower Duet" by Delibes
419
00:34:48,600 --> 00:34:55,200
Go through a gate and on down a set of steps and you arrive at the place where everything comes together.
420
00:34:55,200 --> 00:34:59,520
This is a dramatic and brave part of the garden, made by Jenny,
421
00:34:59,520 --> 00:35:04,320
critically with Di's support using only native plants.
422
00:35:04,320 --> 00:35:09,400
So this is the evolution of the garden,
423
00:35:09,400 --> 00:35:11,840
maybe the future of Australian gardening.
424
00:35:11,840 --> 00:35:17,320
Yeah, I think it started off with not too much thought
425
00:35:17,320 --> 00:35:21,080
behind it. It started off as a passion of mine.
426
00:35:21,080 --> 00:35:22,640
And a bit of plonking!
427
00:35:22,640 --> 00:35:25,400
But plonking is the secret of good gardening!
428
00:35:25,400 --> 00:35:30,440
I tried to work with the colour and texture of plants
429
00:35:30,440 --> 00:35:34,040
and I tried to arrange plants that were blended with each other
430
00:35:34,040 --> 00:35:36,480
in terms of foliage, texture and colour.
431
00:35:36,480 --> 00:35:39,560
But, I don't think that is that important now.
432
00:35:39,560 --> 00:35:42,080
I guess being inspired by the natural bush.
433
00:35:42,080 --> 00:35:45,720
I've always loved the natural stance of eucalypts
434
00:35:45,720 --> 00:35:50,880
and things that aren't too fiddled with and manipulated.
435
00:35:50,880 --> 00:35:56,920
- How do you feel about that?
- Well, I have realised that Jenny
436
00:35:56,920 --> 00:35:59,200
has been a source of great wisdom for me.
437
00:36:19,080 --> 00:36:23,680
I'll be honest with you, when I walked in here and saw the walled English garden,
438
00:36:23,680 --> 00:36:28,400
I thought, "Oh, no, this is beautiful. But I didn't need to cross the world to see it."
439
00:36:28,400 --> 00:36:31,960
I've seen lots of gardens like that although not many done as well as that.
440
00:36:31,960 --> 00:36:35,880
But as I walked round, I realised something special was happening here.
441
00:36:35,880 --> 00:36:43,000
That a garden was evolving, not just through the process of the gardener, but through place and then,
442
00:36:43,000 --> 00:36:49,120
really most interestingly of all, through time and generations as the children of the household grew up
443
00:36:49,120 --> 00:36:54,360
and got interested, they were Australian and this was their background and this was their home.
444
00:36:54,360 --> 00:36:59,080
They started to evolve a style of gardening that was truly indigenous.
445
00:36:59,080 --> 00:37:00,720
It belongs to the place.
446
00:37:00,720 --> 00:37:04,640
The result is something genuinely new and beautiful
447
00:37:04,640 --> 00:37:08,840
and most importantly, sustainable in the changing Australian climate.
448
00:37:11,960 --> 00:37:14,000
But now it's time to leave Australia
449
00:37:14,000 --> 00:37:17,520
and move on for the second phase of my antipodean adventure.
450
00:37:17,520 --> 00:37:21,520
I travel 1,200 hundred miles south east of Australia to New Zealand,
451
00:37:21,520 --> 00:37:25,080
and land in its biggest city, Auckland.
452
00:37:31,040 --> 00:37:35,880
Well, I popped on a plane, and came over her to New Zealand
453
00:37:35,880 --> 00:37:38,720
and although it's just a three-hour journey,
454
00:37:38,720 --> 00:37:44,280
and I'm about as far away from home as it's possible to be, it's all instantly familiar.
455
00:37:44,280 --> 00:37:47,400
It even smells like England.
456
00:37:47,400 --> 00:37:53,320
But although much seems to be reassuringly similar, there is a spectacular plant growing nearby
457
00:37:53,320 --> 00:37:57,240
which reminds me that New Zealand is actually very, very different from home.
458
00:37:59,160 --> 00:38:05,240
For all its instant familiarity, New Zealand is full of very curious things indeed.
459
00:38:05,240 --> 00:38:09,000
This is the pohutukawa or the New Zealand Christmas tree,
460
00:38:09,000 --> 00:38:14,000
which is just coming into flower now as we approach Christmas.
461
00:38:14,000 --> 00:38:17,880
There is nothing that can prepare you for New Zealand
462
00:38:17,880 --> 00:38:21,000
because it is quite unlike anywhere else in the world.
463
00:38:21,000 --> 00:38:24,880
Before Westerners came, it was the nearest thing to an earthly paradise
464
00:38:24,880 --> 00:38:26,960
with a very distinctive flora and fauna.
465
00:38:26,960 --> 00:38:32,880
This means that gardens here with a little imagination and resources can also be unique.
466
00:38:32,880 --> 00:38:37,760
This is Ayrlies, and it's the first garden I'm visiting in New Zealand,
467
00:38:37,760 --> 00:38:43,400
simply because I have been told it's one of the very best Gardens in the whole of the Southern Hemisphere.
468
00:39:01,720 --> 00:39:05,960
Ayrlies is a garden with a dream-like intensity.
469
00:39:05,960 --> 00:39:12,800
It's very large, with 12 acres of dense planting and mature trees around the house surrounded by
470
00:39:12,800 --> 00:39:18,520
another 30 acres of planted woodland and fields that run down to the sea.
471
00:39:22,440 --> 00:39:26,800
But, magnificent as the setting is, it is the planting that overwhelms you.
472
00:39:26,800 --> 00:39:31,800
This is a garden that submerges the visitor in plants,
473
00:39:31,800 --> 00:39:37,440
so you wallow in their colour, texture, shape and scent.
474
00:39:37,440 --> 00:39:43,640
Yet incredibly, I know that only 40 years ago, this was all just a series of grass paddocks.
475
00:39:47,400 --> 00:39:54,040
The effect of the tree ferns and the sound and the general intensity of the planting,
476
00:39:54,040 --> 00:39:57,240
makes one think of a sort of lush,
477
00:39:57,240 --> 00:40:01,920
lush forest, but actually just a few yards from here, if you come back,
478
00:40:03,560 --> 00:40:06,400
you come through the planting...
479
00:40:08,200 --> 00:40:13,040
It just stops and you realise that we're back
480
00:40:13,040 --> 00:40:16,560
to the fields that were grazed by the dairy herd 40 years ago.
481
00:40:16,560 --> 00:40:20,440
Although all the trees you can see were planted,
482
00:40:20,440 --> 00:40:23,480
the garden is made out of a field,
483
00:40:23,480 --> 00:40:25,280
every little bit of it.
484
00:40:26,440 --> 00:40:30,040
I'm shown round the garden by its creator, Bev McConnell,
485
00:40:30,040 --> 00:40:33,720
the celebrated doyenne of New Zealand gardening.
486
00:40:33,720 --> 00:40:38,080
This is quite dramatic here, it is quite a wow, and I shouldn't be able
487
00:40:38,080 --> 00:40:42,640
to grow the Lewisia rose, but I do and I grow that for the hips.
488
00:40:42,640 --> 00:40:47,120
They are absolutely complimentary colours aren't they, the red and the green? Wonderful.
489
00:40:47,120 --> 00:40:52,040
And that one is very yellow, but it was born in the garden, so that will be Ayrlies Gold.
490
00:40:52,040 --> 00:40:54,720
How many plants do you have named after the garden?
491
00:40:54,720 --> 00:40:56,120
About five I think.
492
00:40:56,120 --> 00:40:58,600
That's still five more than most people.
493
00:40:58,600 --> 00:41:02,240
Have you not got any yet?
494
00:41:02,240 --> 00:41:04,520
- I think...
- Oh, look. You are very young!
495
00:41:04,520 --> 00:41:07,240
- You're very sweet to say it.
- It'll come, it'll come.
496
00:41:07,240 --> 00:41:11,000
You have to be really old to have plants named after you.
497
00:41:12,520 --> 00:41:17,640
- You don't mind me interviewing you do you?
- I'm enjoying it, and you're very good at it,
498
00:41:17,640 --> 00:41:20,520
but you can tell me about your pool, cos I can't answer that.
499
00:41:20,520 --> 00:41:24,520
- Isn't that interesting, yes.
- When did you plant the palms?
500
00:41:24,520 --> 00:41:26,280
Oh, 15 years ago.
501
00:41:26,280 --> 00:41:28,520
Really? As recently as that.
502
00:41:42,320 --> 00:41:47,160
I was just astonished at the planting at Ayrlies.
503
00:41:47,160 --> 00:41:52,520
It has the widest and most ecstatic range of plants in one garden I have ever seen.
504
00:41:52,520 --> 00:41:58,320
So how did one person create so much in such a short time?
505
00:41:58,320 --> 00:42:01,120
Did you come out knowing you wanted to make a garden?
506
00:42:01,120 --> 00:42:04,840
Yes, I did, I had it on paper, the first three acres.
507
00:42:04,840 --> 00:42:10,600
I married a man who thought big, probably it was a fault that both of us did,
508
00:42:10,600 --> 00:42:14,480
but it had its good points too, otherwise you'd end up with really nothing.
509
00:42:14,480 --> 00:42:19,440
Cos a lot of farmers in those days, farmers would say to their wives if
510
00:42:19,440 --> 00:42:23,240
they wanted to build a garden, "What do you want to do that for"
511
00:42:23,240 --> 00:42:28,320
just like that, but my husband would say, "Why not. Let's have a look at it."
512
00:42:28,320 --> 00:42:30,920
So you planted these trees?
513
00:42:30,920 --> 00:42:38,920
Every one, there was nothing here, it was a good dairy farmers paddock for his stock.
514
00:42:53,600 --> 00:42:56,640
Bev's greatest ally is the climate.
515
00:42:56,640 --> 00:43:00,680
There are 365 growing days a year here.
516
00:43:00,680 --> 00:43:04,440
The weather is never too cold, never too hot, there is nearly
517
00:43:04,440 --> 00:43:08,280
50 inches of rain a year, and there is much more light.
518
00:43:24,400 --> 00:43:26,440
I think that Ayrlies is a masterpiece.
519
00:43:26,440 --> 00:43:30,960
I have never seen such a wide range of plants together in one garden.
520
00:43:30,960 --> 00:43:36,440
But that mixture depends on a lot of exotic and introduced plants as well as natives,
521
00:43:36,440 --> 00:43:39,240
and in the light of my Australian experience,
522
00:43:39,240 --> 00:43:44,880
I wonder if this best represents the past or the future of New Zealand gardens?
523
00:43:44,880 --> 00:43:50,080
To try and answer that I need to go back in history and on with my journey.
524
00:43:50,080 --> 00:43:52,960
I'm going to drive from Ayrlies, just outside Auckland,
525
00:43:52,960 --> 00:43:56,200
south and west to New Plymouth, a journey which should take me
526
00:43:56,200 --> 00:44:03,960
into New Zealand's wild green heart and give me a taste of its original human culture too.
527
00:44:03,960 --> 00:44:08,600
But when I make my first stop out in the country to look at the landscape,
528
00:44:08,600 --> 00:44:10,800
there's no sign of New Zealand anywhere.
529
00:44:13,360 --> 00:44:19,760
This is a confusing country because the scenery is so like England,
530
00:44:19,760 --> 00:44:24,280
with its green grass and buttercups and daisies
531
00:44:24,280 --> 00:44:29,760
and trees and cows and all the flowers on the verges of the roads.
532
00:44:29,760 --> 00:44:34,640
But, look a bit closer and then there are these oddities.
533
00:44:34,640 --> 00:44:39,200
Like this marvellous super-charged hydrangeas that we found here,
534
00:44:39,200 --> 00:44:42,680
and then you have to realise that everything you are looking at is introduced.
535
00:44:42,680 --> 00:44:46,280
This is not the natural flora of the country.
536
00:44:46,280 --> 00:44:50,360
Every single element of it is artificial.
537
00:44:50,360 --> 00:44:54,840
That includes the grass, the trees, the flowers and the shrubs.
538
00:44:54,840 --> 00:44:56,400
Everything you can see.
539
00:44:58,480 --> 00:45:00,120
So back in to the van
540
00:45:00,120 --> 00:45:04,600
and on deeper into the hills, until finally I find something native,
541
00:45:04,600 --> 00:45:08,760
a Maori garden of phormiums, or New Zealand Flax.
542
00:45:08,760 --> 00:45:12,880
Whereas I am familiar with them as UK garden plants, for the Maori, the native people,
543
00:45:12,880 --> 00:45:16,960
these plants were a vital source of fibre for clothes and mats.
544
00:45:16,960 --> 00:45:21,200
87-year-old Digger Te Kanawa, a Maori weaver, shows me how they are used.
545
00:45:21,200 --> 00:45:26,760
- This is the stripping you have to go through.
- Right.
546
00:45:26,760 --> 00:45:32,600
You have to turn it over on the dull side, and about halfway.
547
00:45:33,880 --> 00:45:37,040
- Now...
- So you score it through but don't cut it through?
548
00:45:37,040 --> 00:45:42,360
- No. So, I've got to split it and this is the tool.
- A mussel shell?
549
00:45:42,360 --> 00:45:44,440
A mussel shell...
550
00:45:44,440 --> 00:45:49,680
and you get a little bit out, and make a loop like that, and then you pull. There you are...
551
00:45:51,400 --> 00:45:54,120
- There it is.
- And that's your muka.
552
00:45:57,080 --> 00:46:00,800
And you do what you call a miro, this is a twining.
553
00:46:00,800 --> 00:46:02,400
I see, yeah.
554
00:46:02,400 --> 00:46:04,080
Easy, eh?
555
00:46:04,080 --> 00:46:07,920
No, you make it look very easy, I can see it's hard.
556
00:46:07,920 --> 00:46:13,720
Her flax threads end up as beautiful ceremonial cloaks, decorated with feathers, part of Digger's heritage
557
00:46:13,720 --> 00:46:19,480
as a Maori, a Polynesian people who settled here more than 600 hundred years ago.
558
00:46:19,480 --> 00:46:23,200
Up there is a photo of the collection.
559
00:46:23,200 --> 00:46:25,720
- That's the whole family?
- That's the whole family.
560
00:46:25,720 --> 00:46:29,520
Mum's made a cloak for each of us.
561
00:46:29,520 --> 00:46:33,120
Can I touch this, can I just feel it?
562
00:46:33,120 --> 00:46:35,080
Because it is very soft, isn't it?
563
00:46:35,080 --> 00:46:39,520
It's not the sort of thing you can make in a month or so,
564
00:46:39,520 --> 00:46:45,320
because it's a mood thing, if you don't feel like it, leave it alone.
565
00:46:45,320 --> 00:46:48,920
And are these mats we're walking on, are these all flax too?
566
00:46:48,920 --> 00:46:53,880
Yes, now I think I'm too old to get down on the floor...
567
00:46:53,880 --> 00:46:55,760
But I want to teach others.
568
00:46:55,760 --> 00:47:02,320
And just on the other side of her land, we touch on Maori spiritual life,
569
00:47:02,320 --> 00:47:05,080
because there's a sacred tree at the end of her drive.
570
00:47:05,080 --> 00:47:11,080
When we were kids, they said it was very taboo, and you mustn't go near it and all that sort of thing.
571
00:47:11,080 --> 00:47:14,560
They were scared stiff of it.
572
00:47:14,560 --> 00:47:19,200
Having had a glimpse of some of the native culture, just beyond Digger's home
573
00:47:19,200 --> 00:47:22,560
I get my first sight of New Zealand's native beauty.
574
00:47:26,560 --> 00:47:29,680
Now things are getting stranger as we go farther away from Auckland
575
00:47:29,680 --> 00:47:33,160
cos in amongst the tractors, the long grass, and wonderful flowers,
576
00:47:33,160 --> 00:47:38,400
are tree ferns, this is distinctly exotic.
577
00:47:40,200 --> 00:47:45,840
It might look exotic to my English eye, but these plants are indigenous here.
578
00:47:45,840 --> 00:47:49,880
Yet I turn around and "Oh, there's an English meadow."
579
00:47:52,280 --> 00:47:56,920
It's just like Alice In Wonderland, that's what it's like. It's a dream world.
580
00:48:00,680 --> 00:48:04,760
Thanks to its mild climate and high rainfall, much of New Zealand
581
00:48:04,760 --> 00:48:08,560
was once covered in temperate rainforest, a cooler and much
582
00:48:08,560 --> 00:48:15,120
gentler sister of the more famous rainforests of the tropics like the Amazon, but every bit as beautiful.
583
00:48:22,480 --> 00:48:30,240
As I continue deeper into the mountains it really feels like I've finally found what I set out to see.
584
00:48:30,240 --> 00:48:33,880
This is primary forest and
585
00:48:33,880 --> 00:48:39,720
almost of New Zealand would have been covered in this with these giant podocarps,
586
00:48:39,720 --> 00:48:43,920
smothered with epiphytes and the tree ferns underneath.
587
00:48:43,920 --> 00:48:48,240
And it's very sobering when you drive through and see mile upon mile
588
00:48:48,240 --> 00:48:52,280
of landscape cleared and just with a monoculture of
589
00:48:52,280 --> 00:48:58,680
grass knowing that it was this that had to be removed in order to feed a few sheep and cattle.
590
00:49:16,240 --> 00:49:20,960
Just step a few yards into the forest and immediately you're surrounded
591
00:49:20,960 --> 00:49:27,800
and you could be anywhere, and unlike the tropical rain forests, this temperate rain forest
592
00:49:27,800 --> 00:49:30,200
is a cool unthreatening place
593
00:49:30,200 --> 00:49:35,920
with this magical green sort of stained glass light filtering through.
594
00:49:39,120 --> 00:49:41,480
It's a very benign place.
595
00:49:45,320 --> 00:49:47,720
This is New Zealand's heart.
596
00:49:47,720 --> 00:49:53,840
A green, cool, song-filled heaven, spilling over with beautiful plants.
597
00:49:53,840 --> 00:49:59,720
Thank goodness a little bit of it was spared and allowed to remain for people like us to treasure.
598
00:49:59,720 --> 00:50:07,320
But can this ancient botanical paradise be the inspiration for New Zealand's gardens of the future?
599
00:50:07,320 --> 00:50:12,720
I finally reach New Plymouth, ready to visit the last garden of this trip,
600
00:50:12,720 --> 00:50:15,920
and rather than turning its back on its natural heritage,
601
00:50:15,920 --> 00:50:20,880
this is a garden famous for taking it as its inspiration.
602
00:50:20,880 --> 00:50:27,880
This is, surprisingly, in a quiet suburb of New Plymouth, is my journey's end,
603
00:50:27,880 --> 00:50:31,920
and I've come here because it's a garden which seems
604
00:50:31,920 --> 00:50:34,120
pretty ordinary from the outside,
605
00:50:34,120 --> 00:50:39,040
but which I know is comprised entirely of native New Zealand plants.
606
00:50:42,800 --> 00:50:46,320
Te Kainga Marire, which is Maori for "peaceful encampment",
607
00:50:46,320 --> 00:50:49,240
is one of New Zealand's very first, and best native gardens.
608
00:50:49,240 --> 00:50:53,920
It was begun 35 ago by Valda Poletti and her husband Dave,
609
00:50:53,920 --> 00:50:58,960
and although relatively modest in scale, is crammed with plants and features.
610
00:50:58,960 --> 00:51:05,000
There's a tree fern alley, a distressed mountain shed, an alpine zone
611
00:51:05,000 --> 00:51:07,120
and even a glow worm cave,
612
00:51:07,120 --> 00:51:13,640
rather surprisingly all created by someone who's very proud of her colonial past.
613
00:51:13,640 --> 00:51:21,520
- Your great grandparents were settlers?
- Yes, they arrived here in 1842.
614
00:51:21,520 --> 00:51:24,680
And they sailed here from Plymouth harbour from Somerset.
615
00:51:24,680 --> 00:51:29,120
So they, Simon and Jane set up home, farm,
616
00:51:29,120 --> 00:51:32,840
and survived the land wars
617
00:51:32,840 --> 00:51:37,160
and great great grandmother had stood there with her children
618
00:51:37,160 --> 00:51:43,080
behind her to find the Maori that was threatening to burn her little house down.
619
00:51:43,080 --> 00:51:50,600
That story is a dramatic contrast to this garden which is clearly in such harmony with its native land.
620
00:51:50,600 --> 00:51:54,120
The Muehlenbeckia complexa, the wire-netting plant, you could
621
00:51:54,120 --> 00:51:57,520
actually jump up and down on sleep on that as a bed.
622
00:51:57,520 --> 00:51:58,760
It's tempting to try.
623
00:51:58,760 --> 00:52:00,480
Yeah, you can do that.
624
00:52:00,480 --> 00:52:02,200
I can do that, I will do that.
625
00:52:02,200 --> 00:52:04,120
Leap, lie down, have a rest.
626
00:52:04,120 --> 00:52:05,760
You see,
627
00:52:05,760 --> 00:52:10,120
- I'm quite squashy.
- Comfortable?
- I would sleep on this willingly.
628
00:52:10,120 --> 00:52:12,720
- You would?
- Yeah. one of the things I like about...
629
00:52:12,720 --> 00:52:19,680
if you're in Australia, you would know there would be some noxious spider or snake or something in
630
00:52:19,680 --> 00:52:23,280
here waiting to get you, whereas in New Zealand, you are pretty sure...
631
00:52:23,280 --> 00:52:27,560
- You're safe as...
- Yeah.
- You could sleep sweetly and soundly.
632
00:52:27,560 --> 00:52:31,240
This is the first garden where I've been invited to leap on the plants.
633
00:52:31,240 --> 00:52:35,480
Yeah, leap on the plants, it's Monty proof! SHE LAUGHS
634
00:52:35,480 --> 00:52:37,040
What's that?
635
00:52:37,040 --> 00:52:41,200
I need my glasses for this, which I haven't got on me they are in my bag.
636
00:52:41,200 --> 00:52:43,920
I'll go get a hand lens.
637
00:52:43,920 --> 00:52:45,720
Monty Don,
638
00:52:45,720 --> 00:52:49,840
I have for you the secret weapon, the hand lens.
639
00:52:49,840 --> 00:52:52,000
Because I can't see without my glasses.
640
00:52:52,000 --> 00:52:56,560
- You're nearly blind, now this is gardening beneath your knees.
- Can I hold the lens please?
641
00:52:56,560 --> 00:53:00,360
- You're being bossy.
- I'm being bossy, I'm a control freak, you know?
642
00:53:00,360 --> 00:53:04,560
All gardeners are control freaks, all good gardeners
643
00:53:04,560 --> 00:53:06,560
are completely control...
644
00:53:06,560 --> 00:53:08,800
- He said I'm a good gardener.
- Well, you are.
645
00:53:08,800 --> 00:53:10,720
Look at that.
646
00:53:11,720 --> 00:53:17,480
This little pansea grows up in the central plateau around the fumaroles, around the sulphur vents.
647
00:53:17,480 --> 00:53:22,280
I have never been shown around a garden via a hand lens before.
648
00:53:22,280 --> 00:53:28,160
- Really, truly?
- So within the space of a minute I have leapt on your plants and looked in minute detail.
649
00:53:28,160 --> 00:53:33,480
And over here, just by your knees, don't get up, is our lobelia.
650
00:53:33,480 --> 00:53:36,760
And again it is a little darling, it's got like half a flower.
651
00:53:36,760 --> 00:53:40,240
It is lovely, I could do the whole tour like this
652
00:53:40,240 --> 00:53:43,280
I could crawl the whole way on my hands and knees...
653
00:53:43,280 --> 00:53:44,520
Look at this!
654
00:53:44,520 --> 00:53:46,560
Look at this down here.
655
00:53:46,560 --> 00:53:48,560
Look at that.
656
00:53:48,560 --> 00:53:50,920
Look at that.
657
00:53:50,920 --> 00:53:54,600
Do you know I've never done this before, this is fantastic.
658
00:53:54,600 --> 00:53:57,760
- He's converted.
- I am, you know.
- Good, born again.
659
00:53:57,760 --> 00:54:00,640
- I don't normally deal with intense detail.
- Oh, don't you?
660
00:54:00,640 --> 00:54:03,240
You wait, there's better to come.
661
00:54:11,280 --> 00:54:12,760
So this is the fernery?
662
00:54:12,760 --> 00:54:15,440
- That's right.
- Some of these ferns are how old?
663
00:54:18,240 --> 00:54:20,560
That's 30 ft... So you planted these in 1972?
664
00:54:20,560 --> 00:54:24,680
- Some of them planted in '72.
- And that is a whopper!
665
00:54:27,880 --> 00:54:30,600
And this is the fern house here, you call it the Faanui.
666
00:54:39,760 --> 00:54:43,440
Here we go... and this Monty is a glow-worm tunnel.
667
00:54:43,440 --> 00:54:47,080
- Do you get glow-worms?
- We do, we've got about six.
668
00:54:47,080 --> 00:54:49,280
It's cool and cold and dark.
669
00:54:49,280 --> 00:54:53,840
It is sort of like dying and emerging and coming out again into the light.
670
00:54:53,840 --> 00:54:57,760
- It's a birthing ceremony.
- A birthing channel - didn't want you to clock onto that.
671
00:54:57,760 --> 00:54:59,440
You are born again...
672
00:54:59,440 --> 00:55:02,840
and oh, look, here's a sign of new life,
673
00:55:02,840 --> 00:55:06,200
the pattern of his unfurling crosier.
674
00:55:06,200 --> 00:55:10,880
- And now your vegetables. I'm keen on vegetables.
- So am I.
675
00:55:10,880 --> 00:55:13,320
So there we go - vegetables...
676
00:55:13,320 --> 00:55:17,120
- Pretty organic.
- This is a real culinary...
677
00:55:17,120 --> 00:55:22,720
This is a working vegetable garden, feeds the family, you know, it's really important.
678
00:55:22,720 --> 00:55:29,880
Now this to an extent is what your great grandparents would have done when they came here,
679
00:55:29,880 --> 00:55:34,000
they would've cleared some soil and planted the things they were used to growing at home.
680
00:55:34,000 --> 00:55:39,560
Yep, the first things they did was to get a garden established because without it, the only food they had
681
00:55:39,560 --> 00:55:43,040
were the rations off the other boats that came out like the flour.
682
00:55:43,040 --> 00:55:49,600
And they obviously got brought stock and did animal husbandry and raised stock to slaughter.
683
00:55:49,600 --> 00:55:56,080
But, if the crops failed then they had trouble surviving in the colonies in those early, early days.
684
00:55:56,960 --> 00:56:01,880
After the veg garden it was time to dive down into the alpines.
685
00:56:06,960 --> 00:56:08,560
Do you know what it's like?
686
00:56:08,560 --> 00:56:10,960
- It's like snorkelling over a coral reef.
- Mmm.
687
00:56:10,960 --> 00:56:13,440
- That's exactly what it's like.
- It is.
688
00:56:15,160 --> 00:56:19,800
A hidden reef of flower reached through a magnifying glass!
689
00:56:21,320 --> 00:56:23,360
Do you think that the next generation
690
00:56:23,360 --> 00:56:27,280
of gardeners will be moving in the direction you've created?
691
00:56:27,280 --> 00:56:31,480
I do, younger people are much, much more open to the flora.
692
00:56:31,480 --> 00:56:38,000
They've got over the fact that gardens are flower gardens, and I think
693
00:56:38,000 --> 00:56:42,400
there is a greater appreciation and awareness now of the flora
694
00:56:42,400 --> 00:56:45,000
of New Zealand and the beauty of the landscapes.
695
00:56:45,000 --> 00:56:49,480
I think it's a coming of age for New Zealand.
696
00:56:50,520 --> 00:56:53,960
What a good and hopeful thought that is!
697
00:56:53,960 --> 00:56:59,080
And Te Kainga Marire is a visual celebration of New Zealand's future.
698
00:57:06,120 --> 00:57:12,880
So I've reached the end of this particular journey, sitting on the lawn
699
00:57:12,880 --> 00:57:18,400
in a smallish garden, in a smallish suburb
700
00:57:18,400 --> 00:57:23,160
of a smallish town in New Zealand and it seems right and proper to me,
701
00:57:23,160 --> 00:57:29,120
having sampled the size and scale of Australia
702
00:57:29,120 --> 00:57:32,920
and come down through the North Island of New Zealand, that
703
00:57:32,920 --> 00:57:38,520
it should end up on this domestic level cos that's what gardens are, they're about people's back gardens.
704
00:57:40,040 --> 00:57:44,400
But what a journey I've had, from the very first Australian garden
705
00:57:44,400 --> 00:57:50,320
and its failing crops in Sydney, to homesick recreations and wonderful flights of fantasy.
706
00:57:50,320 --> 00:57:55,880
I've seen a series of amazing gardens in dynamic, young countries.
707
00:57:55,880 --> 00:57:59,880
But it's the final step that the gardens have made which I believe holds the key to the future.
708
00:57:59,880 --> 00:58:04,240
It's all about working with the land and not about fighting it.
709
00:58:04,240 --> 00:58:07,360
And that's a simple but powerful message that
710
00:58:07,360 --> 00:58:11,360
the indigenous people and plants could have told us all along.
711
00:58:21,680 --> 00:58:25,520
Join me next time as I make my first visit to India.
712
00:58:26,680 --> 00:58:29,000
As I set off to visit some of the most sensual
713
00:58:29,000 --> 00:58:31,480
and opulent gardens in the world.
714
00:58:46,640 --> 00:58:49,680
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd
715
00:58:49,680 --> 00:58:52,800
E-mail subtitling@bbc.co.uk
71341
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