- 26 minutes ago
At Cape Town's famous Kirstenbosch Botanic Gardens, Monty sees the king protea, South Africa's national plant, then in the Drakensberg Mountains he sees some native flora in its natural environment. His favourite garden is a school vegetable patch in Thembisa, one of Johannesburg's townships. Monty is intrigued by how gardening styles have changed here since the Dutch first settled in the 19th century.
开普敦的克斯滕博斯植物园。VOIC花园后来成为该市的中心公园。斯泰伦贝格是一座保存至今的荷兰殖民风格庄园和花园，讽刺的是，它是由一位英国人建造的。在大学城斯泰伦博斯，位于果园和葡萄园地带，建筑师亨克·舒尔茨设计的花园每月定期修剪两次。再往东，高耸的德拉肯斯山脉是欧洲引进物种的故乡, 像山梗菜和凤梨科植物一样，由于其高山冬季气候，它们也生长在那里。柯克林根花园是由另一位英国人在岩石中开凿而成，并配有精巧的灌溉系统。马加利斯堡是一个雕塑家打造的巨大岩石花园，虽然并不罕见，但却杂乱无章，种植着大量的多肉植物和仙人掌。在约翰内斯堡，富有的奥本海姆家族的布伦特赫斯特庄园，最初是爱德华时代的风格，现在除了日式花园外，其余部分都采用了有机种植方式。
开普敦的克斯滕博斯植物园。VOIC花园后来成为该市的中心公园。斯泰伦贝格是一座保存至今的荷兰殖民风格庄园和花园，讽刺的是，它是由一位英国人建造的。在大学城斯泰伦博斯，位于果园和葡萄园地带，建筑师亨克·舒尔茨设计的花园每月定期修剪两次。再往东，高耸的德拉肯斯山脉是欧洲引进物种的故乡, 像山梗菜和凤梨科植物一样，由于其高山冬季气候，它们也生长在那里。柯克林根花园是由另一位英国人在岩石中开凿而成，并配有精巧的灌溉系统。马加利斯堡是一个雕塑家打造的巨大岩石花园，虽然并不罕见，但却杂乱无章，种植着大量的多肉植物和仙人掌。在约翰内斯堡，富有的奥本海姆家族的布伦特赫斯特庄园，最初是爱德华时代的风格，现在除了日式花园外，其余部分都采用了有机种植方式。
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00:01I believe that a really good way to understand a culture is through its gardens.
00:05This is an extraordinary journey to visit 80 inspiring gardens from all over the world.
00:11Some are very well known, like the Taj Mahal or the Alhambra.
00:16And I'm also challenging my idea of what a garden actually is.
00:21So I'm visiting gardens that float on the Amazon, a strange fantasy in the jungle,
00:26as well as the private homes of great designers and the desert flowering in a garden.
00:32And wherever I go, I shall be meeting people that share my own passion for gardens
00:37and my epic quest to see the world through 80 of its most fascinating and beautiful gardens.
00:56This week, I have come to South Africa.
00:59It is the home of some of our best-loved garden plants,
01:02which grow in some of the most dramatic scenery in the world.
01:08Yet, I have avoided coming here until now.
01:11I grew up with a hatred of the racial segregation under the apartheid regime
01:15and felt that to be an impassable ideological barrier to the enjoyment of the beauties of South Africa.
01:21And that view, I confess, fossilised and blocked all floral temptations to visit.
01:27But that's history now.
01:29And although I would be dishonest if I said that I didn't bring a little bit of that baggage with
01:33me,
01:34I really want to see this extraordinary, beautiful country to meet the people
01:39and, of course, to see as many gardens as I can.
01:44I'm starting in Cape Town to see how gardens reflect the emergence of South Africa as a nation.
01:50I shall visit the famous Kirstenbosch Botanic Gardens amongst others.
01:54I'm then going on to the Drakensberg Mountains to see some of our familiar garden plants
02:00growing in their exhilarating natural environment.
02:04Finally, I go to Johannesburg to see how one of South Africa's grandest gardens is changing,
02:09as well as a township garden that has desperately limited resources
02:13but is rich in hope and inspiration.
02:35Cape Town sits beneath the famous silhouette of Table Mountain,
02:38and this provides the backdrop for my first garden.
02:50I've decided to start my journey here at Kirstenbosch Botanical Garden at the base of Table Mountain,
02:56because it's one of the very few botanic gardens that just has native plants.
03:01So if you want to see all the plants of South Africa in one place,
03:04well, this is where you have to come.
03:14The gardens themselves extend to almost 100 carefully tended acres,
03:19but this is only a small proportion of the 1300 acre estate
03:22that runs right to the very top of Table Mountain,
03:26with a mixture of woodland and the indigenous scrub known as Fembos.
03:34The land was bought by Cecil Rose in 1895 and bequeathed to the South African people at his death in
03:411902.
03:42In 1913, the National Botanic Garden of South Africa,
03:45devoted entirely to indigenous plants, was set up on the site.
03:49I met one of the senior horticulturists, Cherise Viljeune, who offered to show me round.
03:54How many South African plants are there here?
03:57In the garden.
03:57Yeah, in the garden.
03:58There are over 7,000 species.
04:007,000 species.
04:01That's unbelievable.
04:01And there's still more to go around.
04:03Right.
04:04We're still adding to the collections every day and to the garden.
04:09Amongst this huge diversity of plants, the garden specialises in local Cape Fraud,
04:15and the showest of these are the Pretias, of which there are over 350 different types.
04:27So these are the Pincushion forms now.
04:30What's interesting is to see a mass of them.
04:32They do make a fantastic display and really bring it home to you.
04:36And they've got quite a sweet common name.
04:38It's Firokis in Afrikaans, and it means matches or matchsticks.
04:44Can I pick it up?
04:45Yeah.
04:46It's perfect, isn't it?
04:48You just need a flint.
04:48See, that's charming.
04:50And the thing that you always find is the birds always on them,
04:53sipping nectar or digging for a seed.
04:59Then Cherise took me to see the King Pratia, the national flower,
05:04expecting, I'm sure, delight and rapture.
05:08But I fear my reaction proves something of a disappointment.
05:11I've got something really special to show you.
05:13OK.
05:13If you'd like to step in.
05:15But it says, don't step in the bed.
05:16Yes, but you're with me.
05:17You may step in.
05:18And here it is.
05:20What do you think of this?
05:23It's an ugly flower, isn't it?
05:26It's a...
05:27Now, you see, this...
05:29I've seen pictures of this sort of thing.
05:30It's not doing anything for me, I have to say.
05:33Well, it reminds you of an artichoke.
05:35Arty is right.
05:36It's artificial rather than an artichoke.
05:39But there we go.
05:40OK.
05:44Well, you can't like them all.
05:46But the wild pelargoniums, growing as sprawling shrubs that Cherise showed me, were a delight.
05:53These are the ancestors of our familiar cultivated regal pelargoniums.
05:57And it was strange to see something so powerfully connected to my childhood growing here.
06:08You just never see that, this great drift and a big plant.
06:12This is a very natural planting as well.
06:14This is how you would come across it growing wild on the mountainside.
06:24Something is smelling wonderful.
06:26It'll be the salvia.
06:28Is this a salvia?
06:29It's a salvia.
06:30It doesn't look like a salvia.
06:31It's our wild African salvia.
06:34Oh, it's lovely.
06:35It does look wonderful.
06:36Sort of lemony and musky and warm.
06:39It definitely contributes to that fendous scent that you get off the felt when you're
06:43going through it.
06:44You see, if I'm honest, I think of words like the felt is a very butch sort of word.
06:50It doesn't say musky, lemony fragrance.
06:53No, it doesn't.
06:54Wild fields don't work for us.
06:57Yeah.
06:58Felt is just felt.
06:59It's an Afrikaans word, but it's traditionally used to describe the wild areas in the Cape.
07:07South Africa is home to 24,000 different species of flowering plants.
07:13That's one tenth of all those that grow on earth.
07:15There is also a small group of plants that were here long before flowers even evolved.
07:22The cycads.
07:25Cycads look like palm trees, but they date back 200 million years and haven't changed at all since they finished
07:32evolving 50 million years ago.
07:39If you had to go back 150 million years, it would pretty much look exactly like that, except there would
07:44be a great big dinosaur behind it.
07:46So they were...
07:47So they hadn't evolved at all?
07:48Very, very little.
07:51And then, amongst this Jurassic foliage, I spotted something that I found as thrilling to me as any dinosaur.
07:57Well, here we are with cycads and also an owl bit.
08:02A spotted eagle owl.
08:03A spotted eagle.
08:04It's beautiful.
08:05Monty, have you spotted her?
08:07Oh, I didn't see it.
08:08The mother owl.
08:09How amazing.
08:13You're a very beautiful girl.
08:15Isn't that amazing?
08:16I mean, isn't that just an extraordinary experience?
08:19Nice to see what the chick is going to look like when he loses all these fluff as well.
08:23We're blessed.
08:27Monty, if we go down here, I can show you a really horrid cycad.
08:32It's kind of like an organic barbed wire.
08:36Aren't they truly, truly horrid?
08:38Encephalatus horridus.
08:40They're a spiky thing.
08:41They really are.
08:43And I guess that when you get spiked by that, you know you've been spiked.
08:45You know it.
08:46And that is entirely designed to stop dinosaur jaws.
08:48Yes.
08:49See, I think they're more beautiful than the king put in.
08:52I knew you were going to build up to that one.
08:54It's true.
09:01I was a bit daunted when I came here.
09:05And I think that was as much as anything through my sense of not knowing enough about South African plants.
09:11One of the good things about today, for me, is that I realise I know more than I thought I
09:15did.
09:20However, the majority here is new and unusual.
09:24And it's really good to see them all in setting and in context.
09:27And that's what a botanical garden is like, like a reference library, really.
09:30And put that against this extraordinary backdrop.
09:33I mean, it really is so beautiful.
09:35And that makes for a fascinating and beautiful way to begin this journey.
09:41But I think, with this experience and feeling a bit more confident, I think the next step is to go
09:46and see these same plants in a much more human context.
09:50Somewhere modern, somewhere quirky and utterly different to this.
09:59So, I'm going a couple of hours east of the city to Franchot, which is a small town near to
10:05Stellenbosch, the intellectual centre for Afrikaners.
10:08As we travel, I get a glimpse of a different facet of life in South Africa.
10:12Just on the left is a township, which is just a series of shacks, tiny shacks, looking more like a
10:20lot with shards than houses.
10:28We leave Cape Town and come into a countryside of orchards and vineyards at the foot of the high mountains
10:34that define the limits of the Cape colonisation for centuries.
10:38The Huguenots, arriving in 1688, based their vineyards there.
10:42And Franchot means French corner.
10:45I'm here to see the garden of Henk Scholtz, a garden designer and artist.
10:58This is a small garden that circles around the house.
11:02The front path runs between beds containing native Strelitzias, framed and contained by tightly clipped privet hedges.
11:11At the back, Henk has a semicircular lawn and a veranda that runs the length of the house with stupendous
11:17views out to the mountains.
11:19You do have this amazing borrowed landscape. I mean, it is about as dramatic as it could be, isn't it?
11:27No, I mean, it's spectacular.
11:29What do you think is the secret of a small garden? Because there is a great failing, it seems to
11:33be, a lot of people thought, if only I had a bigger garden, everything would be okay.
11:37No, no, no, no, I don't agree with that at all. For me, for me, it's what you do with
11:41that space.
11:42Yeah. Number one. First of all, is to divide it up in as many spaces as possible.
11:47It doesn't have to be a solid wall or a solid hedge. If you step down the steps, down to
11:53this lawn space, you're in a total different room.
11:58I love this space. I enjoy this space. For me, this is my palette, where I play.
12:05I don't think I've ever seen a garden so intensely detailed. Some of this is playful and some very practical,
12:11like the steep angle or batter on the hedges.
12:13Now, in the UK, you really don't see that. Really? No, they tend to be cut straight.
12:18Yeah. No, for us, with the maximum sun on both sides, you get a better growth. And it avoids all
12:22the dead ends.
12:23And what is this? This is a ligustrum. It is a privet. Yeah.
12:26You see, you very rarely see a privet in the UK used for a low hedge. Yeah.
12:33Between the privet hedges and the boundary fence were clip balls of plumbaga, which I'd always thought of as a
12:40sprawly houseplant.
12:43Henk doesn't only shape his plants, but his sculptures, made from recycled materials, are also an important part of the
12:49garden.
12:51Floating influence. Just blowing the wind. Lovely. Really beautiful. And I like your water feature, I suppose.
12:58Well, that's basically our South African version of Fung Sui. Right, OK.
13:02If you want to see that. That's my security guard. Yeah. I can see she's... With the Medusa outrest.
13:10She's a beauty. Yeah. A great beauty.
13:15Everything in the garden is tweaked, trimmed or adorned.
13:19I love, as obviously one would, all the little touches in this garden. Yeah, thank you.
13:24And there are a lot. That's found objects.
13:29Although small, every turn there's a new composed view.
13:34The lawn is describing the circle. Absolutely. And I really like that.
13:44And this is lovely. I really like this. The way that it's enclosed in. And this, the curves of the
13:53hedge.
13:53I mean, it's basically... It grows on you. It's like an organic thing that's alive.
13:57I mean, you can basically shake this thing. I mean, it's like...
14:01But that's what we call ragoda. Ragoda hastata. Like saltbush.
14:05Smell your hands, and then you'll stop doing that.
14:09It smells, dear viewer, of slightly off fish.
14:15But now he tells me. But it clips beautifully.
14:17Yeah, I'm sure he did.
14:22Hank told me that he trims the entire garden every 12 days throughout the year.
14:27And the combination of his tight-clipping and idiosyncratic playfulness is evident everywhere.
14:33And the flowering plants seem to thrive spectacularly on his regime.
14:40It's the most floriferous traculospernal I have ever seen.
14:45Yeah, I must say, it's extremely happy.
14:47Yeah.
14:49And that's just one plant. That's one plant.
14:52That's amazing.
14:53Yeah.
15:00And suddenly, this muted palette becomes shocking pink in the Bougamilium.
15:06Absolutely.
15:06And I love that where I'm standing now, that curve is perfect.
15:10Yeah.
15:13Very beautiful indeed.
15:17This is probably the most photogenic garden I've ever been to.
15:22Everywhere you look, you turn your head, and there's the picture.
15:32I love the way that it's the expression of one man's work, that it's personal, it's quirky.
15:38The relationship between the sculpture and the plants and the design, the whole thing has been fabulous.
15:46And I particularly like the way that it's used indigenous plants, that it's an expression of South African gardening and
15:54art.
15:54And, after all, that's what I came here to see, so that's been very inspirational.
16:01But the next stop is a complete contrast.
16:04I want to go back to the middle of Cape Town and really see where all this began.
16:08See where and how the first South African gardens started.
16:22The first South African garden is bound up with the story of the Dutch East India Company.
16:31By the time that their ships would round the Cape of Good Hope on their way to the Far East,
16:36the crews would be exhausted and often suffering terribly from scurvy after anything up to six months at sea after
16:43leaving Holland.
16:45Table Mountain stood out on an otherwise very level and bland coastline.
16:49This meant that sailors used it to navigate and it became a major landmark on the long, long journey.
16:55So, in 1652, a small group of men and women colonisers set ashore at its base, specifically to cultivate ground
17:04that could supply the ships with fresh fruit and vegetables.
17:14This was immediately a success, and that initial garden expanded to become the Company Garden.
17:20Most of it still survives as a public park in the middle of the city.
17:26And this tree is a remnant from that first garden.
17:30This is Pyrus communis.
17:32It's a pear.
17:32It's got these evergreen, rather leathery leaves that are not typical of a pear, but I've got one in my
17:40own garden.
17:40It's indigenous to Northern Europe, and this is a survivor from those days.
17:48People didn't found the initial colony of Cape Town on this site because of the harbour.
17:52The natural harbour here, actually, was rather poor.
17:55The reason why people settled here was because of the clouds on the mountain.
18:00The clouds condense, water falls, it percolates down through the mountain, and then reappears here, on the flat ground,
18:08at springs, which meant that they had a constant source of irrigation.
18:11And that's why they settled here.
18:20The Cape has a Mediterranean climate, which is wet in winter, but bone dry and hot in summer.
18:26So having a constant water supply was vital to the garden's success.
18:36This is one of the original springs that was used for the garden.
18:42And, of course, the water which has come down from the top of Table Mountain filtered down and is still
18:47running.
18:55Although in its heyday this was five and a half hectares of very organised, rectilinear Dutch vegetable growing,
19:04it soon proved to be not adequate for the needs of both the colony and also the ships that kept
19:09coming in.
19:10So company employees were given permission to set up farms which could supplement the original company garden produce.
19:17And in the garden, the fruit and vegetables were gradually replaced by ornamental plants.
19:22By 1840, it was a full-blown pleasure garden.
19:25But the garden remains the heart of Cape Town and the birth of modern, colonised South Africa.
19:45Whereas the company garden was very much a corporate place with practical beginnings that became a pleasure garden.
19:53I've come here to Stellenberg, which is a private house.
19:55In fact, it's the oldest privately owned house in the whole of South Africa.
19:59Which I've heard is a very beautiful garden, but perhaps more interestingly,
20:04also should tell me something of South Africa's colonial history.
20:18Stellenberg was part of the cultural mix that colonised the Cape from the outset.
20:23It was built in 1742 by an Englishman called John White, who then changed his name to Jan de Wit,
20:29and built it in a Dutch colonial style.
20:33The five-acre garden is set around the house and has a distinctly European feel.
20:40It's grand, elegant and charming.
20:46Unfortunately, the weather turned only too European as well.
20:51That's typical. I've come to South Africa in its summer.
20:55And it's pelting with rain. Really, really wet.
21:00But I'm English, and I won't let a little rain come between me and a beautiful garden.
21:05Which, even in the wet, it clearly is.
21:12What's interesting about this is that it's a white garden,
21:17with this white parterre and a white house.
21:20A house which is very Dutch, not at all English.
21:24Now, they call this a white garden, and all the plants are shades of white.
21:28But, in fact, it's a green garden, and I think that's true of all so-called white gardens,
21:32because the white makes the green seem greener.
21:35And the fact that it's so wet today makes the whole thing shine with that extraordinary green intensity.
21:52Well, it's always nice to see a vegetable garden.
21:55And this is a very carefully mannered, tasteful affair.
22:03You feel that they're not having to survive off these veg.
22:07They're growing for as much the way they look as they are, but it's lovely.
22:20I'm not letting the rain dampen my spirits.
22:23And, in fact, there are very nice touches.
22:25For instance, these steps, very, very shallow steps, almost a slope.
22:31Looks wonderful.
22:32It's got real style.
22:35And, as I go around the world, I always see little bits and pieces, and I think, I'll nick that.
22:39I'll use that in my own garden at some point.
22:41And that's one of those things.
23:00See, that's interesting.
23:01You've got the Melianthus, which to me is exotic and beautiful, and a very South African plant.
23:06And then the canner behind it.
23:08And a fantastic Bugmangia.
23:10I mean, look at the size of the fantastic, huge flowering trumpets.
23:30Here I am, in the end of November, with delphiniums and roses and verbena benariensis and mulleins and foxgloves.
23:42All the elements of a lovely English mixed border.
23:53All the tricks of the horticultural design trade are being wheeled out.
23:58Parterres with santolina and lavender.
24:00The lutching seat painted a tasteful colour.
24:04You've seen it all before, but the truth is, the reason why you've seen it before is because it is
24:09lovely.
24:13Stellenberg is a garden made with great care and love, and the Dutch house and English garden measure out a
24:20colonial past with great elegance and style.
24:23Its heritage is colonial, but deeply rooted in the culture of Northern Europe.
24:28However, having seen this, I now think I need to sort of escape all those English influences and just find
24:38something that is neat South African, undiluted.
24:47So, I'm heading off down the Cape Peninsula, just south of the city.
24:57I've come on down the Cape, and the rain has cleared, thank goodness.
25:02I've stopped just to take an overview, because from here I can look back and see Table Mountain with its
25:07tablecloth of clouds still on it,
25:10Kirstenbosch on the slopes, and Stellenberg, where I've just come from, tucked in down below that with clouds still round
25:17it, probably still raining there.
25:18But up here, it's windy, but for the moment, it's dry.
25:24Table Mountain is at the head of a range of mountains which run down the Cape Peninsula to the Cape
25:30of Good Hope,
25:31which is the symbolic southern tip of Africa.
25:34It was originally known as the Cape of Storms, and is still a tricky piece of water, whose rocky coast
25:40is littered with shipwrecks.
25:45This is the setting for my last Cape garden, created by Donovan van der Hayden and called Lillien.
25:59Donovan's house and garden is part of an unofficial shantytown of wooden and tin huts,
26:06thrown up cheap by jowl above the fishing port of Hauk Bay.
26:15His garden is a series of terraces on the hillside, looking out over the blue waters of the bay.
26:24What was your own inspiration to get it going?
26:28From the mountains. I spent a lot of time roaming the mountains, going to the water streams,
26:34you know, studying the textures and, you know, the forms of the plants and how they complement each other,
26:41that relationship.
26:42What you're describing is a very sophisticated understanding of nature and how it works.
26:48I take it from the people that we as a local people here descend from.
26:53They lived close to nature, you know. They had that harmony with nature.
26:57And to me, it's really, that is my inspiration and maintaining that.
27:02In terms of this garden here, is it constantly evolving or has it reached a point at which you're happy
27:11with it and it's staying?
27:13No, I don't think I'll ever be satisfied. In terms of my garden, I see myself as an artist.
27:21With an artist, there's always new scenery, something new that inspires him that he wants to capture on canvas.
27:27And similarly with me, when I walk around in nature, there's always something captivating there that I see.
27:33And it's like, wow, you know, I must... And then I come to my garden and I experiment and I
27:37play around with the rocks.
27:39You know, and similarly as an artist, with textures, colours, you know.
27:43So, yeah, it's always changing.
27:47What do your neighbours think? I mean, everyone around here, they haven't all got gardens.
27:50What do they think about what you're doing?
27:52It's an informal settlement or squatter camp and any available open space is utilised to put up another bungalow for
28:00someone to live in, you know.
28:02So, when you take space and make a garden, you know, you get challenged and this was met in the
28:08same way.
28:11But the community does benefit directly from Donovan's garden.
28:15He's running a project to introduce local children to the value and pleasures of gardening and growing plants.
28:22The parable, basically, that if you plant the seed and you water it and you nurture it and you see
28:28it growing and maturing into a well-establish tree,
28:31you pick the fruits of it in the end of the day, you can enjoy the fruits.
28:33The same way the elders knew that if they planted the seeds in us as young people back then, the
28:41fruits would ultimately be reaped when we are grown.
28:43You know, we would be taking on that kind of work.
28:45We've got an interest as humans to protect what we have.
28:51Donovan and his vision of a society literally growing out of the soil and the plants of the Cape seem
28:57to me to make his tiny garden on the shanty hillside truly beautiful.
29:03But now it's time to leave the Cape.
29:06And before I visit my next garden, I want to see some more of that spectacular South African landscape.
29:12So I'm going to take myself off inland to the Drakensberg Mountains.
29:17If for no other reason than that's the place where most of the plants that I recognise as being South
29:23African in my own garden come from.
29:28This means that I'm now travelling east to the Drakensberg, or Dragons Mountains.
29:38It's a curious thing that so many of the plants of this region, which is so different and so far
29:43from home, have adapted so well to our own gardens.
29:47And you also have the truly exotic growing here almost carelessly.
29:54Will you stop here, sir?
29:57Look at that.
30:01Here, just by the side of the road, you've got arum lilies growing like a weed.
30:10This is a wet bit on the margins.
30:13And here it is. Look at that.
30:16You know, people in London will go and pay a fortune for a bunch of those.
30:22That is, I think, Xantedicia alba maculata.
30:29And it is just beautiful.
30:32Just growing by the side of the road.
30:43These mountains rise up to about 3,000 metres, which is about twice as high as Ben Nevis.
30:57I absolutely hadn't expected this, a sort of alpine meadow, filled with flowers.
31:06This is a candelabra lily.
31:09And this whopping great flower head.
31:13And then next to it, there's a little aster there, and a white scylla there.
31:24The Drakensberg range is on the east side of South Africa, and has the opposite climate to that of the
31:30Cape.
31:30So here, the rains fall during the warm, wet summers, which gives the plants a growing season similar to that
31:36of Northern Europe.
31:41This purple flower here is, I'm sure, Benonia.
31:46Now, I planted this at Berryfields just a few months ago, and here it is, growing in its true home
31:53in the Drakensberg Mountains.
31:57This is a funny one. This is Phygelius Equalis, which is becoming increasingly common at home.
32:03See, lots of gardens, lots of garden centres.
32:05And here is where it really wants to be.
32:15I'm heading back because it's gone from being beautifully clear and hot to really wet, and there's rumbles of thunder.
32:22And apparently the last thing you should do is, oh, there we are, hang about, there's any lightning in the
32:27mountains, because it gets you.
32:29Oh, look. Look at that. Come in here and have a look. That little white flower is a Streptocarpus in
32:37flower. It's growing on almost vertical, damp bank.
32:46The storms tend to be limited to the afternoons, and the next morning I get up early to go further
32:52up in the mountains.
32:56Once you get higher up, and I'm now at about 2,500 metres, the landscape forms itself into the kind
33:05of thing that people very carefully construct in rock gardens.
33:11And here you can see these little helichrysons just in little niches and perches in the rocks, which are formed
33:17beautifully.
33:19You couldn't do this better with all the money and skill that British horticulture could give you.
33:32The ground here is dappled with these lovely little pink and white flowers.
33:41It's rhoda hypoxis, and it's a tiny little thing, though I've never grown it.
33:46But you can grow it in the UK, but normally as a pan, in a container.
33:50And here there are tens of thousands of them, sprinkled over the ground.
33:59I'm walking through what really amounts to a field of eucomis.
34:05You can see them here, with the flowers beginning to form in the little pineapple topknot.
34:11Now these cost a fortune in the UK, whereas here they are, nearly 8,000 feet up, on the side
34:17of a freezing cold mountain.
34:28Now look at this little clump of lobelia, here 8,000 feet up, growing cheek by jowl with a eucomis.
34:46At Drakensberg, really, it's the most extraordinary, vast, beautiful sight.
34:56But on a day like today, it's hard to imagine that in winter, it quite regularly gets down to about
35:03minus 2 or 3 here.
35:05And on the colder parts, higher up, down to minus 20 or even colder.
35:09And snow is really common, which means that essentially it's alpine.
35:14And this, of course, is the reason why the plants from this area adapt so well to our gardens in
35:21northern Europe.
35:21And that's the connection.
35:27Seeing plants in their natural environment is the best way to learn about them.
35:32And I'll never look again on a hanging basket filled with lobelia without thinking of the Drakensberg.
35:42The Drakensberg is a giant escarpment.
35:45At its back is an arid platter, the high veldt, which has yet another distinct zone of life.
35:53This is the setting for an unlikely garden, built here nearly 80 years ago by the magnificently named Tudor Bodden
36:00Wettel and his wife Ruby.
36:03Named Kirklington after the Nottingham village where Tudor was born, the remote house looks over the distant savannah and is
36:10more commonly known as the garden in the veldt.
36:18The garden is cut into the hillside in a series of terraces, although only the area around the house remains
36:24tended today.
36:26But there still remain hints and signs of something much grander.
36:30Thick stone paths and walls are still there amongst the rough growth.
36:34Beneath the overgrown grass of the orchard lies a sleeping giant of a garden.
36:45These steps lead down way out of the garden.
36:51And these are really solid paving stones and steps.
36:58You see, they go on and on right down.
37:03And these steps come down to this grand sweeping staircase.
37:12This was clearly a deliberate attempt to make a grandiose English country house garden carved out of the high veldt
37:20stone.
37:20This is garden making on the most ambitious of scales in the most improbable of circumstances.
37:26Tudor's descendants, the Moffat family, still live on the farm and told me about its creation.
37:34They had to dress all the stone, cut it on the farm, haul it in and then start laying out
37:41the paths and the terraces and building the walls.
37:46This is really ambitious stuff you're describing.
37:50Very, very ambitious, yes.
37:54Climate wise, it was a battle.
37:57We are pretty extreme here, being so high.
38:00January, February when there's a shortage of rain, the garden really suffers.
38:05And at times we bring in tankers, you know, carto bought on an ongoing basis to keep it, you know,
38:10those few things going which are more important.
38:12The crops get it first, the farm crops and then...
38:15Or the cattle.
38:16And the rain comes and then you won't have rain for a long time again.
38:19And it streams off the mountain.
38:24Gathering and storing water is the key to the garden's existence.
38:28Even before he began the garden, Tudor made extraordinary and extreme measures to trap the stormwater as it tumbled down
38:36the cliffs.
38:37This path behind the house is essentially a drain, a stone drain that comes down, goes underneath this building, out
38:44this pipe and then along this path which meets in the middle, the water which pours off the hillside comes
38:53down here and comes to this point.
38:56Water pouring in down there, through a drain there, through this system, into this enormous tank which was designed specifically
39:06to water the garden.
39:09So Tudor's plans were from the outset wildly, crazily grand.
39:14And without this kind of ingenious hydro-engineering, a garden like this would never have been possible here.
39:21I came up here to see the water culverts cut into the rock and get an idea of this great
39:28cliff face with the water pouring down to the garden.
39:32But now I'm up here, it's the view that is fantastic, it's awesome.
39:38And it's all, or a great chunk of it, connected to the house and garden.
39:42So you have the house and the garden below, and then the field stretching right out for a great chunk
39:47of what you can see.
39:49And for most of us, to live in scenery of this scale is unimaginable.
40:02So now I enter into the final leg of my journey, heading across the high plains to Johannesburg.
40:08But I'm going to make a little detour first, to visit another garden.
40:14This is one that I know very little about, but what I've heard whets my appetite.
40:20It's grown organically in so much that it wasn't really planned.
40:23I know that it's just sort of a crude. It mainly uses succulents from the region, and also a lot
40:29of rocks and stones.
40:33Unlike my last visit, this is not a garden that tries to fight the natural environment, but instead embraces it.
40:39And in that, it is truly of the place, a holy South African garden.
40:44And everything here, including the house and its furniture, has been designed and made by the owners.
40:48I asked them what it was called. It didn't really have a name, they said.
40:51So, let's call it the Mahalersberg Rock Garden.
41:01What I'm absolutely loving is the way that stone, wood and plant material are merging and becoming completely fused as
41:19an expression.
41:21And this is deliberate. The garden, made by a painter and a sculptor, is being created as a work of
41:27land art.
41:35See, look up there. Look at that.
41:40That is just beautiful.
41:44I have to say that when we first came here, I knew it was going to be quite interesting.
41:49And I'd seen an odd picture or two, but I had no idea that it was all done on this
41:55scale.
41:58The natural slope of the hillside has been gouged and hollowed into one vast sculpture.
42:04So ravines, hillocks and rocky passes leading nowhere map out this new made-up land.
42:09And bowls, ponds and wooden, bony carcasses jostle the stone until they marry into a kind of composite, organic material.
42:19It's breathtaking.
42:31Fantastic. The health and safety people will be having a fit.
42:35And if I fall off, well, at least I've had fun.
42:42I've often thought, and I suspect often said, that half of gardening is just grown-ups going outside to play.
42:49And what I feel here is that this is just untrammeled play.
42:54Someone who's raised playing outside in the garden to an art form.
43:19Even though the stonework and the sculpture seems to dominate, I think if it were just stonework and wood,
43:27it would be beautiful and interesting, but it wouldn't quite be enough.
43:31What really makes it come alive and what peoples it are the plants.
43:45There are a wide range of drought-tolerant plants.
43:49Grasses, agaves and many other indigenous South African succulents,
43:54many of which have been rescued from development and bought here to be nurtured.
44:01But it is the giant aloes that dominate.
44:04Some of the bigger ones are just bursting with personality.
44:08You feel like you ought to go up and shake hands and introduce yourself to them.
44:13All of these plants are perfectly adapted to the arid conditions here.
44:17As is the inevitable wildlife that they attract, there's even a weaver bird colony just outside the front door.
44:29The garden, down to the last stone, is the creation of the sculptor Jeffrey Armstrong and painter Wendy Vincent.
44:37It's a happy hour garden, that's how it started.
44:40After you'd spent the day painting or carving, you then come and sit and all of a sudden say,
44:47right, let's have a stream, let's have a pond.
44:51We all do it. You sit, you have a cup of tea in the morning and you say, let's have
44:55a stream.
44:55Yes.
44:56And we're already planning another pond even though the water is drying up.
45:01I like your style.
45:04And that became obsessive.
45:07Yes, the data about that.
45:09About six years ago, one started to think of it as a work of art.
45:15It's quite common to see works of art in a garden.
45:19It's quite common for artists to have a keen interest in gardens as an expression of their art.
45:24It's not very common to see gardens as they work of art.
45:29Was it intended as that?
45:30It changed. We were just enthusiasts, you know, bringing plants and rocks in.
45:36And then we started looking at the whole.
45:38And that was then when we saw that it was getting more important than just that.
45:43It was actually important to bring in the environment and to see through
45:48and to look at different aspects from different angles
45:51and to see that you needed to repeat something somewhere else
45:54and where you would cluster things.
45:56Just like painting a canvas, actually.
46:03Now, British horticulture can be occasionally a bit pompous and self-referential.
46:08But a garden like this, entirely in tune with its setting,
46:12that celebrates the relationship between plants and art
46:15and yet maybe the sort of earth mania that every gardener recognises
46:19rekindles every kind of enthusiasm.
46:22So, I continue on to Johannesburg, buoyed up with inspiration.
46:25I'm on my way to a garden now called Brenthurst,
46:29which is reckoned to be the biggest and the grandest
46:32and the best-known garden in the whole of South Africa.
46:35It's run by a woman called Strilli Oppenheimer,
46:39who, since she took it over about seven years ago,
46:41has turned it completely organic.
46:43So, on two counts, this is likely to be a really interesting garden for me.
46:50Brenthurst is certainly grand.
46:52For a start, it's huge, 45 acres of intensive gardens
46:56right in the middle of Johannesburg.
47:05It has belonged to the Oppenheimer family since the early 1920s,
47:09whose fortune was derived from the local diamond and gold mining industries.
47:13The garden has many different sections, including sweeping lawns,
47:16statuary, a large Japanese garden, mature woodlands,
47:21a biodynamic vegetable garden and areas that seem to be left to grow wild.
47:30Over the past seven years, the garden has been going through a kind of horticultural revolution,
47:35which has shocked some, but thrilled as many others.
47:38And this is entirely due to the naturalistic principles of its current mistress,
47:43Strilli Oppenheimer.
47:44I could quite easily and find it exciting to do nothing at all with the garden and just watch it
47:52become totally wild again and meet its climax and create another rhythm.
48:02The garden was originally laid out in 1904, but much of the existing structure was added in 1959 by the
48:09garden designer Joan Pym.
48:10However, it remained as a conventional, highly controlled, Edwardian garden until Strilli took over in 2001.
48:17Now the lawns consist of local species of grass, whole swathes of which are encouraged to run to seed and
48:24borders are encouraged to grow naturally without obvious attempts to tidy or control.
48:30However, the vistas and views are carefully maintained.
48:37I think that the scale is superb.
48:42On the hillside above the statues is a huge Japanese garden commissioned by Strilli and her husband, Nikki.
48:58This was done by one of the gardeners of the emperor.
49:03And so for me, I know something about Japanese gardens, but not a lot.
49:09And what I needed was that if we had something which was called a Japanese garden, that it was truly
49:15authentic to the Japanese.
49:17And for me, what it does is create a tension between the sort of gardening where I am comfortable, which
49:24is very natural and don't prune anything, and this totally clipped garden.
49:34Certainly, the obsessive control of Japanese horticulture in this garden creates a dynamic of balancing tensions and ideologies.
49:42It gives the place energy.
49:44Round the corner, we go up to the copy garden.
49:46Now copy is an African rocky outcrop, and here the plants are again given a free rein.
49:52For a lot of people who want to garden naturally, are becoming environmentally much more aware, who want to be
49:58in tune with what they conceive as a correct way to behave towards the natural world, have only their garden
50:05in which to operate.
50:06Yes, but I think they must be conscious about what they want and what they're trying to do, and have
50:12that relationship.
50:13And when they have a real relationship with the plants, then they're, I mean, it's like with their children, they
50:20let their children grow.
50:21They don't totally prune and, well, maybe some people do, you know, control their children, and then they're a disaster.
50:31Brenthurst is a carefully managed balance between natural freedom and human control.
50:36Clipped hedges contain untrammelled growth, and everything is connected and interwoven by paths,
50:41many of which are decorated with assay cores from the mines.
50:53Strilly takes me to the terrace just below the house to show me the broad view, but in particular, the
50:58large borders on the lawn below.
51:02These were planned and planted, and then left to grow pretty much as they pleased, creating a constantly evolving display.
51:16This is typical of allowing really nature to do what it wants to do, and not imposing one's own view
51:26on it.
51:27And it's just as beautiful, if not more beautiful than it was as a mixed border.
51:37We in the UK make these borders, we plant them carefully, we plan and design them, we tweak and prune
51:45and preem them, and try and establish a picture like a work of art, and somehow take the applause for
51:54it ourselves.
51:55Whereas what Strilly said about these mixed borders made a huge impression on me.
52:01Let the plants do their own thing. Let them free. They'll do it fine without you.
52:07Now that's so inspirational.
52:10And immediately I thought, yeah, I like that a lot, and I want to do it.
52:14I want to get out of my own garden and do precisely that.
52:22The effect of Brenthurst, just like the rock garden at Mahalysburg, is to shake up my idea of how to
52:28garden, redefine my image of what a garden can be, not be overawed by that, but empowered.
52:38Before I leave South Africa, I have one last garden to visit, that takes me from one of the wealthiest
52:44white households to a school in the township of Tembisa, on the outskirts of Johannesburg.
52:54Under apartheid, millions of black Africans were removed from their homes, rehoused in what were often makeshift settlements, called townships,
53:02which were often the focus of violent civil unrest.
53:07Today, a million people live here in pretty harsh conditions, and life is still tough.
53:12But when I arrive at Tatuka Primary School, I'm welcomed inside.
53:34I don't know what's going on here at all. I'm just drifting along in a river of singing children.
53:40I don't know what they're singing about. I haven't a clue what's happening, but it's lovely. It's absolutely lovely.
53:52The school's garden is organic, biodynamic, and grows mostly herbs and vegetables.
53:58My irrepressible guide is a teacher, Mr Lucas Mumbelli.
54:03Montanoa entered the main gate to our garden, from our classroom.
54:08So now, here, this is our learners. They are working here. They are taking off all the dry and yellow
54:19leaves to put in our compost.
54:22This is beautiful. Thank you.
54:24It's a wonderful garden. Thank you.
54:27Your beds are mixed with different types of herbs, different types of vegetables.
54:34The reason is that to be able to repair the insects.
54:39And for them to be able to give each plant, it gives food to the other one.
54:47As well as an important supply of vegetables, there are many traditional medicinal plants being grown here too.
54:54Here at school, you can see there's no child who's coughing here.
54:59Right.
54:59There's the main medicine called lingana.
55:02Lingana.
55:03Boil water and put there and make a tea and let the child drink.
55:09In no time, that child is healed from flu or from cold.
55:17But there are some plants here which are intended to help with a much more serious issue.
55:22HIV-AIDS.
55:25South Africa has one of the highest incidences of AIDS, affecting over 20% of the adult population and up
55:33to a third of these children here.
55:35Do you know this?
55:37How I've got African potato here, we don't kill HIV-AIDS, but we suspend that spreading of that opportunity diseases
55:47through the HIV-AIDS.
55:49We take the baths, we chop them, we cook them, we let you drink.
55:54Right.
55:55We reduce the speed, how it can be able to kill you.
56:05A section of the garden is used as an outdoor classroom, where children are taught all kinds of subjects, from
56:11maths to horticulture.
56:16Tell me, do you like working in the garden?
56:19Yes.
56:20What do you like about it?
56:21Watering plants, planting.
56:24I like sweeping.
56:26Why do you like that?
56:27Because it cleans our garden.
56:30What sort of things do you learn?
56:32How to plant trees, how to take care of your environment.
56:36Do you think the garden is beautiful?
56:37Yes.
56:38Why?
56:39We've got flowers, spinach, onions, cabbage, so that makes our garden look beautiful.
56:50It certainly does.
56:55If it belonged to a keen, amateur gardener at home, I'd admire it hugely.
57:01As it is, this is a school garden in a township in South Africa.
57:06So it's beautiful in its own right, and it's a miracle, really.
57:10It's just wonderful.
57:17It's been a fascinating journey.
57:20There's no doubt that the gardens I've seen reflect the way that the nation is in a process of transition,
57:26evolving from a severe colonial past to a true South African identity.
57:33That identity is shaped as much as anything else by the landscape, which is just staggering.
57:41And then there are the plants in that landscape.
57:45To see so many familiar garden plants growing in their natural form and habitat was a treat.
57:59Before I came here, I had a fixed image of South Africa, forged by the horrors of apartheid, that had,
58:07I admit, become a pretty blinkered outlook.
58:10In fact, I go so far as to say that, if I was really honest, before I came here, I
58:14didn't want to come at all.
58:16And now that I've been here, I am just so glad that I did come.
58:25Next time, my journey will keep me closer to home, as I go in search of some of the most
58:30inspiring gardens to be found in the more familiar territory of Northern Europe.
58:43Foraging for wild blackberries next on BBC Two, it's harvest time with Gardener's World, then to the dizzying heights of
58:50Loch Ness as the Beach Grove garden team are inspired by a community project with high hopes in half an
58:56hour.
59:13And there are a place where there is now.
59:13After you are funny...
59:13After you are now...
59:13The block ofomics isn't possible to put themselves in a process of an unfinished eyes, there is a place to
59:13do with the warehouse that just hung out through whatever сожалению peathing and attracts them in stehen in mind.