0:00:02 > 0:00:03I believe that a really good way
0:00:03 > 0:00:06to understand a culture is through its gardens.
0:00:06 > 0:00:12This is an extraordinary journey to visit 80 inspiring gardens from all over the world.
0:00:12 > 0:00:17Some are very well known like the Taj Mahal or the Alhambra.
0:00:17 > 0:00:22And I'm also challenging my idea of what a garden actually is.
0:00:22 > 0:00:27So I'm visiting gardens that float on the Amazon a strange fantasy in the jungle.
0:00:27 > 0:00:30As well as the private homes of great designers,
0:00:30 > 0:00:34and the desert flowering in a garden and wherever I go,
0:00:34 > 0:00:38I shall be meeting people that share my own passion for gardens
0:00:38 > 0:00:44on my epic quest to see the world through 80 of its most fascinating and beautiful gardens.
0:00:55 > 0:01:02200 years ago, this was regarded as the most remote and the strangest place on the planet.
0:01:10 > 0:01:15And I shall be taking a journey across this vast continent,
0:01:15 > 0:01:17looking at its landscape and above all its gardens,
0:01:17 > 0:01:21to see how it's evolved from colonisation
0:01:21 > 0:01:27to gradual use and acceptance of the native flora,
0:01:27 > 0:01:31to become the independent, modern society that it is today.
0:01:35 > 0:01:40My journey begins in Sydney, where the British first settled over 200 years ago.
0:01:40 > 0:01:44I'll then head inland to Alice Springs and a garden in the heart
0:01:44 > 0:01:47of the continent's vast burning desert,
0:01:47 > 0:01:50before I turn south to the garden city of Melbourne.
0:01:50 > 0:01:53Finally, I'll cross the Tasman Sea
0:01:53 > 0:01:57to New Zealand to look at gardens filled with their native plants.
0:02:01 > 0:02:05By the edge of an unremarkable beach on a huge natural bay in
0:02:05 > 0:02:09the South East of the country, is a very special plant.
0:02:09 > 0:02:13This is a banksia, and its strangeness to British eyes
0:02:13 > 0:02:20and its name acknowledges the beginning of Britain's colonial occupation of this continent.
0:02:20 > 0:02:25The stone obelisk behind me marks the spot where Cook made
0:02:25 > 0:02:29his landfall after his epic voyage.
0:02:29 > 0:02:34And the bay that he stopped in, he called "Stingray Bay"
0:02:34 > 0:02:37because he found so many of those fish in these waters.
0:02:37 > 0:02:42But travelling with Cook was a young botanist called Joseph Banks,
0:02:42 > 0:02:47who went on to be the first curators of Kew, and one of the great figures in botanical history.
0:02:47 > 0:02:52Banks found so many new and extraordinary plant species here,
0:02:52 > 0:03:00around the edge of the bay, that Cook renamed it in his honour and he called it Botany Bay.
0:03:01 > 0:03:05The banksia is only one of the many thousands of spectacular native plants
0:03:05 > 0:03:09that thrive nowhere else on earth but here.
0:03:09 > 0:03:14It was the sheer number of unique species that made the plant's namesake, Joseph Banks,
0:03:14 > 0:03:19realise that this was more than a new island, this was a whole new continent.
0:03:26 > 0:03:30They went back home with news of this extraordinary discovery,
0:03:30 > 0:03:35and 18 years later, the first fleet of settlers and convicts arrived.
0:03:35 > 0:03:40I'm arriving on the same route today on the Manley ferry.
0:03:40 > 0:03:44When the fleet landed in Botany Bay, where Cook had landed,
0:03:44 > 0:03:47and then they discovered there was no water, they had to decamp and move.
0:03:47 > 0:03:51They came up knowing there was an entrance, but they didn't know what they would find.
0:03:51 > 0:03:59So they came in here out of the open ocean, hopefully to find a more sheltered place to land.
0:03:59 > 0:04:04And 200 years later, we know this as Sydney.
0:04:04 > 0:04:06HOOTER BLOWS
0:04:17 > 0:04:23Unlike those first settlers, my boat docks in a large modern metropolis.
0:04:23 > 0:04:29But, despite the skyscrapers, Sydney's past remains close to hand,
0:04:29 > 0:04:33and my first Australian garden is slap in the middle of the city.
0:04:34 > 0:04:38Behind the Opera House are the gates to the Royal Botanic Garden.
0:04:45 > 0:04:52What I particularly like about this garden is that you have this juxtaposition of this fabulous
0:04:52 > 0:04:58natural harbour on the one side, and then on the other side, the city right on top of the garden.
0:04:58 > 0:05:02And its 74 acres are packed with extraordinary plants.
0:05:05 > 0:05:09But this is not just a botanical reserve.
0:05:09 > 0:05:14It is in one of the most spectacularly beautiful urban positions in the world
0:05:14 > 0:05:18and has always been at the heart of Sydney's life.
0:05:18 > 0:05:21It is constantly used by Sydney's citizens,
0:05:21 > 0:05:27either for their rather relentless exercising or just to relax.
0:05:29 > 0:05:36One of the reasons that I've chosen to visit the botanic gardens is not just because it is beautiful
0:05:36 > 0:05:42and interesting, but because of its importance in the history of the entire occupation of Australia.
0:05:42 > 0:05:48What the first settlers needed most urgently of all was fresh water.
0:05:48 > 0:05:51They came up the coast and found a creek
0:05:51 > 0:05:57fed by fresh water, and this pond is fed by that same stream.
0:05:57 > 0:06:02So, famously, they created a small farm nine acres of wheat.
0:06:02 > 0:06:07The bay out there is still called Farm Cove to this day.
0:06:10 > 0:06:16The modern botanic garden is rich with healthy lush plants
0:06:16 > 0:06:19of every variety, but it wasn't always so.
0:06:19 > 0:06:24In fact, life for the original settlers was almost unimaginably hard.
0:06:24 > 0:06:29To clear the farm land, they had to clear wood and forest and scrub.
0:06:29 > 0:06:33It blunted their axes, they couldn't dig out or get rid of the trunks,
0:06:33 > 0:06:35so they sowed their corn in amongst them.
0:06:35 > 0:06:40This is a recreation of that first crop.
0:06:40 > 0:06:42Which is really hardly a crop at all.
0:06:42 > 0:06:46We're filming this on the 1st of December, the first day of Summer, which is near harvest.
0:06:46 > 0:06:48This is what they would have had to feed them.
0:06:48 > 0:06:52It doesn't really look like a crop at all but their lives depended on it.
0:06:52 > 0:06:55And they had to sow into this very, very thin soil.
0:06:55 > 0:07:01This has had 200 years of improvement but then it was practically pure sand.
0:07:05 > 0:07:12But they had little choice because any convict trying to escape the colony and its struggling crops
0:07:12 > 0:07:15faced almost certain death by starvation in the dense Australian bush,
0:07:15 > 0:07:20which was also filled with unfamiliar and sometimes dangerous creatures.
0:07:25 > 0:07:31The most astonishing thing for me in the botanic gardens is not a plant but the fruit bats.
0:07:31 > 0:07:37They hang from the branches like sacks,
0:07:37 > 0:07:42occasionally extending a vast wing or the whole tree at times
0:07:42 > 0:07:46can be fluttering as they move to cool down in the sun.
0:07:46 > 0:07:49It's like bellows expanding and contracting.
0:07:49 > 0:07:52You can imagine for the first settlers
0:07:52 > 0:07:59seeing these strange animals, either vast versions of what they saw at home, or completely different.
0:07:59 > 0:08:02It must have been an extraordinary thing.
0:08:06 > 0:08:10As the colony developed, the farmland became the Governor's garden,
0:08:10 > 0:08:14and then in 1816 the Botanic Gardens were officially founded.
0:08:14 > 0:08:18But that original settlement, by the shelter of Farm Bay,
0:08:18 > 0:08:24is still at the heart of the garden and is the symbolic beginning of the modern Australian nation.
0:08:28 > 0:08:32As Sydney became established, it deliberately recreated
0:08:32 > 0:08:34the appearance and style of the homeland.
0:08:34 > 0:08:37These mixed borders of Government House
0:08:37 > 0:08:41could be part of any British stately home, albeit on the other side of the world.
0:08:42 > 0:08:47This represents a kind of homesickness and it's that urge to create a reminder of home,
0:08:47 > 0:08:52that's key to the next wave of Australian gardens further inland.
0:08:55 > 0:09:01The first inland town took shape here, in Mittagong, in the hills south of Sydney.
0:09:01 > 0:09:06Mittagong, means 'small mountain' and has a much cooler and wetter climate
0:09:06 > 0:09:13which was perfect for those early homesick settlers, who started building modest pioneer homes.
0:09:13 > 0:09:18Initially all settlements were in Sydney itself.
0:09:18 > 0:09:26But, gradually people began to leave the city and create lives themselves in the country.
0:09:26 > 0:09:30MUSIC: "Waltzing Matilda"
0:09:35 > 0:09:40But nevertheless, despite the almost unimaginable hard work involved,
0:09:40 > 0:09:44there would be time to just plant a little bit of colour.
0:09:44 > 0:09:48Just a token bit of gardening to lift the spirits if nothing else.
0:09:48 > 0:09:53And this modest splash of colour to relieve a brutally harsh existence
0:09:53 > 0:09:58in the countryside, heralded a new wave of Australian gardens.
0:09:59 > 0:10:04By the middle of the 19th-century, people in Sydney were becoming
0:10:04 > 0:10:09wealthy enough to consider moving out of the city during the baking summer months.
0:10:09 > 0:10:12They came south here which is much cooler
0:10:12 > 0:10:15even on a summers day like today, it's positively chilly.
0:10:15 > 0:10:21They were buying up the simple little shacks and enlarging them and converting them into
0:10:21 > 0:10:24summer homes, country houses and wherever you get a country house,
0:10:24 > 0:10:27you are gonna get a country house garden.
0:10:33 > 0:10:36The garden at Kennerton Green began its life in a modest way in 1860,
0:10:36 > 0:10:42but since then it has grown to spread over five well-tended acres.
0:10:42 > 0:10:48It includes a rose garden, a tightly clipped Bay Tree Garden, a silver birch wood and, almost inevitably,
0:10:48 > 0:10:54a "potager", all divided as a series of garden rooms,
0:10:54 > 0:10:56centred around the original settler's cottage.
0:10:59 > 0:11:03The thing that immediately strikes me about Kennerton,
0:11:03 > 0:11:07is that here we are, an hour or two south of Sydney,
0:11:07 > 0:11:15and yet this is a garden that really wouldn't feel out of place in the Home Counties in England.
0:11:15 > 0:11:18It's an English country garden.
0:11:25 > 0:11:28This was a deliberate thing.
0:11:28 > 0:11:34Apparently the first settlers, once they had overcome the sort of hostility of their terrain,
0:11:34 > 0:11:38and got to the luxury of making a garden as opposed to just surviving,
0:11:38 > 0:11:42sent home for familiar plants.
0:11:42 > 0:11:48Apparently violets and snowdrops, even song birds were shipped out
0:11:48 > 0:11:52so they could recreate the gardens they were familiar with.
0:11:54 > 0:12:01It was a distinct homesickness, a nostalgia, and they built around them spaces
0:12:01 > 0:12:05that they could think of as home, not their new homeland,
0:12:05 > 0:12:09but a distant home that they would probably never see again.
0:12:18 > 0:12:23From this point of the garden, I can't see a single native plant.
0:12:26 > 0:12:32It's worth stressing that Kennerton is not a historical recreation,
0:12:32 > 0:12:36it is a modern garden, but it illustrates so many
0:12:36 > 0:12:42of the tendencies of those early Australian gardens and this area, the Bay Garden,
0:12:42 > 0:12:47shows how that with the tightly clipped bay trees,
0:12:47 > 0:12:49it's conquering nature.
0:12:49 > 0:12:54It reminds me of the 17th-century French and Dutch gardens
0:12:54 > 0:12:57where you use formality and topiary
0:12:57 > 0:13:04to show man's mastery of a hostile natural world that lay beyond the garden's edges.
0:13:11 > 0:13:15Kennerton is a series of garden rooms
0:13:15 > 0:13:19and as you come out of the Bay Garden, you walk into this wood.
0:13:19 > 0:13:26It is made up just of the white trunks of birch and grass.
0:13:26 > 0:13:29I think it is the loveliest thing in the entire garden.
0:13:34 > 0:13:39Kennerton is undoubtedly a very beautiful garden.
0:13:39 > 0:13:41But it is a beautiful fantasy.
0:13:41 > 0:13:47It is an attempt to create a little piece of England in a very foreign land.
0:13:47 > 0:13:53The reality just on the other side of the garden hedge, or at least just down the road is this.
0:13:53 > 0:13:55This is the real Australia.
0:13:55 > 0:14:02It is a completely different world which the early gardens turned their backs on.
0:14:02 > 0:14:06Before I leave the Sydney area, I'm going to visit a 21st-century garden
0:14:06 > 0:14:08that celebrates its Australian roots.
0:14:21 > 0:14:25When I chose this garden, it was really because it was modern
0:14:25 > 0:14:28and I'd heard about it, seen pictures of it .
0:14:28 > 0:14:30I thought it looked really interesting.
0:14:30 > 0:14:33When you walk in here, the first thing you notice are these
0:14:33 > 0:14:39great jagged angles of rock pushing out at you. It's almost quite aggressive.
0:14:39 > 0:14:46But the way that they're balanced, actually it's not hostile, it's not threatening.
0:14:46 > 0:14:52You start to look further and see that the plants work really well with them, with that colour.
0:14:52 > 0:14:57This tiny, private garden in Sydney's fashionable Mossman district
0:14:57 > 0:15:01has been created for its owners by Czech designer, Vladimir Sitta.
0:15:01 > 0:15:06'It nestles in the right angle of the building, and, with its large sliding glass doors facing onto it,
0:15:06 > 0:15:09'is an important part of the living space.
0:15:11 > 0:15:19'The rock, all 33 tonnes of it, was quarried in Alice Springs, the red heart of Australia.
0:15:19 > 0:15:23'The owners commissioned the garden to display their collection of drought-resisting succulents.
0:15:23 > 0:15:28'However, not all the plants are Australian although this magnificent
0:15:28 > 0:15:34'ponytail palm, with its dangling water-storing roots, most certainly is.'
0:15:34 > 0:15:37What is an Australian garden?
0:15:37 > 0:15:42I wish to know. The garden is a culture concept to me.
0:15:42 > 0:15:45First you have to define what the culture is.
0:15:45 > 0:15:49I don't think there is even a demand for creating an Australian garden,
0:15:49 > 0:15:56it's not, people think that when they stick Australian plants into some space that it's an Australian garden.
0:15:56 > 0:15:58That's a load of rubbish.
0:15:58 > 0:16:03- There's hardly anywhere in the world that relishes the outdoors so much. - Because you have such good weather..
0:16:03 > 0:16:09So you would think it was the perfect place to make gardens that could be relished all the time?
0:16:09 > 0:16:16If you see the garden as a stage set for your hedonistic pursuits, absolutely.
0:16:16 > 0:16:18But it doesn't have to be a hedonistic pursuit.
0:16:18 > 0:16:21It doesn't have to be a swimming pool, tennis court, barbecue.
0:16:21 > 0:16:24But this is what most of our gardens are here.
0:16:24 > 0:16:27In those richer suburbs of course.
0:16:27 > 0:16:31I think the garden ideally should touch you emotionally.
0:16:31 > 0:16:37Unfortunately it became, in many ways, just another commodity.
0:16:37 > 0:16:42In terms of just making your own and creating,
0:16:42 > 0:16:47then I think we've just barely scratched the surface in Australia.
0:16:47 > 0:16:51'Despite Vladimir's middle European gloom,
0:16:51 > 0:16:56'I think his garden is the closest I've come so far to feeling a real spirit of Australia.'
0:16:56 > 0:17:00These jagged angles have a tectonic energy that I like,
0:17:00 > 0:17:04and are pointing me to that burning red heart of the continent.
0:17:07 > 0:17:13That's where I'm going next, the outback, near Alice Springs.
0:17:13 > 0:17:15It couldn't be less like Sydney.
0:17:21 > 0:17:23DIDGERIDOO PLAYS
0:17:23 > 0:17:28It is a staggeringly harsh, grand, bright orange landscape
0:17:28 > 0:17:31but I can see echoes of Sitta's design immediately.
0:17:31 > 0:17:36Although this vast 'Sand Country' is classed as desert,
0:17:36 > 0:17:40it is actually full of life and empty only to the untutored eye.
0:17:40 > 0:17:43I'm visiting a completely different type of garden.
0:17:43 > 0:17:49Alice Springs Desert Park, which I hope will help me to understand the outback a little better.
0:18:00 > 0:18:02The park opened in 1997,
0:18:02 > 0:18:08and is designed to introduce people to the plants, animals and aboriginal culture of the outback
0:18:08 > 0:18:15with spinifex grasses, dried creeks, sand country and even a large salt pan.
0:18:15 > 0:18:21All painstakingly recreated to mimic the conditions of the outback in its true setting.
0:18:28 > 0:18:34It is a vast site with over 100 acres of cultivated garden and over 3,000 acres in all.
0:18:34 > 0:18:37I was shown round by Gary Dinham, the Curator of Botany,
0:18:37 > 0:18:42and he explained to me how the spinifex, the spiky grass that grows in the sand country,
0:18:42 > 0:18:45is perfectly adapted to the conditions.
0:18:45 > 0:18:48It's got these very spiky leaves which in fact used to be
0:18:48 > 0:18:53flat leaves which have rolled around to try and reduce water loss.
0:18:53 > 0:18:56I tell you what, that is as beautiful a grass
0:18:56 > 0:18:58as in any garden, isn't it?
0:18:58 > 0:19:01It's fantastic. We're trying to get people to use them more in gardens
0:19:01 > 0:19:05because it doesn't use much water and it is very easy to manage.
0:19:05 > 0:19:10You'll find plants which are less suited to the desert often grow beside rivers.
0:19:10 > 0:19:14So the River Red Gum, is a euycalpyt, Eucalyputus camaldulensis.
0:19:14 > 0:19:18They're very beautiful with their bark off.
0:19:18 > 0:19:22Look at this. This sort of clear white.
0:19:22 > 0:19:28The desert doesn't really have rivers or at least if there are, they don't run very often do they?
0:19:28 > 0:19:31They're ephemeral rivers - the upside down rivers of Central Australia,
0:19:31 > 0:19:34where the sand's on top and the water flows underneath.
0:19:34 > 0:19:39It's only after the heavy rains that you'll get the river flowing.
0:19:39 > 0:19:42It was interesting with my children in Central Australia,
0:19:42 > 0:19:46when they saw a river with water in it they were wondering what it was!
0:19:46 > 0:19:47MONTY LAUGHS
0:19:47 > 0:19:51'Away from the river, either underground or overground,
0:19:51 > 0:19:55'the harsher environment of the red desert sands means all plants have to be highly adapted.'
0:19:55 > 0:19:59These are only very young desert oaks.
0:19:59 > 0:20:03They're probably 8 or 10-years-old, very, very slow growing plants.
0:20:03 > 0:20:08You can see they actually photosynthesize through the stem.
0:20:08 > 0:20:11That little point there is just the remnant leaf.
0:20:11 > 0:20:14Under cultivation that is probably 6 or 7-years-old.
0:20:14 > 0:20:19In the wild you'd see one of those would probably be 20-years-old.
0:20:19 > 0:20:21Its root system is probably going down 10 metres.
0:20:21 > 0:20:24- 10 metres?- Yeah.- Wow!
0:20:24 > 0:20:27So they grow a lot more under the ground than above ground.
0:20:30 > 0:20:33Like every bit of this beautifully made garden,
0:20:33 > 0:20:38the park's artificially created salt pan looks completely natural.
0:20:38 > 0:20:42Do you get visitors assuming this is a natural landscape?
0:20:42 > 0:20:46That's one of the greatest compliments to the staff when people think that
0:20:46 > 0:20:51we are very fortunate to have all these habitats sitting in this small area.
0:20:51 > 0:20:54We've fooled them into thinking they're in a natural environment.
0:20:54 > 0:20:58The staff really love that. That's a great compliment to them.
0:20:58 > 0:21:00You've created this place, there is no other word for it.
0:21:00 > 0:21:03You've made it with your team.
0:21:03 > 0:21:05Does that make you a gardener?
0:21:05 > 0:21:12Well, this is a fantastic garden, it's one of the best gardens you could ever create I think.
0:21:14 > 0:21:17Recreating the environment, is an incredible challenge.
0:21:17 > 0:21:22It's not that easy, but I think we've managed to do that here to get it across.
0:21:22 > 0:21:23I think you have too.
0:21:33 > 0:21:38The aboriginal population co-habited with and used this flora
0:21:38 > 0:21:41long, long before Europeans arrived.
0:21:41 > 0:21:45I've met up with one of the Desert Park Rangers, Doug Taylor,
0:21:45 > 0:21:49to learn about his people's subtle relationship with the plants of the Australian outback.
0:21:51 > 0:21:56This is one of the most useful plants - the Mogga Tree.
0:21:56 > 0:22:00You could obtain food from here, tools.
0:22:00 > 0:22:04So the seed would be very small, wouldn't it, on those cones?
0:22:04 > 0:22:07Yes, this one's lost its seed. It would've been seeding a month back,
0:22:07 > 0:22:10but there are quite large pods and this is the seed that it produces.
0:22:10 > 0:22:13And this could be used by ladies ground up
0:22:13 > 0:22:19into like a flour or paste and baked into what we call Damper or bread.
0:22:19 > 0:22:22'This tree's timber is perfect for making boomerangs too.
0:22:22 > 0:22:24'This is a non-returning variety!'
0:22:24 > 0:22:29Very good to bring down a medium-sized kangaroo, stop an emu with this.
0:22:29 > 0:22:30Really?
0:22:30 > 0:22:33One of the strangest of all desert plants
0:22:33 > 0:22:38is the grass tree, Xanthorrhoea, which grows incredibly slowly.
0:22:38 > 0:22:40These plants are hundreds of years old.
0:22:40 > 0:22:44The land and the people, the traditional people were as one.
0:22:44 > 0:22:46Where our people
0:22:46 > 0:22:51didn't try to control the land, but live with it, and everything on the land had its place -
0:22:51 > 0:22:54in our people's culture
0:22:54 > 0:22:56and had a right to be there.
0:22:56 > 0:22:58It was useful too.
0:22:58 > 0:23:02The flower spike was used to carry a glowing ember for fire-making
0:23:02 > 0:23:08which is fitting for a plant that will regrow after being burned.
0:23:08 > 0:23:11Using fire to manage and regenerate the land
0:23:11 > 0:23:15was perhaps the closest that Doug's people came to gardening.
0:23:16 > 0:23:20It involved a highly sophisticated relationship with the land.
0:23:20 > 0:23:24Each family group had a seasonal cycle of moving from one camp
0:23:24 > 0:23:30to another within their territory, which they would use as a base for hunting and gathering bush tucker.
0:23:30 > 0:23:33They would use small controlled burns to flush out game and once
0:23:33 > 0:23:37they had hunted out one campsite, they would then move on to the next.
0:23:37 > 0:23:42By the time they return to this site, the burn done previous which
0:23:42 > 0:23:48may be 6-8 months' later say, but the burn would have then created regrowth and regeneration.
0:23:48 > 0:23:52Old expression in Australia here - aborigine going walking about,
0:23:52 > 0:23:56which was basically talking about this type of thing which is what our people used to do.
0:23:56 > 0:24:01I like to say, "Aborigine went on controlled seasonal movement."
0:24:01 > 0:24:05MONTY LAUGHS Sounds a lot better too!
0:24:05 > 0:24:13Now this is the shade of a desert oak which is a good size tree, but not vast, but it is very old.
0:24:13 > 0:24:20Oh, yeah. Very slow growing, desert oak, this one's quite mature, the one we're sitting under here.
0:24:20 > 0:24:24Probably anything up to 400, 500 years.
0:24:24 > 0:24:27Because these trees are so old, generations to generations of
0:24:27 > 0:24:30people see these trees and the stories attached to them.
0:24:30 > 0:24:37It's like looking at the old men and old women from the past.
0:24:37 > 0:24:43You sit amongst the desert oaks, and a light breeze comes through and it's like a...
0:24:43 > 0:24:44HE BLOWS
0:24:44 > 0:24:48If you sit down in the quiet long enough it sounds like you can hear voices whispering.
0:24:48 > 0:24:53That's where a lot of our people believe that the old people are still
0:24:53 > 0:24:56with these trees, and their spirit's still there.
0:25:00 > 0:25:04As I travel back to Alice Springs, I thought about what Doug had told me.
0:25:04 > 0:25:07I can see just how perfectly the native people lived in
0:25:07 > 0:25:10harmony with that seemingly wholly hostile environment.
0:25:10 > 0:25:16It was clear that the key factor to this, for plants as well as people, was drought and how to manage it.
0:25:20 > 0:25:26However, I am not sure I expect this to be the case in my next destination, which is Melbourne.
0:25:26 > 0:25:29Melbourne is often referred to as Australia's Garden City
0:25:29 > 0:25:35and it has a much wetter climate thanks to its position on the southern tip of the continent.
0:25:35 > 0:25:40This was my first visit and I was surprised to see European plants and trees everywhere.
0:25:40 > 0:25:43Its leafy, green avenues and flower-filled yards
0:25:43 > 0:25:47make a dramatic contrast to the parched streets of Alice Springs.
0:25:47 > 0:25:52Along with the skyscrapers and trams, there still survive quaint,
0:25:52 > 0:25:58ornate and now very select, Victorian streets.
0:25:58 > 0:26:03During the 1880s, Melbourne was the second largest city in the British Empire
0:26:03 > 0:26:07and many of the opulent homes from that period still survive.
0:26:07 > 0:26:12My next garden is the pinnacle of the grand Australian establishment,
0:26:12 > 0:26:16and my host is Dame Elizabeth Murdoch.
0:26:22 > 0:26:25Got into Melbourne when it was dark last night.
0:26:25 > 0:26:28Driven to a hotel, went to bed, got up, and come out here first
0:26:28 > 0:26:33thing in the morning, and I have to say it is a vast culture shock, I could be in another world.
0:26:39 > 0:26:42Hello, Dame Elisabeth, how nice to meet you.
0:26:42 > 0:26:44- How are you?- I'm very, very well.
0:26:44 > 0:26:48- Good, how nice to see you. - And with your beautiful garden.. - It's looking not bad.
0:26:54 > 0:27:01At 99, she and her garden are almost half as old as the nation.
0:27:01 > 0:27:05She's the matriarch of Australia's great media dynasty, and the guiding
0:27:05 > 0:27:11spirit behind Cruden Farm and its 20-acre garden, which Dame Elisabeth began in the 1920s.
0:27:11 > 0:27:16There can be few people on this planet that have gardened
0:27:16 > 0:27:20continuously in the same place for over 80 years.
0:27:23 > 0:27:28That's one of my great prides, my copper beach.
0:27:28 > 0:27:33I mean, it's fantastic to think I planted that only 52 years ago.
0:27:33 > 0:27:38Of course far too close to the house, but never mind, we manage.
0:27:38 > 0:27:41Are copper beach fairly unusual in Melbourne?
0:27:41 > 0:27:43In Melbourne, yes.
0:27:43 > 0:27:45When we were planning to put that in,
0:27:45 > 0:27:51I said to Michael my gardener, "It's ridiculous, I'll never see this Michael really."
0:27:51 > 0:27:54He said, "Of course you will, you're gonna live forever!"
0:27:57 > 0:28:01But part of the pleasure of planting a tree is watching it grow.
0:28:01 > 0:28:05- I know, wonderful.- It's not necessarily the finished article.
0:28:05 > 0:28:08So you've created a landscape,
0:28:08 > 0:28:11that is sort of like Capability Brown in some ways.
0:28:11 > 0:28:16You've done it in a lifetime rather than over generations.
0:28:16 > 0:28:20Yes, well I think you see everything grows so fast here.
0:28:20 > 0:28:24'That's the point. In England similar trees would take a couple of centuries to grow this big.'
0:28:24 > 0:28:28I love the purple stems - the purple touch on the stems.
0:28:28 > 0:28:30It's lovely, isn't it?
0:28:30 > 0:28:32I see you've got a good eye.
0:28:40 > 0:28:47This is surreal for me, here we are looking at hostas, having 12 hours ago
0:28:47 > 0:28:52stepped on a plane in the outback where the thought of a hosta is...
0:28:52 > 0:28:55I know, the contrast is fabulous, isn't it?
0:28:55 > 0:28:58- Really amazing.- It looks marvellous.
0:28:58 > 0:29:02They are beautiful, they are beautiful hostas. I love them dearly.
0:29:02 > 0:29:06That's quite a young denudatus, it's amazing.
0:29:06 > 0:29:13It's very protected in there. You see the possums eat everything, so we've put an electric fence on the roof.
0:29:13 > 0:29:16So they can't come across.
0:29:18 > 0:29:21- Mind the bump.- Right.
0:29:21 > 0:29:24- It's rather lovely, isn't it? - Beautiful.
0:29:36 > 0:29:42'I have never been in a garden which has reached such maturity within the life of its owner and creator.
0:29:42 > 0:29:46'I don't think I have ever met a gardener who has quite so much personal charm.'
0:29:51 > 0:29:55I confess that when I walked down the drive here,
0:29:55 > 0:30:02I thought this is so different from Alice Springs and the outback that there's no connection.
0:30:02 > 0:30:09But actually what this garden has is a sense of place, a sense of self-confidence.
0:30:09 > 0:30:14So you've got your rose garden, you've got your alchemillas and all the sort of English plants
0:30:14 > 0:30:21that might seem a bit odd here in Australia, but it also has a real sense of place and identity.
0:30:21 > 0:30:23It's grounded.
0:30:23 > 0:30:27At heart this is a European garden,
0:30:27 > 0:30:31but one that is very happily married to its native landscape.
0:30:34 > 0:30:38However, that cross cultural connection is under serious threat.
0:30:38 > 0:30:43Climate change is increasing the already serious problems of drought in Australia.
0:30:43 > 0:30:49This means that the classic English flowers and lush greenery just won't thrive.
0:30:49 > 0:30:52The situation can only get worse.
0:30:52 > 0:30:57But having seen how the tough Aussie native plants thrive in the outback,
0:30:57 > 0:31:02I wonder if they are the key to Australia's gardening future?
0:31:05 > 0:31:09My next garden could answer that question.
0:31:09 > 0:31:10It is the Garden Vineyard,
0:31:10 > 0:31:15created by Di Johnson and now extended by her daughter Jenny.
0:31:15 > 0:31:20The garden is set amongst vineyards in the gently rolling countryside south of Melbourne.
0:31:20 > 0:31:24It began just 11 years ago, but already, it is one of
0:31:24 > 0:31:28Australia's most exciting gardens because it is a fusion
0:31:28 > 0:31:35of traditional English design and planting, with a contemporary use of native Australian species.
0:31:35 > 0:31:39It's a story which started out with an attempt to make an exact copy
0:31:39 > 0:31:45of a very English garden until Di was confronted with the inescapable realities of the climate.
0:31:45 > 0:31:47I think that's a perfect example
0:31:47 > 0:31:51of how one has to adapt, because I love that little geranium.
0:31:51 > 0:31:54I've tried to grow it for three years, it looks fabulous in winter.
0:31:56 > 0:32:03I should give up, because look how wonderful the sedum by comparison looks.
0:32:03 > 0:32:07We went to a brick yard in North Melbourne,
0:32:07 > 0:32:11and these are convict bricks - there's a thumb print in one.
0:32:11 > 0:32:14Every 1,000 bricks they had to mark with a thumb print,
0:32:14 > 0:32:17every 10,000 I think it was with two thumb prints.
0:32:17 > 0:32:21But these bricks were all hand made by convicts.
0:32:21 > 0:32:24- No doubt those convicts were from England.- I'm sure they were.
0:32:30 > 0:32:35The next stage of the garden shows the true scale of Di's ambition.
0:32:37 > 0:32:42The first thing that strikes me, these are socking great borders.
0:32:42 > 0:32:45- It's great!- I'll probably never be able to sell it.
0:32:45 > 0:32:46Well, that's another matter..
0:32:46 > 0:32:48Nobody wants this much work.
0:32:48 > 0:32:54The giant borders mark the very first introduction of Australian natives into Di's garden.
0:32:54 > 0:32:57Tightly clipped green pillars of the gloriously named lillypilly,
0:32:57 > 0:33:02which she uses for structure in the border much as we might use yew at home.
0:33:02 > 0:33:06The lilypillies came in at what stage?
0:33:06 > 0:33:10- Pretty early on.- Not straight away. - About the second.
0:33:10 > 0:33:12Was it your first entry into indigenous planting?
0:33:12 > 0:33:18Yes, absolutely. I think the thing is they take the heat as well as the dryness.
0:33:18 > 0:33:24Follow the path round the corner and there is a quantum leap away from the traditional English garden.
0:33:24 > 0:33:30It's a composition of tightly clipped native shrubs in balls and
0:33:30 > 0:33:35billows set around the peeling white trunks of lemon-scented eucalypts.
0:33:35 > 0:33:37It looks fantastic.
0:33:37 > 0:33:40It's a bit English, but it's got a lot more Australian feel about it.
0:33:40 > 0:33:45This rhagodia is a brilliant thing. I know it is looking a little drab
0:33:45 > 0:33:50because we have just had to severely prune it, but it comes back, and it is totally drought tolerant.
0:33:50 > 0:33:55It grows in the sun or shade and we've used it all over the garden.
0:34:02 > 0:34:05After that cool modernism,
0:34:05 > 0:34:09there is a return to a European heritage with a much more formal
0:34:09 > 0:34:12and rather grand Italianate garden,
0:34:12 > 0:34:17using clipped coppery lillipilli lollipops - I've been dying to say that -
0:34:17 > 0:34:20under-planted with a sea of agapanthus and heliotropes.
0:34:20 > 0:34:23MUSIC: "The Flower Duet" by Delibes
0:34:48 > 0:34:55Go through a gate and on down a set of steps and you arrive at the place where everything comes together.
0:34:55 > 0:34:59This is a dramatic and brave part of the garden, made by Jenny,
0:34:59 > 0:35:04critically with Di's support using only native plants.
0:35:04 > 0:35:09So this is the evolution of the garden,
0:35:09 > 0:35:11maybe the future of Australian gardening.
0:35:11 > 0:35:17Yeah, I think it started off with not too much thought
0:35:17 > 0:35:21behind it. It started off as a passion of mine.
0:35:21 > 0:35:22And a bit of plonking!
0:35:22 > 0:35:25But plonking is the secret of good gardening!
0:35:25 > 0:35:30I tried to work with the colour and texture of plants
0:35:30 > 0:35:34and I tried to arrange plants that were blended with each other
0:35:34 > 0:35:36in terms of foliage, texture and colour.
0:35:36 > 0:35:39But, I don't think that is that important now.
0:35:39 > 0:35:42I guess being inspired by the natural bush.
0:35:42 > 0:35:45I've always loved the natural stance of eucalypts
0:35:45 > 0:35:50and things that aren't too fiddled with and manipulated.
0:35:50 > 0:35:56- How do you feel about that? - Well, I have realised that Jenny
0:35:56 > 0:35:59has been a source of great wisdom for me.
0:36:19 > 0:36:23I'll be honest with you, when I walked in here and saw the walled English garden,
0:36:23 > 0:36:28I thought, "Oh, no, this is beautiful. But I didn't need to cross the world to see it."
0:36:28 > 0:36:31I've seen lots of gardens like that although not many done as well as that.
0:36:31 > 0:36:35But as I walked round, I realised something special was happening here.
0:36:35 > 0:36:43That a garden was evolving, not just through the process of the gardener, but through place and then,
0:36:43 > 0:36:49really most interestingly of all, through time and generations as the children of the household grew up
0:36:49 > 0:36:54and got interested, they were Australian and this was their background and this was their home.
0:36:54 > 0:36:59They started to evolve a style of gardening that was truly indigenous.
0:36:59 > 0:37:00It belongs to the place.
0:37:00 > 0:37:04The result is something genuinely new and beautiful
0:37:04 > 0:37:08and most importantly, sustainable in the changing Australian climate.
0:37:11 > 0:37:14But now it's time to leave Australia
0:37:14 > 0:37:17and move on for the second phase of my antipodean adventure.
0:37:17 > 0:37:21I travel 1,200 hundred miles south east of Australia to New Zealand,
0:37:21 > 0:37:25and land in its biggest city, Auckland.
0:37:31 > 0:37:35Well, I popped on a plane, and came over her to New Zealand
0:37:35 > 0:37:38and although it's just a three-hour journey,
0:37:38 > 0:37:44and I'm about as far away from home as it's possible to be, it's all instantly familiar.
0:37:44 > 0:37:47It even smells like England.
0:37:47 > 0:37:53But although much seems to be reassuringly similar, there is a spectacular plant growing nearby
0:37:53 > 0:37:57which reminds me that New Zealand is actually very, very different from home.
0:37:59 > 0:38:05For all its instant familiarity, New Zealand is full of very curious things indeed.
0:38:05 > 0:38:09This is the pohutukawa or the New Zealand Christmas tree,
0:38:09 > 0:38:14which is just coming into flower now as we approach Christmas.
0:38:14 > 0:38:17There is nothing that can prepare you for New Zealand
0:38:17 > 0:38:21because it is quite unlike anywhere else in the world.
0:38:21 > 0:38:24Before Westerners came, it was the nearest thing to an earthly paradise
0:38:24 > 0:38:26with a very distinctive flora and fauna.
0:38:26 > 0:38:32This means that gardens here with a little imagination and resources can also be unique.
0:38:32 > 0:38:37This is Ayrlies, and it's the first garden I'm visiting in New Zealand,
0:38:37 > 0:38:43simply because I have been told it's one of the very best Gardens in the whole of the Southern Hemisphere.
0:39:01 > 0:39:05Ayrlies is a garden with a dream-like intensity.
0:39:05 > 0:39:12It's very large, with 12 acres of dense planting and mature trees around the house surrounded by
0:39:12 > 0:39:18another 30 acres of planted woodland and fields that run down to the sea.
0:39:22 > 0:39:26But, magnificent as the setting is, it is the planting that overwhelms you.
0:39:26 > 0:39:31This is a garden that submerges the visitor in plants,
0:39:31 > 0:39:37so you wallow in their colour, texture, shape and scent.
0:39:37 > 0:39:43Yet incredibly, I know that only 40 years ago, this was all just a series of grass paddocks.
0:39:47 > 0:39:54The effect of the tree ferns and the sound and the general intensity of the planting,
0:39:54 > 0:39:57makes one think of a sort of lush,
0:39:57 > 0:40:01lush forest, but actually just a few yards from here, if you come back,
0:40:03 > 0:40:06you come through the planting...
0:40:08 > 0:40:13It just stops and you realise that we're back
0:40:13 > 0:40:16to the fields that were grazed by the dairy herd 40 years ago.
0:40:16 > 0:40:20Although all the trees you can see were planted,
0:40:20 > 0:40:23the garden is made out of a field,
0:40:23 > 0:40:25every little bit of it.
0:40:26 > 0:40:30I'm shown round the garden by its creator, Bev McConnell,
0:40:30 > 0:40:33the celebrated doyenne of New Zealand gardening.
0:40:33 > 0:40:38This is quite dramatic here, it is quite a wow, and I shouldn't be able
0:40:38 > 0:40:42to grow the Lewisia rose, but I do and I grow that for the hips.
0:40:42 > 0:40:47They are absolutely complimentary colours aren't they, the red and the green? Wonderful.
0:40:47 > 0:40:52And that one is very yellow, but it was born in the garden, so that will be Ayrlies Gold.
0:40:52 > 0:40:54How many plants do you have named after the garden?
0:40:54 > 0:40:56About five I think.
0:40:56 > 0:40:58That's still five more than most people.
0:40:58 > 0:41:02Have you not got any yet?
0:41:02 > 0:41:04- I think...- Oh, look. You are very young!
0:41:04 > 0:41:07- You're very sweet to say it. - It'll come, it'll come.
0:41:07 > 0:41:11You have to be really old to have plants named after you.
0:41:12 > 0:41:17- You don't mind me interviewing you do you?- I'm enjoying it, and you're very good at it,
0:41:17 > 0:41:20but you can tell me about your pool, cos I can't answer that.
0:41:20 > 0:41:24- Isn't that interesting, yes. - When did you plant the palms?
0:41:24 > 0:41:26Oh, 15 years ago.
0:41:26 > 0:41:28Really? As recently as that.
0:41:42 > 0:41:47I was just astonished at the planting at Ayrlies.
0:41:47 > 0:41:52It has the widest and most ecstatic range of plants in one garden I have ever seen.
0:41:52 > 0:41:58So how did one person create so much in such a short time?
0:41:58 > 0:42:01Did you come out knowing you wanted to make a garden?
0:42:01 > 0:42:04Yes, I did, I had it on paper, the first three acres.
0:42:04 > 0:42:10I married a man who thought big, probably it was a fault that both of us did,
0:42:10 > 0:42:14but it had its good points too, otherwise you'd end up with really nothing.
0:42:14 > 0:42:19Cos a lot of farmers in those days, farmers would say to their wives if
0:42:19 > 0:42:23they wanted to build a garden, "What do you want to do that for"
0:42:23 > 0:42:28just like that, but my husband would say, "Why not. Let's have a look at it."
0:42:28 > 0:42:30So you planted these trees?
0:42:30 > 0:42:38Every one, there was nothing here, it was a good dairy farmers paddock for his stock.
0:42:53 > 0:42:56Bev's greatest ally is the climate.
0:42:56 > 0:43:00There are 365 growing days a year here.
0:43:00 > 0:43:04The weather is never too cold, never too hot, there is nearly
0:43:04 > 0:43:0850 inches of rain a year, and there is much more light.
0:43:24 > 0:43:26I think that Ayrlies is a masterpiece.
0:43:26 > 0:43:30I have never seen such a wide range of plants together in one garden.
0:43:30 > 0:43:36But that mixture depends on a lot of exotic and introduced plants as well as natives,
0:43:36 > 0:43:39and in the light of my Australian experience,
0:43:39 > 0:43:44I wonder if this best represents the past or the future of New Zealand gardens?
0:43:44 > 0:43:50To try and answer that I need to go back in history and on with my journey.
0:43:50 > 0:43:52I'm going to drive from Ayrlies, just outside Auckland,
0:43:52 > 0:43:56south and west to New Plymouth, a journey which should take me
0:43:56 > 0:44:03into New Zealand's wild green heart and give me a taste of its original human culture too.
0:44:03 > 0:44:08But when I make my first stop out in the country to look at the landscape,
0:44:08 > 0:44:10there's no sign of New Zealand anywhere.
0:44:13 > 0:44:19This is a confusing country because the scenery is so like England,
0:44:19 > 0:44:24with its green grass and buttercups and daisies
0:44:24 > 0:44:29and trees and cows and all the flowers on the verges of the roads.
0:44:29 > 0:44:34But, look a bit closer and then there are these oddities.
0:44:34 > 0:44:39Like this marvellous super-charged hydrangeas that we found here,
0:44:39 > 0:44:42and then you have to realise that everything you are looking at is introduced.
0:44:42 > 0:44:46This is not the natural flora of the country.
0:44:46 > 0:44:50Every single element of it is artificial.
0:44:50 > 0:44:54That includes the grass, the trees, the flowers and the shrubs.
0:44:54 > 0:44:56Everything you can see.
0:44:58 > 0:45:00So back in to the van
0:45:00 > 0:45:04and on deeper into the hills, until finally I find something native,
0:45:04 > 0:45:08a Maori garden of phormiums, or New Zealand Flax.
0:45:08 > 0:45:12Whereas I am familiar with them as UK garden plants, for the Maori, the native people,
0:45:12 > 0:45:16these plants were a vital source of fibre for clothes and mats.
0:45:16 > 0:45:2187-year-old Digger Te Kanawa, a Maori weaver, shows me how they are used.
0:45:21 > 0:45:26- This is the stripping you have to go through.- Right.
0:45:26 > 0:45:32You have to turn it over on the dull side, and about halfway.
0:45:33 > 0:45:37- Now...- So you score it through but don't cut it through?
0:45:37 > 0:45:42- No. So, I've got to split it and this is the tool.- A mussel shell?
0:45:42 > 0:45:44A mussel shell...
0:45:44 > 0:45:49and you get a little bit out, and make a loop like that, and then you pull. There you are...
0:45:51 > 0:45:54- There it is.- And that's your muka.
0:45:57 > 0:46:00And you do what you call a miro, this is a twining.
0:46:00 > 0:46:02I see, yeah.
0:46:02 > 0:46:04Easy, eh?
0:46:04 > 0:46:07No, you make it look very easy, I can see it's hard.
0:46:07 > 0:46:13Her flax threads end up as beautiful ceremonial cloaks, decorated with feathers, part of Digger's heritage
0:46:13 > 0:46:19as a Maori, a Polynesian people who settled here more than 600 hundred years ago.
0:46:19 > 0:46:23Up there is a photo of the collection.
0:46:23 > 0:46:25- That's the whole family? - That's the whole family.
0:46:25 > 0:46:29Mum's made a cloak for each of us.
0:46:29 > 0:46:33Can I touch this, can I just feel it?
0:46:33 > 0:46:35Because it is very soft, isn't it?
0:46:35 > 0:46:39It's not the sort of thing you can make in a month or so,
0:46:39 > 0:46:45because it's a mood thing, if you don't feel like it, leave it alone.
0:46:45 > 0:46:48And are these mats we're walking on, are these all flax too?
0:46:48 > 0:46:53Yes, now I think I'm too old to get down on the floor...
0:46:53 > 0:46:55But I want to teach others.
0:46:55 > 0:47:02And just on the other side of her land, we touch on Maori spiritual life,
0:47:02 > 0:47:05because there's a sacred tree at the end of her drive.
0:47:05 > 0:47:11When we were kids, they said it was very taboo, and you mustn't go near it and all that sort of thing.
0:47:11 > 0:47:14They were scared stiff of it.
0:47:14 > 0:47:19Having had a glimpse of some of the native culture, just beyond Digger's home
0:47:19 > 0:47:22I get my first sight of New Zealand's native beauty.
0:47:26 > 0:47:29Now things are getting stranger as we go farther away from Auckland
0:47:29 > 0:47:33cos in amongst the tractors, the long grass, and wonderful flowers,
0:47:33 > 0:47:38are tree ferns, this is distinctly exotic.
0:47:40 > 0:47:45It might look exotic to my English eye, but these plants are indigenous here.
0:47:45 > 0:47:49Yet I turn around and "Oh, there's an English meadow."
0:47:52 > 0:47:56It's just like Alice In Wonderland, that's what it's like. It's a dream world.
0:48:00 > 0:48:04Thanks to its mild climate and high rainfall, much of New Zealand
0:48:04 > 0:48:08was once covered in temperate rainforest, a cooler and much
0:48:08 > 0:48:15gentler sister of the more famous rainforests of the tropics like the Amazon, but every bit as beautiful.
0:48:22 > 0:48:30As I continue deeper into the mountains it really feels like I've finally found what I set out to see.
0:48:30 > 0:48:33This is primary forest and
0:48:33 > 0:48:39almost of New Zealand would have been covered in this with these giant podocarps,
0:48:39 > 0:48:43smothered with epiphytes and the tree ferns underneath.
0:48:43 > 0:48:48And it's very sobering when you drive through and see mile upon mile
0:48:48 > 0:48:52of landscape cleared and just with a monoculture of
0:48:52 > 0:48:58grass knowing that it was this that had to be removed in order to feed a few sheep and cattle.
0:49:16 > 0:49:20Just step a few yards into the forest and immediately you're surrounded
0:49:20 > 0:49:27and you could be anywhere, and unlike the tropical rain forests, this temperate rain forest
0:49:27 > 0:49:30is a cool unthreatening place
0:49:30 > 0:49:35with this magical green sort of stained glass light filtering through.
0:49:39 > 0:49:41It's a very benign place.
0:49:45 > 0:49:47This is New Zealand's heart.
0:49:47 > 0:49:53A green, cool, song-filled heaven, spilling over with beautiful plants.
0:49:53 > 0:49:59Thank goodness a little bit of it was spared and allowed to remain for people like us to treasure.
0:49:59 > 0:50:07But can this ancient botanical paradise be the inspiration for New Zealand's gardens of the future?
0:50:07 > 0:50:12I finally reach New Plymouth, ready to visit the last garden of this trip,
0:50:12 > 0:50:15and rather than turning its back on its natural heritage,
0:50:15 > 0:50:20this is a garden famous for taking it as its inspiration.
0:50:20 > 0:50:27This is, surprisingly, in a quiet suburb of New Plymouth, is my journey's end,
0:50:27 > 0:50:31and I've come here because it's a garden which seems
0:50:31 > 0:50:34pretty ordinary from the outside,
0:50:34 > 0:50:39but which I know is comprised entirely of native New Zealand plants.
0:50:42 > 0:50:46Te Kainga Marire, which is Maori for "peaceful encampment",
0:50:46 > 0:50:49is one of New Zealand's very first, and best native gardens.
0:50:49 > 0:50:53It was begun 35 ago by Valda Poletti and her husband Dave,
0:50:53 > 0:50:58and although relatively modest in scale, is crammed with plants and features.
0:50:58 > 0:51:05There's a tree fern alley, a distressed mountain shed, an alpine zone
0:51:05 > 0:51:07and even a glow worm cave,
0:51:07 > 0:51:13rather surprisingly all created by someone who's very proud of her colonial past.
0:51:13 > 0:51:21- Your great grandparents were settlers?- Yes, they arrived here in 1842.
0:51:21 > 0:51:24And they sailed here from Plymouth harbour from Somerset.
0:51:24 > 0:51:29So they, Simon and Jane set up home, farm,
0:51:29 > 0:51:32and survived the land wars
0:51:32 > 0:51:37and great great grandmother had stood there with her children
0:51:37 > 0:51:43behind her to find the Maori that was threatening to burn her little house down.
0:51:43 > 0:51:50That story is a dramatic contrast to this garden which is clearly in such harmony with its native land.
0:51:50 > 0:51:54The Muehlenbeckia complexa, the wire-netting plant, you could
0:51:54 > 0:51:57actually jump up and down on sleep on that as a bed.
0:51:57 > 0:51:58It's tempting to try.
0:51:58 > 0:52:00Yeah, you can do that.
0:52:00 > 0:52:02I can do that, I will do that.
0:52:02 > 0:52:04Leap, lie down, have a rest.
0:52:04 > 0:52:05You see,
0:52:05 > 0:52:10- I'm quite squashy.- Comfortable?- I would sleep on this willingly.
0:52:10 > 0:52:12- You would?- Yeah. one of the things I like about...
0:52:12 > 0:52:19if you're in Australia, you would know there would be some noxious spider or snake or something in
0:52:19 > 0:52:23here waiting to get you, whereas in New Zealand, you are pretty sure...
0:52:23 > 0:52:27- You're safe as...- Yeah. - You could sleep sweetly and soundly.
0:52:27 > 0:52:31This is the first garden where I've been invited to leap on the plants.
0:52:31 > 0:52:35Yeah, leap on the plants, it's Monty proof! SHE LAUGHS
0:52:35 > 0:52:37What's that?
0:52:37 > 0:52:41I need my glasses for this, which I haven't got on me they are in my bag.
0:52:41 > 0:52:43I'll go get a hand lens.
0:52:43 > 0:52:45Monty Don,
0:52:45 > 0:52:49I have for you the secret weapon, the hand lens.
0:52:49 > 0:52:52Because I can't see without my glasses.
0:52:52 > 0:52:56- You're nearly blind, now this is gardening beneath your knees. - Can I hold the lens please?
0:52:56 > 0:53:00- You're being bossy.- I'm being bossy, I'm a control freak, you know?
0:53:00 > 0:53:04All gardeners are control freaks, all good gardeners
0:53:04 > 0:53:06are completely control...
0:53:06 > 0:53:08- He said I'm a good gardener. - Well, you are.
0:53:08 > 0:53:10Look at that.
0:53:11 > 0:53:17This little pansea grows up in the central plateau around the fumaroles, around the sulphur vents.
0:53:17 > 0:53:22I have never been shown around a garden via a hand lens before.
0:53:22 > 0:53:28- Really, truly?- So within the space of a minute I have leapt on your plants and looked in minute detail.
0:53:28 > 0:53:33And over here, just by your knees, don't get up, is our lobelia.
0:53:33 > 0:53:36And again it is a little darling, it's got like half a flower.
0:53:36 > 0:53:40It is lovely, I could do the whole tour like this
0:53:40 > 0:53:43I could crawl the whole way on my hands and knees...
0:53:43 > 0:53:44Look at this!
0:53:44 > 0:53:46Look at this down here.
0:53:46 > 0:53:48Look at that.
0:53:48 > 0:53:50Look at that.
0:53:50 > 0:53:54Do you know I've never done this before, this is fantastic.
0:53:54 > 0:53:57- He's converted. - I am, you know.- Good, born again.
0:53:57 > 0:54:00- I don't normally deal with intense detail.- Oh, don't you?
0:54:00 > 0:54:03You wait, there's better to come.
0:54:11 > 0:54:12So this is the fernery?
0:54:12 > 0:54:15- That's right. - Some of these ferns are how old?
0:54:18 > 0:54:20That's 30 ft... So you planted these in 1972?
0:54:20 > 0:54:24- Some of them planted in '72. - And that is a whopper!
0:54:27 > 0:54:30And this is the fern house here, you call it the Faanui.
0:54:39 > 0:54:43Here we go... and this Monty is a glow-worm tunnel.
0:54:43 > 0:54:47- Do you get glow-worms? - We do, we've got about six.
0:54:47 > 0:54:49It's cool and cold and dark.
0:54:49 > 0:54:53It is sort of like dying and emerging and coming out again into the light.
0:54:53 > 0:54:57- It's a birthing ceremony. - A birthing channel - didn't want you to clock onto that.
0:54:57 > 0:54:59You are born again...
0:54:59 > 0:55:02and oh, look, here's a sign of new life,
0:55:02 > 0:55:06the pattern of his unfurling crosier.
0:55:06 > 0:55:10- And now your vegetables. I'm keen on vegetables.- So am I.
0:55:10 > 0:55:13So there we go - vegetables...
0:55:13 > 0:55:17- Pretty organic. - This is a real culinary...
0:55:17 > 0:55:22This is a working vegetable garden, feeds the family, you know, it's really important.
0:55:22 > 0:55:29Now this to an extent is what your great grandparents would have done when they came here,
0:55:29 > 0:55:34they would've cleared some soil and planted the things they were used to growing at home.
0:55:34 > 0:55:39Yep, the first things they did was to get a garden established because without it, the only food they had
0:55:39 > 0:55:43were the rations off the other boats that came out like the flour.
0:55:43 > 0:55:49And they obviously got brought stock and did animal husbandry and raised stock to slaughter.
0:55:49 > 0:55:56But, if the crops failed then they had trouble surviving in the colonies in those early, early days.
0:55:56 > 0:56:01After the veg garden it was time to dive down into the alpines.
0:56:06 > 0:56:08Do you know what it's like?
0:56:08 > 0:56:10- It's like snorkelling over a coral reef.- Mmm.
0:56:10 > 0:56:13- That's exactly what it's like. - It is.
0:56:15 > 0:56:19A hidden reef of flower reached through a magnifying glass!
0:56:21 > 0:56:23Do you think that the next generation
0:56:23 > 0:56:27of gardeners will be moving in the direction you've created?
0:56:27 > 0:56:31I do, younger people are much, much more open to the flora.
0:56:31 > 0:56:38They've got over the fact that gardens are flower gardens, and I think
0:56:38 > 0:56:42there is a greater appreciation and awareness now of the flora
0:56:42 > 0:56:45of New Zealand and the beauty of the landscapes.
0:56:45 > 0:56:49I think it's a coming of age for New Zealand.
0:56:50 > 0:56:53What a good and hopeful thought that is!
0:56:53 > 0:56:59And Te Kainga Marire is a visual celebration of New Zealand's future.
0:57:06 > 0:57:12So I've reached the end of this particular journey, sitting on the lawn
0:57:12 > 0:57:18in a smallish garden, in a smallish suburb
0:57:18 > 0:57:23of a smallish town in New Zealand and it seems right and proper to me,
0:57:23 > 0:57:29having sampled the size and scale of Australia
0:57:29 > 0:57:32and come down through the North Island of New Zealand, that
0:57:32 > 0:57:38it should end up on this domestic level cos that's what gardens are, they're about people's back gardens.
0:57:40 > 0:57:44But what a journey I've had, from the very first Australian garden
0:57:44 > 0:57:50and its failing crops in Sydney, to homesick recreations and wonderful flights of fantasy.
0:57:50 > 0:57:55I've seen a series of amazing gardens in dynamic, young countries.
0:57:55 > 0:57:59But it's the final step that the gardens have made which I believe holds the key to the future.
0:57:59 > 0:58:04It's all about working with the land and not about fighting it.
0:58:04 > 0:58:07And that's a simple but powerful message that
0:58:07 > 0:58:11the indigenous people and plants could have told us all along.
0:58:21 > 0:58:25Join me next time as I make my first visit to India.
0:58:26 > 0:58:29As I set off to visit some of the most sensual
0:58:29 > 0:58:31and opulent gardens in the world.
0:58:46 > 0:58:49Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd
0:58:49 > 0:58:52E-mail subtitling@bbc.co.uk