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I believe a really good way to understand a culture is through it's gardens. | 0:00:02 | 0:00:06 | |
This is an extraordinary journey to visit 80 inspiring gardens from all over the world. | 0:00:06 | 0:00:11 | |
Some are very well known like the Taj Mahal or the Alhambra. | 0:00:11 | 0:00:16 | |
And I'm also challenging my idea of what a garden actually is. | 0:00:16 | 0:00:22 | |
So I'm visiting gardens that float on the Amazon, a strange fantasy in the jungle. | 0:00:22 | 0:00:27 | |
As well as the private homes of great designers, | 0:00:27 | 0:00:30 | |
and the desert flowering in a garden... | 0:00:30 | 0:00:33 | |
and wherever I go I shall be meeting people that share my own passion for gardens | 0:00:33 | 0:00:38 | |
on my epic quest to see the world through 80 of it's most fascinating and beautiful gardens. | 0:00:38 | 0:00:44 | |
This week, my travels have brought me to the continent | 0:00:56 | 0:00:59 | |
with the most diverse climate and range of landscapes on this planet, | 0:00:59 | 0:01:03 | |
and which is home to more than 50,000 species of plants only found here. | 0:01:03 | 0:01:10 | |
This is a land almost twice the size of Europe. | 0:01:10 | 0:01:13 | |
South America. | 0:01:13 | 0:01:14 | |
One of the ways of trying to get beneath the skin | 0:01:17 | 0:01:21 | |
of this vast continent | 0:01:21 | 0:01:24 | |
is to work out what people's concept of a garden actually is. | 0:01:24 | 0:01:27 | |
And I also want to find out what it is that drives people to make gardens at all, | 0:01:30 | 0:01:34 | |
when their natural landscape is as beautiful and dramatic as this. | 0:01:34 | 0:01:40 | |
I'm starting the first leg of my journey in Rio de Janeiro, | 0:01:44 | 0:01:49 | |
to see the private garden of Brazil's greatest artist, | 0:01:49 | 0:01:53 | |
before travelling by boat to the floating gardens of the Amazon. | 0:01:53 | 0:01:58 | |
Heading back south, I'll go to Argentina | 0:01:58 | 0:02:02 | |
to visit a traditional 'estancia' in the Pampas, | 0:02:02 | 0:02:05 | |
before finally ending my journey on the Pacific coast of Chile | 0:02:05 | 0:02:10 | |
where one man has created a garden completely in tune with the landscape. | 0:02:10 | 0:02:14 | |
So, I arrive for the first time in one of the world's great cities, | 0:02:18 | 0:02:24 | |
Rio de Janeiro. | 0:02:24 | 0:02:25 | |
Now, the Brazilian climate varies from hot and arid in the interior | 0:02:25 | 0:02:29 | |
to hot and sticky in the tropical rainforest of the Amazon jungle. | 0:02:29 | 0:02:35 | |
So I had expected, for my first visit to Brazil, | 0:02:35 | 0:02:37 | |
not just all the conventional features of Rio to be there, | 0:02:37 | 0:02:40 | |
colour, bronzed bodies, dancing, that kind of thing, | 0:02:40 | 0:02:44 | |
but above all lots of sunshine. After all, it is supposed to be summer. | 0:02:44 | 0:02:48 | |
Every image of Copacabana beach is of beautiful bodies, sunshine, | 0:02:48 | 0:02:55 | |
packed beaches... | 0:02:55 | 0:02:57 | |
Well, this is Copacabana beach, and I've got rain. | 0:02:57 | 0:03:02 | |
And not a soul... | 0:03:02 | 0:03:03 | |
Not a thong in sight! | 0:03:05 | 0:03:07 | |
But the reason I'm on the beach in this terrible weather | 0:03:11 | 0:03:14 | |
is to visit my first garden, the famous Copacabana promenade, | 0:03:14 | 0:03:18 | |
designed by Roberto Burle Marx in 1970. | 0:03:18 | 0:03:22 | |
Burle Marx was Brazil's most eminent landscape architect and artist, | 0:03:25 | 0:03:29 | |
and he radically combined his paintings with the landscape of Rio's pavements and parks. | 0:03:29 | 0:03:36 | |
He took the lines and the swirls | 0:03:39 | 0:03:41 | |
that were so familiar from his paintings and his other artwork, | 0:03:41 | 0:03:45 | |
and applied them to the surface of the Copacabana. | 0:03:45 | 0:03:47 | |
That went on... | 0:03:47 | 0:03:49 | |
..and on.... | 0:03:50 | 0:03:51 | |
..and on... | 0:03:52 | 0:03:53 | |
..and on. | 0:03:55 | 0:03:56 | |
The scale is simply enormous | 0:03:57 | 0:03:58 | |
and amounts to a two and a half mile long abstract painting. | 0:03:58 | 0:04:03 | |
There can be few gardens best seen from the 27th floor of a hotel. | 0:04:03 | 0:04:08 | |
What we're looking at is one of the largest public gardens in the world. | 0:04:08 | 0:04:12 | |
And in my opinion, a garden it surely is, | 0:04:12 | 0:04:14 | |
as clearly municipal and as public as bedding on a roundabout. | 0:04:14 | 0:04:19 | |
It's not just Copacabana's promenade | 0:04:25 | 0:04:27 | |
that's suffused with Burle Marx's brilliant creativity. | 0:04:27 | 0:04:31 | |
From the late 1930s until his death in 1994 | 0:04:31 | 0:04:34 | |
he added much to the quality of Rio's life | 0:04:34 | 0:04:37 | |
by designing many radical, elegant and invariably stimulating public spaces in the city. | 0:04:37 | 0:04:43 | |
These fabulous abstract spaces are not the only reason why Burle Marx | 0:04:46 | 0:04:51 | |
is one of the most important garden designers in South America. | 0:04:51 | 0:04:55 | |
He also personally revolutionised gardening in Brazil. | 0:04:55 | 0:04:58 | |
And to see how, I am heading now 40 miles out of the city | 0:04:58 | 0:05:02 | |
to visit his own private garden. | 0:05:02 | 0:05:04 | |
Burle Marx loved Brazil's native plants. | 0:05:17 | 0:05:21 | |
In 1949 he bought this 90-acre estate | 0:05:21 | 0:05:23 | |
to experiment with what was then a revolutionary idea - | 0:05:23 | 0:05:27 | |
the introduction of some of Brazil's indigenous plants to its parks and gardens. | 0:05:27 | 0:05:32 | |
The garden, known today as the Sitio, | 0:05:32 | 0:05:34 | |
became his life-long passion. | 0:05:34 | 0:05:36 | |
Have a look at this... | 0:05:43 | 0:05:45 | |
non stick! | 0:05:47 | 0:05:49 | |
Although Burle Marx was obsessive | 0:05:49 | 0:05:54 | |
about championing plants local to Brazil | 0:05:54 | 0:05:58 | |
this garden has many species from all over the world, | 0:05:58 | 0:06:01 | |
and he was very clear about the role of a garden. | 0:06:01 | 0:06:04 | |
It was nature designed and controlled by man for man; | 0:06:04 | 0:06:09 | |
and in other words a wholly artificial space, | 0:06:09 | 0:06:11 | |
and this is no exception. | 0:06:11 | 0:06:13 | |
In his garden as in every part of his life, | 0:06:13 | 0:06:16 | |
Burle Marx was a compulsive designer and collector, | 0:06:16 | 0:06:20 | |
and everything he did at the Sitio, | 0:06:20 | 0:06:22 | |
from planting to entertaining, was on an heroic scale. | 0:06:22 | 0:06:25 | |
This area which was designed by Burle Marx specifically for parties | 0:06:27 | 0:06:32 | |
is big but it's recognisably domestic. | 0:06:32 | 0:06:35 | |
And this pergola which he created to house the jade vine he was given, | 0:06:35 | 0:06:41 | |
it's very big and very eccentric to do such a grand gesture just for one plant. | 0:06:41 | 0:06:46 | |
But then you just go a few more steps | 0:06:49 | 0:06:53 | |
and you come through here and suddenly all the rules are changed. | 0:06:53 | 0:06:59 | |
I'm in completely different territory | 0:06:59 | 0:07:03 | |
and I don't see this as a gardener or horticulturist, | 0:07:03 | 0:07:06 | |
but almost like a child at the edge of a forest, | 0:07:06 | 0:07:09 | |
because this isn't the experience of a garden, | 0:07:09 | 0:07:14 | |
it's the landscape of a dream. | 0:07:14 | 0:07:17 | |
And although it seems extraordinary now, | 0:07:19 | 0:07:22 | |
Burle Marx's dream to protect and celebrate Brazil's tropical plant life | 0:07:22 | 0:07:27 | |
was actually considered more revolutionary in its day | 0:07:27 | 0:07:30 | |
than his abstract painting or landscape design. | 0:07:30 | 0:07:32 | |
At the age of 19 Burle Marx went to Europe to study art for a year | 0:07:32 | 0:07:38 | |
and he left behind him a Brazil whose gardens faced Europe. | 0:07:38 | 0:07:42 | |
They were heavily influenced by them, | 0:07:42 | 0:07:44 | |
formal, Victorian and bearing no recognition | 0:07:44 | 0:07:48 | |
of the extraordinary plant life of the South American continent. | 0:07:48 | 0:07:52 | |
Whilst he was in Berlin, Marx visited Dahlem Botanic Gardens | 0:07:52 | 0:07:57 | |
and was stunned to find Brazilian plant species | 0:07:57 | 0:08:00 | |
growing as curiosities in the glasshouses there. | 0:08:00 | 0:08:04 | |
He suddenly thought this is mad, | 0:08:04 | 0:08:07 | |
"Why am I looking at these plants here | 0:08:07 | 0:08:10 | |
"when we should be growing them in our gardens back home?" | 0:08:10 | 0:08:13 | |
It was really from that point that he began this process of designing modern gardens | 0:08:13 | 0:08:18 | |
using the plants that were on his doorstep, | 0:08:18 | 0:08:22 | |
on the South American continent, | 0:08:22 | 0:08:24 | |
and above all that were Brazilian in every way. | 0:08:24 | 0:08:28 | |
Burle Marx became obsessed | 0:08:33 | 0:08:36 | |
with collecting and protecting these native plants, | 0:08:36 | 0:08:39 | |
and the Sitio contains more than 3,000 species of tropical flora | 0:08:39 | 0:08:43 | |
that he collected during his plant expeditions. | 0:08:43 | 0:08:46 | |
Robeiro Diaz, the director of the Sitio, used to accompany him on his expeditions. | 0:08:53 | 0:08:58 | |
In one of those excursions we went to Bahia and when we came back | 0:08:59 | 0:09:05 | |
he said, "Everyone goes to the Sitio with me now!" | 0:09:05 | 0:09:09 | |
So we came, he called the gardeners, | 0:09:09 | 0:09:12 | |
and the truck that was filled with plants... | 0:09:12 | 0:09:15 | |
And then "These there! Those there! | 0:09:15 | 0:09:18 | |
"And there and there... | 0:09:18 | 0:09:19 | |
And he composed | 0:09:19 | 0:09:23 | |
the garden with those plants. | 0:09:23 | 0:09:26 | |
So as soon as he found them in the wild, | 0:09:26 | 0:09:28 | |
he wanted to immediately use them and create with them. | 0:09:28 | 0:09:32 | |
Yes, he had to experiment with plants because when you pick up plants | 0:09:32 | 0:09:38 | |
and nature, unknown, it comes not with a manual of how to plant it. | 0:09:38 | 0:09:45 | |
He had to plant it to see how it would behave. | 0:09:45 | 0:09:49 | |
There are more different species of bromeliad in Brazil | 0:10:15 | 0:10:18 | |
than anywhere else on earth. | 0:10:18 | 0:10:21 | |
And other than a pineapple we tend to come across bromeliads | 0:10:21 | 0:10:25 | |
as house plants or something in a conservatory. | 0:10:25 | 0:10:29 | |
Whereas here of course they grow anywhere and everywhere, | 0:10:29 | 0:10:33 | |
and they are extraordinary things. | 0:10:33 | 0:10:35 | |
Because their roots don't take in any nutrition at all... | 0:10:35 | 0:10:38 | |
they simply attach the plant to whatever surface it's growing on. | 0:10:38 | 0:10:42 | |
And all of them collect water at the base of their leaves... | 0:10:42 | 0:10:47 | |
what amounts to a tiny lake... | 0:10:47 | 0:10:49 | |
with its own complete ecosystem inside it. | 0:10:49 | 0:10:52 | |
You'll have frogs and insects | 0:10:52 | 0:10:54 | |
that never leave that individual bromeliad. | 0:10:54 | 0:10:57 | |
Their whole life is spent within it. | 0:10:57 | 0:10:59 | |
And that miracle... to come down into a garden | 0:10:59 | 0:11:03 | |
and be used with all this exuberanceand colour and life! | 0:11:03 | 0:11:08 | |
It's fantastic! | 0:11:08 | 0:11:09 | |
I love the relationship here between small details | 0:11:30 | 0:11:35 | |
and the big block planting that Burle Marx is famous for. | 0:11:35 | 0:11:39 | |
He was well known for saying if you wanted people to appreciate a plant | 0:11:39 | 0:11:43 | |
it was no good just planting one of them. | 0:11:43 | 0:11:45 | |
In order to see it properly, they had to have lots of them. | 0:11:45 | 0:11:49 | |
I love the textures. | 0:11:49 | 0:11:50 | |
The way textures on the trunk of a tree will match. | 0:11:50 | 0:11:53 | |
Or the colours of the water will pick up the colours of the leaves. | 0:11:53 | 0:11:57 | |
And it's those tiny details expanded out by the vigour of the planting here in Brazil, | 0:11:57 | 0:12:04 | |
together with the vigour of his imagination | 0:12:04 | 0:12:07 | |
that is one of the things that makes this place so extraordinary. | 0:12:07 | 0:12:10 | |
Burle Marx bequeathed the Sitio to the people of Brazil | 0:12:14 | 0:12:17 | |
as part of the Burle Marx Foundation, | 0:12:17 | 0:12:19 | |
and although he designed over 2,000 gardens, | 0:12:19 | 0:12:22 | |
this is, I think, where his genius is best displayed. | 0:12:22 | 0:12:27 | |
But now I am leaving here to follow in the footsteps of the great man | 0:12:27 | 0:12:30 | |
and head north into the rainforest. | 0:12:30 | 0:12:33 | |
My first visit to the Amazon basin exceeds any previous experience. | 0:12:42 | 0:12:48 | |
All its statistics are superlatives. | 0:12:48 | 0:12:51 | |
It produces 20% of the planet's oxygen | 0:12:51 | 0:12:54 | |
and also contains more than 20% of the world's fresh water. | 0:12:54 | 0:12:59 | |
Its 1.5 million square miles contains a third of the world's total rainforest | 0:12:59 | 0:13:04 | |
and with an estimated 50,000 species of endemic plants | 0:13:04 | 0:13:08 | |
it makes Brazil the most bio-diverse country on earth. | 0:13:08 | 0:13:12 | |
I arrive in the middle of the dry season and it's unbelievably hot. | 0:13:12 | 0:13:16 | |
But any romantic notions I may have harboured | 0:13:16 | 0:13:19 | |
about my arrival in the remote Amazon, | 0:13:19 | 0:13:21 | |
quickly evaporate as I find myself in a large noisy, commercial city | 0:13:21 | 0:13:27 | |
right in the heart of the jungle. | 0:13:27 | 0:13:29 | |
This is Manaus, the capital of the Amazonas. | 0:13:31 | 0:13:35 | |
On the banks of the Rio Negro, | 0:13:35 | 0:13:37 | |
and it is one of the gateways to the whole Amazon region. | 0:13:37 | 0:13:42 | |
And it started life as a rubber trading port. | 0:13:42 | 0:13:45 | |
The rubber came in from the jungle and the city that grew up | 0:13:45 | 0:13:49 | |
around that trade was elegant and had real colonial charm. | 0:13:49 | 0:13:53 | |
The Opera House, built in 1879 by Joseph Eiffel, of Eiffel tower fame, | 0:13:56 | 0:14:01 | |
attests to the wealth brought by the rubber trade, now long gone. | 0:14:01 | 0:14:06 | |
Yet still, forest people are drawn here by the hope of work. | 0:14:06 | 0:14:11 | |
Today the population of Manaus is more than 1.5 million; | 0:14:11 | 0:14:14 | |
that's bigger than any British city outside London. | 0:14:14 | 0:14:17 | |
But the lure for the modern visitor | 0:14:19 | 0:14:21 | |
is the same as for the original 18th century rubber traders. | 0:14:21 | 0:14:26 | |
And that is what is out there, | 0:14:26 | 0:14:27 | |
which is the richest selection of plant life on this planet. | 0:14:27 | 0:14:32 | |
I'm looking for the Cassiquiari. | 0:14:37 | 0:14:40 | |
I don't know if that's how you pronounce it, but it's one of these boats. | 0:14:40 | 0:14:44 | |
I hope it's a nice one. | 0:14:44 | 0:14:46 | |
There are at a rough estimate at least 50 or 60 such boats. | 0:14:46 | 0:14:50 | |
Cassiquiari. | 0:14:50 | 0:14:52 | |
That's her. | 0:14:52 | 0:14:54 | |
Very charming. Hello. | 0:14:54 | 0:14:57 | |
Hello, I'm Monty, nice to meet you, can I come on? | 0:14:57 | 0:15:01 | |
Welcome aboard. | 0:15:03 | 0:15:04 | |
Thank you very much indeed. Thank you. | 0:15:04 | 0:15:07 | |
We leave the city and moor out in the river | 0:15:07 | 0:15:09 | |
as the light drops quickly away into the darkness of the steamy tropical night. | 0:15:09 | 0:15:13 | |
It'll be morning before I see my first unfettered views of the mighty Amazon. | 0:15:13 | 0:15:18 | |
As day breaks, the river reveals itself in all it's glory. | 0:15:21 | 0:15:24 | |
It is unimaginably huge. | 0:15:24 | 0:15:28 | |
The river system has 11,000 tributaries, | 0:15:28 | 0:15:31 | |
of which 17 are more than 1,000 miles long. | 0:15:31 | 0:15:35 | |
Before I could set off for the day | 0:15:39 | 0:15:40 | |
there was an unexpected problem to deal with. | 0:15:40 | 0:15:44 | |
Now we had a slight mishap on my way here, | 0:15:44 | 0:15:47 | |
because at Sao Paolo I picked up the wrong suitcase, identical to mine. | 0:15:47 | 0:15:50 | |
And when we got on the boat and opened it out, | 0:15:50 | 0:15:54 | |
instead of seeing all my gear, my clothes, my washing kit and all the rest of it, | 0:15:54 | 0:15:58 | |
there was a large collection of saris and sequin-encrusted jerseys. | 0:15:58 | 0:16:05 | |
And there's obviously some poor woman, desperate for her clothes. | 0:16:05 | 0:16:09 | |
It left me with a problem because I was about to go down the Amazon. | 0:16:09 | 0:16:12 | |
All I had was the suit I travelled in and nothing else at all. | 0:16:12 | 0:16:16 | |
Luckily I managed to borrow these clothes. | 0:16:16 | 0:16:18 | |
SPEAKS PORTUGUESE | 0:16:18 | 0:16:23 | |
I don't speak Portuguese but I guess she's probably saying that | 0:16:23 | 0:16:27 | |
it looks very nice but a nice pink sari would've been more fetching! | 0:16:27 | 0:16:31 | |
OK. Are we ready? | 0:16:35 | 0:16:39 | |
Managing to resist the lure of a pink sari, | 0:16:39 | 0:16:41 | |
I'm off to explore the Amazon. | 0:16:41 | 0:16:43 | |
With over a fifth of the world's plant species thought to be growing here, | 0:16:43 | 0:16:47 | |
I wondered if people who live here need to garden? | 0:16:47 | 0:16:51 | |
My guide Ivano assures me they do, | 0:16:51 | 0:16:53 | |
so he takes me to meet a river community. | 0:16:53 | 0:16:55 | |
Ah, look... look at the dogs. | 0:16:56 | 0:16:59 | |
The water levels in the Amazon can rise and fall by as much as 30 feet according to the season, | 0:17:04 | 0:17:10 | |
so all these houses float on the river to accommodate the changing levels. | 0:17:10 | 0:17:15 | |
This is the last place I would expect to find a garden | 0:17:17 | 0:17:20 | |
but then, astonishingly, | 0:17:20 | 0:17:21 | |
one floats by. | 0:17:21 | 0:17:23 | |
The floating house | 0:17:25 | 0:17:27 | |
is very nice to live because when I was born my parents live in a floating house. | 0:17:27 | 0:17:32 | |
You were born in a floating house. | 0:17:32 | 0:17:34 | |
Yes, I was born in a floating house. | 0:17:34 | 0:17:37 | |
There's budgerigars! Ah! | 0:17:37 | 0:17:40 | |
You can see now that this house with a garden... | 0:17:42 | 0:17:44 | |
Balanced on these vast logs, these trees, | 0:17:44 | 0:17:47 | |
and then boxes and containers stretched across them. | 0:17:47 | 0:17:52 | |
Most of the plants are medicinal plants. | 0:17:52 | 0:17:55 | |
And some vegetables that they can eat. | 0:17:55 | 0:17:58 | |
There are onions... in an old boat! | 0:17:58 | 0:18:00 | |
Fantastic! | 0:18:00 | 0:18:03 | |
It's much easier to get around on the river | 0:18:03 | 0:18:06 | |
than trekking through the jungle, | 0:18:06 | 0:18:08 | |
so the houses are floating on the river too. | 0:18:08 | 0:18:11 | |
But with the massive change in level, | 0:18:11 | 0:18:13 | |
these floating houses move quite large distances. | 0:18:13 | 0:18:16 | |
Wherever a house goes, the garden must follow. | 0:18:16 | 0:18:18 | |
Those trees there. Are they floating too? | 0:18:20 | 0:18:23 | |
Yeah, they are very interesting these gardens | 0:18:23 | 0:18:26 | |
because it's incredible how the gardens can support a tree like that. | 0:18:26 | 0:18:30 | |
Like coconuts trees and lemon and cashew nuts. | 0:18:30 | 0:18:33 | |
-So these big trees are growing in what we would call containers floating on the water. -Yeah. | 0:18:33 | 0:18:40 | |
We drop by the local shop, | 0:18:42 | 0:18:44 | |
where the owner grows fruit trees aboard their floating garden. | 0:18:44 | 0:18:47 | |
-E Monty, Dona Sebastiana. -How do you do? | 0:18:47 | 0:18:52 | |
This is beautiful, look her house. | 0:18:53 | 0:18:56 | |
-It's a beautiful house. -Very typical. Look at the kitchen. Very nice kitchen. | 0:18:56 | 0:19:00 | |
Out the back is Sebastiana's garden. | 0:19:00 | 0:19:02 | |
Amazingly, it is an orchard of really quite large trees | 0:19:02 | 0:19:05 | |
bobbing about on a pontoon chained to the house. | 0:19:05 | 0:19:08 | |
This is fantastic... | 0:19:08 | 0:19:10 | |
these are big plants, aren't they? | 0:19:10 | 0:19:12 | |
How much soil has she put into the containers? | 0:19:12 | 0:19:15 | |
She use a bag like these and she use like 30 for to get the soil. | 0:19:23 | 0:19:29 | |
30. So the roots don't go down in to the water? | 0:19:29 | 0:19:31 | |
No they stay on the soil. | 0:19:31 | 0:19:34 | |
And you water it from the river? She'll splash it off in. | 0:19:34 | 0:19:37 | |
Yes, she's going to show us how she waters from the river. | 0:19:37 | 0:19:40 | |
Right. | 0:19:46 | 0:19:48 | |
Does she have to water all her pots every day? | 0:19:51 | 0:19:54 | |
-Yes, twice every day. -Twice a day. | 0:20:00 | 0:20:03 | |
-Presumably in the rainy season she doesn't have to do that? -No, no. | 0:20:03 | 0:20:08 | |
Tell me what she has here... | 0:20:08 | 0:20:11 | |
Verbena, carambola, cashew, banana. | 0:20:15 | 0:20:20 | |
All growing in little boxes floating on the river is an amazing thing. | 0:20:20 | 0:20:24 | |
It's an amazing thing. | 0:20:24 | 0:20:27 | |
She loves plants and she cannot plant in the land because of the flood jungle. | 0:20:28 | 0:20:34 | |
So if she wants to have some trees by side of the house it has to be like that. | 0:20:34 | 0:20:39 | |
People who garden on the river have fewer constraints than you might imagine | 0:20:45 | 0:20:49 | |
and can grow nearly as much as anyone on dry land, including vegetables. | 0:20:49 | 0:20:54 | |
Combined with fresh fish from the river it seemed | 0:20:54 | 0:20:57 | |
to make for a superbly healthy diet and very attractive lifestyle. | 0:20:57 | 0:21:02 | |
But I met one householder preparing to sell up and move to the city. | 0:21:05 | 0:21:10 | |
Now she's going to move to Manaus will she still have a garden? | 0:21:13 | 0:21:18 | |
She's going to take it. | 0:21:21 | 0:21:23 | |
Only the house is for selling. Not the garden. | 0:21:23 | 0:21:27 | |
-Which is her favourite plant? -The rose. | 0:21:27 | 0:21:31 | |
Cos it's like a queen in the garden. | 0:21:31 | 0:21:35 | |
It's like a queen in the garden. That's a very beautiful thought. | 0:21:35 | 0:21:39 | |
Flowers are actually a rare sight in the Amazon | 0:21:39 | 0:21:42 | |
because there isn't one distinct flowering season and flowering plants bloom unpredictably, | 0:21:42 | 0:21:47 | |
and usually out of sight at the top of tree canopies where there's light. | 0:21:47 | 0:21:51 | |
So in these floating gardens, any bright showy flower is always very popular. | 0:21:51 | 0:21:55 | |
So what do we have round here? | 0:21:58 | 0:22:00 | |
-She has plants, piggies. -Piggies! | 0:22:00 | 0:22:07 | |
I love piggies. 6 pigs, floating. | 0:22:07 | 0:22:12 | |
Fantastic. | 0:22:12 | 0:22:14 | |
I too keep pigs and love growing vegetables. | 0:22:14 | 0:22:16 | |
So whilst I like roses, I love her pigs and I admire her vegetables. | 0:22:16 | 0:22:21 | |
Obrigada! | 0:22:21 | 0:22:24 | |
The sun is about to drop and when it does go it just falls out of the sky. | 0:22:36 | 0:22:41 | |
You're left in pitch blackness. | 0:22:41 | 0:22:43 | |
And the main thing today, other than the vastness of this place | 0:22:43 | 0:22:47 | |
and the unimaginable scale of everything, including the heat, | 0:22:47 | 0:22:52 | |
is that the desire to garden seems to be a completely basic thing. | 0:22:52 | 0:22:58 | |
It doesn't matter if you're on the middle of one of the biggest rivers on this planet. | 0:22:58 | 0:23:02 | |
Still people are making gardens in old canoes and boxes of wood, | 0:23:02 | 0:23:07 | |
with soil they've had to hump from different parts of the land | 0:23:07 | 0:23:11 | |
and get into a canoe and row it over and empty it out. | 0:23:11 | 0:23:14 | |
And still that urge to grow things, | 0:23:14 | 0:23:17 | |
in the most unlikely of situations, seems to be a basic instinct. | 0:23:17 | 0:23:22 | |
The next morning I set off to go into the jungle. | 0:23:42 | 0:23:44 | |
We all now know that this habitat is highly threatened, | 0:23:44 | 0:23:48 | |
but I'm still hoping to find some of the plants | 0:23:48 | 0:23:50 | |
Burle Marx fought so hard to conserve in his Sitio garden near Rio. | 0:23:50 | 0:23:55 | |
Before you come to the rainforest you're hit over the head with statistics. | 0:24:04 | 0:24:10 | |
But there is one that is really striking, | 0:24:10 | 0:24:13 | |
and that is that one hectare of virgin rainforest in the Amazon | 0:24:13 | 0:24:18 | |
has more species of trees than the whole of North America. | 0:24:18 | 0:24:24 | |
It's remarkably easy to get lost in the jungle, | 0:24:27 | 0:24:29 | |
even on a modest little jaunt like this, | 0:24:29 | 0:24:32 | |
so I've enlisted the help of Mo, | 0:24:32 | 0:24:34 | |
a local guide who's lived in the Amazon jungle all his life. | 0:24:34 | 0:24:37 | |
Mo explained to me the reason for the extraordinary flaring buttresses | 0:24:37 | 0:24:42 | |
of many of the jungle trees. | 0:24:42 | 0:24:44 | |
The land here is so poor that this tree doesn't have a deep root, | 0:24:46 | 0:24:52 | |
so it needs this support, the system of roots to support the tree. | 0:24:52 | 0:24:58 | |
OK, you have very, very shallow soil, | 0:24:58 | 0:25:01 | |
but how does these enormous trees and this mass of life sustain its fertility, | 0:25:01 | 0:25:08 | |
because it must be making great demands in nutrition and in water. | 0:25:08 | 0:25:12 | |
-Water we have enough. -Right. | 0:25:12 | 0:25:15 | |
They live from what the other trees leave. | 0:25:15 | 0:25:18 | |
What they have is a big exchange of nutrients. | 0:25:18 | 0:25:25 | |
What one lose, the others get. | 0:25:25 | 0:25:28 | |
In the intense heat and humidity of the tropical rainforest, | 0:25:29 | 0:25:33 | |
specially-adapted fungi and bacteria | 0:25:33 | 0:25:35 | |
rapidly break down fallen leaves and wood. | 0:25:35 | 0:25:39 | |
This releases nutrients which are immediately taken back up by the plants. | 0:25:39 | 0:25:45 | |
This process almost completely by-passes the soil, | 0:25:45 | 0:25:47 | |
leaving it almost devoid of organic matter, | 0:25:47 | 0:25:51 | |
shallow and with hardly any nutrients. | 0:25:51 | 0:25:53 | |
You have the roots right on the surface | 0:25:53 | 0:25:58 | |
and a very very thin layer of soil. | 0:25:58 | 0:26:00 | |
So the whole of this vast forest with these enormous trees | 0:26:00 | 0:26:06 | |
is supported like in a tray. | 0:26:06 | 0:26:10 | |
What's this? | 0:26:12 | 0:26:13 | |
Oh! This is a brazil nut fruit, | 0:26:13 | 0:26:15 | |
if you open it up there are like 20 nuts inside. | 0:26:15 | 0:26:18 | |
Really? Let me have a look at that. | 0:26:18 | 0:26:20 | |
Yes. Try to cut it. | 0:26:20 | 0:26:23 | |
So you just, just... | 0:26:23 | 0:26:24 | |
Put in the ground. It's very hard. | 0:26:24 | 0:26:26 | |
-Is it? -Yeah. | 0:26:26 | 0:26:28 | |
Now you can see the nuts in there. | 0:26:36 | 0:26:38 | |
So inside this very, very hard shell | 0:26:38 | 0:26:40 | |
are a series of nuts with very, very hard shells. | 0:26:40 | 0:26:44 | |
Is there an animal that breaks through that? | 0:26:44 | 0:26:46 | |
Yeah, a very interesting point. There is a little hole here. | 0:26:46 | 0:26:49 | |
What happened we have an agouti, like a little kangaroo | 0:26:49 | 0:26:54 | |
with big backside and small hands but very sharp teeth, | 0:26:54 | 0:26:57 | |
that come and eats two or three of those seeds and then buries the rest. | 0:26:57 | 0:27:03 | |
He intends to return, but the animal has a very poor memory. | 0:27:03 | 0:27:07 | |
So for this reason grows the Brazil nut. | 0:27:07 | 0:27:09 | |
Without the help of the agouti they cannot grow. | 0:27:09 | 0:27:12 | |
Countless species in the rainforest are dependent upon this sort of complex, symbiotic relationship. | 0:27:14 | 0:27:20 | |
But, over a quarter of a million square miles of this delicate ecosystem | 0:27:20 | 0:27:27 | |
have been ruthlessly cleared in the past 40 years alone, | 0:27:27 | 0:27:31 | |
which has accelerated a process that began with the first European settlers in the 15th century. | 0:27:31 | 0:27:36 | |
They were convinced the obvious lushness of the rainforest was due to rich soils. | 0:27:37 | 0:27:41 | |
As indeed it would have been in the temperate forests of Europe. | 0:27:41 | 0:27:45 | |
So, they cut and burned vast tracts of forest in an attempt to create farmland. | 0:27:45 | 0:27:52 | |
However, this cleared land only supports crops for a few years. | 0:27:52 | 0:27:57 | |
Once the trees are gone, the soil has no protection from the equatorial rains, | 0:27:57 | 0:28:01 | |
which quickly wash away the ash and the few remaining nutrients | 0:28:01 | 0:28:05 | |
and the blazing sun desiccates the essential bacteria and fungi. | 0:28:05 | 0:28:09 | |
It is an ecological disaster. | 0:28:09 | 0:28:11 | |
This is now clearly understood, | 0:28:15 | 0:28:18 | |
but nevertheless still continues to happen. | 0:28:18 | 0:28:21 | |
Exhausted land is quickly abandoned and virgin rainforest once again | 0:28:21 | 0:28:25 | |
sacrificed at the altar of ignorant greed. | 0:28:25 | 0:28:29 | |
However, a new discovery offers an ember of hope | 0:28:29 | 0:28:33 | |
that could revolutionise the way the rainforest is farmed in the future, | 0:28:33 | 0:28:37 | |
working with the forest to create sustainable fertility. | 0:28:37 | 0:28:40 | |
Recent science has shown a very, very small percentage of Amazonia, | 0:28:40 | 0:28:47 | |
about 0.2%, but which still amounts to 50,000 sq km, | 0:28:47 | 0:28:52 | |
is composed of pockets of very rich black soil. | 0:28:52 | 0:28:58 | |
How on earth did that get there? | 0:28:58 | 0:29:00 | |
This deep, black soil, known as 'terra preta', is extremely fertile | 0:29:03 | 0:29:08 | |
and, because it contains pottery shards and organic matter dating back to prehistoric times, | 0:29:08 | 0:29:13 | |
scientists believe it is man-made, | 0:29:13 | 0:29:15 | |
built up artificially over thousands of years. | 0:29:15 | 0:29:18 | |
And the key to its fertility lies in the charcoal, | 0:29:18 | 0:29:22 | |
which can retain nutrients. | 0:29:22 | 0:29:24 | |
These then remain stable in the soil and don't leach away. | 0:29:24 | 0:29:28 | |
The furious heat from conventional slash and burn | 0:29:28 | 0:29:31 | |
quickly reduces plant material into ash | 0:29:31 | 0:29:34 | |
which leaches its goodness almost immediately. | 0:29:34 | 0:29:37 | |
But charcoal, made from a much gentler smouldering fire lit in the rainy season, | 0:29:37 | 0:29:41 | |
acts as a sponge for nutrients, holding them in the soil. | 0:29:41 | 0:29:44 | |
It's thought native Amazonians used this system long before settlers arrived | 0:29:44 | 0:29:49 | |
to transform some of the world's worst soil into some of the best. | 0:29:49 | 0:29:53 | |
There are still some tribes that practise similar techniques. | 0:29:56 | 0:30:00 | |
The Satere-Mawe tribe use the rainforest for all their daily needs, | 0:30:00 | 0:30:05 | |
and Bacu and her village want to share their knowledge | 0:30:05 | 0:30:07 | |
and show visitors her ancestors' way of growing things. | 0:30:07 | 0:30:11 | |
Mo is taking me to meet her because, for generations, | 0:30:13 | 0:30:16 | |
this tribe has been using fire to create compost | 0:30:16 | 0:30:20 | |
and to cultivate their poor rainforest soils. | 0:30:20 | 0:30:22 | |
Hello. | 0:30:25 | 0:30:27 | |
So what's she doing here? | 0:30:28 | 0:30:31 | |
She's using the old spoiled wood, it's not the good wood, | 0:30:35 | 0:30:39 | |
the spoiled wood, to make fire. | 0:30:39 | 0:30:42 | |
She takes the ashes for the plants to grow all the plants she needs. | 0:30:42 | 0:30:48 | |
Is she just putting the ash straight on, | 0:30:48 | 0:30:52 | |
or she is adding any other the soil? | 0:30:52 | 0:30:54 | |
SHE SPEAKS PORTUGUESE | 0:30:54 | 0:30:57 | |
The ashes she's using there, she gets some of the dead wood, | 0:31:02 | 0:31:05 | |
and puts them together, she says, not to get too strong, too acid. | 0:31:05 | 0:31:10 | |
I see. So it's just when she plants the plant. | 0:31:10 | 0:31:13 | |
SHE SPEAKS PORTUGUESE | 0:31:15 | 0:31:18 | |
When the plant is ugly, she has to do that over! | 0:31:20 | 0:31:23 | |
So you make it a good plant by using it. | 0:31:23 | 0:31:26 | |
Bacu slowly burns the mixture of dead wood and organic matter, | 0:31:26 | 0:31:31 | |
like her ancestors did, to create a soil conditioner | 0:31:31 | 0:31:34 | |
to propagate and raise healthy plants | 0:31:34 | 0:31:36 | |
in her small garden, year in, year out. | 0:31:36 | 0:31:39 | |
Can I see how she uses it in the garden? | 0:31:42 | 0:31:46 | |
THEY SPEAK PORTUGUESE | 0:31:46 | 0:31:51 | |
There is wood from the palm. | 0:31:51 | 0:31:54 | |
But she brings a different one to mix. | 0:31:54 | 0:31:56 | |
And then she says she's going to plant. | 0:31:56 | 0:31:59 | |
This is a thing that she uses for worms. | 0:31:59 | 0:32:04 | |
If you have a parasite in your intestines. | 0:32:04 | 0:32:07 | |
So she's taking a cutting? | 0:32:07 | 0:32:09 | |
Just a branch. She breaks a branch. | 0:32:10 | 0:32:12 | |
But she puts a little earth in here before she breaks, | 0:32:14 | 0:32:17 | |
so they have little roots already. | 0:32:17 | 0:32:19 | |
It makes roots presumably because it's so warm and moist, it wants to make roots. | 0:32:19 | 0:32:24 | |
Tell me, how long ago did she break that branch off? | 0:32:24 | 0:32:27 | |
Two days ago. | 0:32:30 | 0:32:31 | |
And it's started to put roots out already, in the air, with just a little soil round it. | 0:32:31 | 0:32:36 | |
From where I live, that is incredible. | 0:32:36 | 0:32:39 | |
There are very few plants that will do that. | 0:32:39 | 0:32:42 | |
Este esta de marejar e para xampu e tambem para criancas... | 0:32:42 | 0:32:47 | |
I understood "shampoo". And this one? | 0:32:47 | 0:32:49 | |
E remedio para gente que fala muito. | 0:32:49 | 0:32:52 | |
This is a plant she calls "shut-up". | 0:32:52 | 0:32:57 | |
This is to give to for people who talk too much. | 0:32:57 | 0:33:01 | |
Very useful plant! A very, very useful plant, that! | 0:33:01 | 0:33:05 | |
Before I go, I have the obligatory song and dance put on for visiting tourists. | 0:33:05 | 0:33:11 | |
But Bacu's intimacy with the forest is real and profound, | 0:33:11 | 0:33:15 | |
and not just a tourist display. | 0:33:15 | 0:33:16 | |
And her age-old knowledge, handed on to the children, | 0:33:16 | 0:33:21 | |
holds hope for the sustainable future of the rainforest. | 0:33:21 | 0:33:25 | |
Today has been really interesting because it's shown how quickly | 0:33:45 | 0:33:52 | |
you can lose that incredible knowledge that people have. | 0:33:52 | 0:33:56 | |
And if we undervalue that, and somehow regard it as worthless | 0:33:56 | 0:34:02 | |
once we've got mechanisation or industrialisation, | 0:34:02 | 0:34:05 | |
all the skills that you need to care and to work with a place | 0:34:05 | 0:34:10 | |
as complex as the jungle, go alarmingly quickly. | 0:34:10 | 0:34:14 | |
It's scary how we've lost what we need | 0:34:16 | 0:34:20 | |
to live in harmony with a place like this. | 0:34:20 | 0:34:22 | |
And yet it doesn't need us, of course, it doesn't need us at all. | 0:34:22 | 0:34:26 | |
It's time to end my all-too brief visit to the Amazon | 0:34:31 | 0:34:35 | |
and go to a landscape that couldn't be more different. | 0:34:35 | 0:34:39 | |
I'm heading south to Argentina now, | 0:34:42 | 0:34:45 | |
to see how gardening was crucial in enabling European settlers | 0:34:45 | 0:34:48 | |
to take root in a very inhospitable region. | 0:34:48 | 0:34:51 | |
Argentina runs down from the Andes | 0:35:01 | 0:35:03 | |
to the windswept featureless plains of the Pampas. | 0:35:03 | 0:35:08 | |
I'm starting my visit in the country's elegant capital, | 0:35:08 | 0:35:12 | |
Buenos Aires. | 0:35:12 | 0:35:13 | |
The name "Argentina" is derived from the Latin for silver, "argentum", | 0:35:18 | 0:35:23 | |
and was given by Spanish conquerors in 1524 | 0:35:23 | 0:35:25 | |
who claimed that the mountains were rich in the precious metal. | 0:35:25 | 0:35:29 | |
This sparked a silver rush and, over the course of the next 300 years, | 0:35:29 | 0:35:33 | |
Argentina saw a mass migration of southern Europeans in search of a better life. | 0:35:33 | 0:35:38 | |
The city does feel to me as though it's got a European feel to it. | 0:35:42 | 0:35:48 | |
It's hard to place exactly but there is something distinctly European. | 0:35:48 | 0:35:52 | |
And I think it's as much to do with the avenues and the parks and the trees. | 0:35:52 | 0:35:57 | |
And the responsibility for those is directly down to one man. | 0:35:57 | 0:36:02 | |
The parks and broad tree-lined avenues of Buenos Aires | 0:36:04 | 0:36:07 | |
were designed by a French landscape architect called Charles Thays. | 0:36:07 | 0:36:11 | |
In 1889, when he was 40, he came here on a visit, | 0:36:11 | 0:36:16 | |
fell in love with the country and spent the rest of his life here. | 0:36:16 | 0:36:20 | |
It's directly thanks to him that the modern city has inherited | 0:36:21 | 0:36:26 | |
the green spaces and sheltering trees which it benefits from today, | 0:36:26 | 0:36:31 | |
as I learnt from his grandson and namesake, Carlos Thays. | 0:36:31 | 0:36:35 | |
TRANSLATION: He learnt the art of landscape design in Europe, | 0:36:35 | 0:36:40 | |
and saw the cities of London and Paris were tree-lined, and full of parks. | 0:36:40 | 0:36:46 | |
There were absolutely no trees and parks in Buenos Aires when he arrived, | 0:36:46 | 0:36:52 | |
so he planted 1.2 million trees in the streets of Buenos Aires. | 0:36:52 | 0:36:57 | |
Although the city has a distinctly European feel, | 0:36:58 | 0:37:02 | |
the trees that Charles Thays planted | 0:37:02 | 0:37:04 | |
were often species native to South America. | 0:37:04 | 0:37:07 | |
And none is more magnificent than this beautiful giant. | 0:37:07 | 0:37:10 | |
This is one of the most wonderful trees I've ever seen. | 0:37:16 | 0:37:19 | |
It's a gomero, rubber tree. | 0:37:19 | 0:37:21 | |
Apart from the fact that it's enormous, | 0:37:21 | 0:37:24 | |
it has great significance because it was the first tree, | 0:37:24 | 0:37:27 | |
apparently, planted here in Buenos Aires. | 0:37:27 | 0:37:30 | |
And, in the 200 years since it was planted, it has become vast. | 0:37:30 | 0:37:34 | |
In the middle of this incredibly noisy, busy city, | 0:37:34 | 0:37:38 | |
it's a symbolic stately presence. | 0:37:38 | 0:37:42 | |
The influence of Charles Thays's tree-planting | 0:37:45 | 0:37:48 | |
can be felt throughout the city, | 0:37:48 | 0:37:51 | |
but it also extended into the countryside. | 0:37:51 | 0:37:54 | |
So tomorrow, I am going to head out to wilderness of the Pampas. | 0:37:54 | 0:37:57 | |
The open, even bleak, landscape of the Pampas, | 0:38:08 | 0:38:11 | |
is the territory of the beef barons. | 0:38:11 | 0:38:13 | |
It is where European settlers turned these wind-battered but fertile flatlands | 0:38:13 | 0:38:19 | |
into a very successful rural economy, | 0:38:19 | 0:38:21 | |
based around huge cattle ranches called "estancias". | 0:38:21 | 0:38:24 | |
As they prospered, the owners of the estancias | 0:38:28 | 0:38:31 | |
built themselves impressive houses and grounds. | 0:38:31 | 0:38:34 | |
I've come to see Estancia Dos Talas, a remnant, albeit somewhat reduced, | 0:38:34 | 0:38:39 | |
of a golden age when this European elite transformed Argentina. | 0:38:39 | 0:38:44 | |
Estancia Dos Talas was built in 1858 by Pedro Luro | 0:38:54 | 0:38:58 | |
who came to the country at 17 without a penny to his name. | 0:38:58 | 0:39:01 | |
But through a combination of graft and guile, | 0:39:01 | 0:39:04 | |
became one of the most important landowners in Argentina. | 0:39:04 | 0:39:07 | |
The estancia came into the family by the most extraordinary route | 0:39:13 | 0:39:17 | |
because Don Pedro Luro was offered the job of planting trees. | 0:39:17 | 0:39:22 | |
And he was going to be paid in land. | 0:39:22 | 0:39:24 | |
So many trees, you get so much land. | 0:39:24 | 0:39:25 | |
The owner then went away to Europe for three years and, in his absence, | 0:39:25 | 0:39:29 | |
Don Pedro planted trees like a man possessed. | 0:39:29 | 0:39:32 | |
Tens of thousands of trees. | 0:39:32 | 0:39:33 | |
And when we came back, the owner found the only way he could pay him | 0:39:33 | 0:39:37 | |
was by giving him all the land. | 0:39:37 | 0:39:38 | |
The case went to court, Don Pedro won and he found himself with 17,000 hectares of the Pampas. | 0:39:38 | 0:39:45 | |
This is a pigeon house. | 0:40:01 | 0:40:02 | |
And every self-respecting big house or farm house | 0:40:02 | 0:40:08 | |
had a pigeon house in England. | 0:40:08 | 0:40:09 | |
But it's a European thing. | 0:40:09 | 0:40:11 | |
And apparently the stone, | 0:40:11 | 0:40:13 | |
these ledges for the pigeons to go on, was brought in from Europe. | 0:40:13 | 0:40:17 | |
It's old red sandstone which is what my house in England is made out of! | 0:40:17 | 0:40:22 | |
It doesn't exist in South America. | 0:40:22 | 0:40:24 | |
It was all shipped over here. | 0:40:24 | 0:40:26 | |
And the most ornate fabulous building, occupied now by bees. | 0:40:26 | 0:40:33 | |
What a lovely building. | 0:40:33 | 0:40:35 | |
At the start of the 20th century, Buenos Aires's top landscape architect, | 0:40:36 | 0:40:40 | |
who was of course Charles Thays, | 0:40:40 | 0:40:42 | |
was commissioned to draw up plans for a 75-acre park. | 0:40:42 | 0:40:46 | |
The estancia has remained in the same family, | 0:40:46 | 0:40:49 | |
and Sara de Elizalde, the current chatelaine, | 0:40:49 | 0:40:51 | |
showed me Thays's original plans for the design of the garden. | 0:40:51 | 0:40:55 | |
This is a highly fashionable design in June 1908. | 0:40:55 | 0:41:01 | |
Did he oversee the execution of it? | 0:41:01 | 0:41:06 | |
TRANSLATION: When Charles Thays started to supervise the work | 0:41:06 | 0:41:10 | |
he came here and saw that many trees had already been planted. | 0:41:10 | 0:41:15 | |
So, he designed the garden to incorporate those that were already here. | 0:41:15 | 0:41:20 | |
It must be quite a responsibility to feel you have | 0:41:20 | 0:41:24 | |
this exceptional design and garden that it is your duty to look after? | 0:41:24 | 0:41:32 | |
Well, my husband Luis feels that it is a legacy | 0:41:32 | 0:41:38 | |
to maintain the whole estancia, but especially the park. | 0:41:38 | 0:41:41 | |
It is something he has in his blood | 0:41:41 | 0:41:44 | |
and he suffers a lot whenever there is a storm and a tree falls down. | 0:41:44 | 0:41:49 | |
He fights hard to keep everything in good condition. | 0:41:49 | 0:41:52 | |
To appreciate this vast garden, Sara's husband, Luis de Elizalde, | 0:41:52 | 0:41:57 | |
suggested that I explore his estate on horseback. | 0:41:57 | 0:42:00 | |
I don't often get the chance to ride, | 0:42:02 | 0:42:05 | |
but there is no better way to get round | 0:42:05 | 0:42:07 | |
and see some of the 1,400 hectares, or 3,500 acres, of the estancia. | 0:42:07 | 0:42:13 | |
Things like this avenue, the scale of it, is extraordinary. | 0:42:13 | 0:42:18 | |
-And these trees are what? -Casuarina. | 0:42:18 | 0:42:21 | |
The beautiful thing of these trees | 0:42:21 | 0:42:24 | |
is that, when the wind blows, it produces the sound of the sea. | 0:42:24 | 0:42:29 | |
I know, I heard it this morning! | 0:42:29 | 0:42:31 | |
But I didn't realise it was these trees causing it. How fabulous. | 0:42:31 | 0:42:35 | |
I imagine that on the Pampas | 0:42:35 | 0:42:37 | |
the original settlers must have felt so exposed. | 0:42:37 | 0:42:41 | |
Yes, they had only the tala, but the tala doesn't grow over six metres. | 0:42:41 | 0:42:46 | |
-A tree, but a small tree. -A small tree. | 0:42:46 | 0:42:48 | |
So these were planted as windbreaks, | 0:42:48 | 0:42:51 | |
and obviously very beautiful avenues. | 0:42:51 | 0:42:53 | |
Was it practicality first and then beauty? | 0:42:53 | 0:42:57 | |
They loved planting long avenues, and wide, | 0:42:57 | 0:43:01 | |
just to make them important. | 0:43:01 | 0:43:04 | |
The whole park is carved into these great avenues, dividing the woods into blocks. | 0:43:06 | 0:43:11 | |
Some have clearly been clipped but are now grown out so they have become dramatic tunnels. | 0:43:11 | 0:43:16 | |
They also provide vital protection on this completely exposed landscape. | 0:43:16 | 0:43:22 | |
Charles Thays's park can't possibly be maintained today in the style | 0:43:24 | 0:43:29 | |
that needed 16 gardeners to tend it in its pre-war heyday. | 0:43:29 | 0:43:34 | |
But it has matured to become a rambling, overgrown but magical garden | 0:43:34 | 0:43:39 | |
dominated by more than 50 species of superb trees, | 0:43:39 | 0:43:43 | |
including an avenue of dead but still magnificent elms. | 0:43:43 | 0:43:48 | |
It's big and it's flat. | 0:43:54 | 0:43:56 | |
Immeasurably, literally immeasurably. | 0:43:56 | 0:44:00 | |
One big field. | 0:44:00 | 0:44:02 | |
Between the fences, we are talking about 60 hectares here. | 0:44:03 | 0:44:07 | |
So each field is about 60 hectares? | 0:44:07 | 0:44:09 | |
-60, 70. From 100 to 60. -Right. | 0:44:09 | 0:44:13 | |
So the Pampas has been like this forever, | 0:44:13 | 0:44:16 | |
but presumably the grazing affects the grass and what's grown here. | 0:44:16 | 0:44:20 | |
If it's left ungrazed, how does it turn? | 0:44:20 | 0:44:24 | |
Because trees don't grow on it. | 0:44:24 | 0:44:26 | |
Yes, but grass does. | 0:44:26 | 0:44:29 | |
Because it's the soil is so good, so good that we never fertilise this. | 0:44:29 | 0:44:35 | |
And the grass just keeps growing and growing. | 0:44:35 | 0:44:37 | |
-That's why the Pampas, it's mainly for cattle. -So it's cattle. | 0:44:37 | 0:44:42 | |
Cattle, cattle and cattle! | 0:44:42 | 0:44:44 | |
There are a few trees to be found growing naturally on the Pampas, | 0:44:50 | 0:44:54 | |
but they are small, and very tough. | 0:44:54 | 0:44:56 | |
Anything much bigger than a blade of grass | 0:44:56 | 0:44:58 | |
has difficulty surviving because of the constant wind. | 0:44:58 | 0:45:01 | |
It's not hard to see why these vast shelter belts | 0:45:01 | 0:45:04 | |
were planted around the edge of the park. | 0:45:04 | 0:45:06 | |
The last storm, Katrina, went through New Orleans. | 0:45:09 | 0:45:15 | |
And the tail of that wind, if you look on the map, | 0:45:15 | 0:45:18 | |
came through and put them all down, at once. | 0:45:18 | 0:45:21 | |
Pomp, pomp, pomp... | 0:45:21 | 0:45:24 | |
You must have come down the next morning and... | 0:45:24 | 0:45:27 | |
140 km the wind. | 0:45:27 | 0:45:30 | |
Really? | 0:45:30 | 0:45:31 | |
Do you feel you need to replant it, to recreate...? | 0:45:33 | 0:45:37 | |
Of course! | 0:45:37 | 0:45:39 | |
If God gives me the time, I'll do it! | 0:45:39 | 0:45:41 | |
The reason that I came to Argentina was to see the Pampas. | 0:46:05 | 0:46:09 | |
And of course, I accept there much more to the place than that. | 0:46:09 | 0:46:13 | |
But I really wanted to see how you could garden | 0:46:13 | 0:46:17 | |
in a place of such vast, flat almost emptiness. | 0:46:17 | 0:46:21 | |
Charles Thays did not shut out the Pampas completely. | 0:46:21 | 0:46:26 | |
He carefully plotted sunset and sunrise and left openings | 0:46:26 | 0:46:29 | |
in his planting to view them and make them part of the garden. | 0:46:29 | 0:46:33 | |
And the existence of this huge garden is, I think, | 0:46:33 | 0:46:37 | |
a defiant expression of mastery over this fertile yet intimidating space, | 0:46:37 | 0:46:44 | |
imposing, for a while at least, a European culture upon it. | 0:46:44 | 0:46:47 | |
But it's time to leave the Argentinean Pampas | 0:46:50 | 0:46:54 | |
and continue on to the final stage of my journey, | 0:46:54 | 0:46:57 | |
to a country of startling contrasts - Chile. | 0:46:57 | 0:47:00 | |
Chile is 18 times longer than it is wide. | 0:47:04 | 0:47:09 | |
It has 4,300 miles of coastline and is 180 miles across. | 0:47:09 | 0:47:15 | |
The Andes flank the entire length of the country, | 0:47:20 | 0:47:24 | |
and the arid plains of the Atacama desert seal the north. | 0:47:24 | 0:47:28 | |
To the south are the ice flows of Patagonia. | 0:47:28 | 0:47:32 | |
I want to find out how Chilean gardeners are inspired by such dramatic backdrops. | 0:47:32 | 0:47:38 | |
I suppose if you got enough time the best way to see this country | 0:47:38 | 0:47:41 | |
would be to go from the far north right down to the frozen south, | 0:47:41 | 0:47:45 | |
but I've decided to take a slice across the country, | 0:47:45 | 0:47:48 | |
from the Andes to the Pacific. | 0:47:48 | 0:47:50 | |
Botanically speaking, Chile is like an island | 0:47:53 | 0:47:55 | |
with new plant material unable to enter from any direction, | 0:47:55 | 0:47:59 | |
and it has such extreme environments | 0:47:59 | 0:48:01 | |
that an incredible range of endemic plants thrive here. | 0:48:01 | 0:48:04 | |
The Chilean palm is one of these. | 0:48:06 | 0:48:09 | |
Their trunks shrink and bulge with age as they put all their energy into producing fruit. | 0:48:09 | 0:48:14 | |
They're also extremely slow growing and live to a great age. | 0:48:14 | 0:48:18 | |
This veteran is thought to be the oldest palm tree in the world | 0:48:18 | 0:48:21 | |
and is more than 1,000 years old. | 0:48:21 | 0:48:24 | |
But the palm was almost exploited to extinction because of its sap, | 0:48:26 | 0:48:32 | |
which was extracted and then boiled up to make syrup. | 0:48:32 | 0:48:35 | |
This is illegal now, and today the palm is the national emblem of Chile. | 0:48:35 | 0:48:40 | |
Wet! | 0:48:54 | 0:48:55 | |
THUNDER RUMBLES | 0:48:55 | 0:48:57 | |
Near the Campana National Park, a local hacienda has been trying | 0:48:57 | 0:49:02 | |
to protect the Chilean palm and increase their numbers. | 0:49:02 | 0:49:05 | |
They collect syrup, but only if a tree falls naturally, | 0:49:05 | 0:49:08 | |
and the owner has invited me over to try this for myself. | 0:49:08 | 0:49:11 | |
Salud. | 0:49:17 | 0:49:19 | |
I hope it's not medicine. | 0:49:19 | 0:49:20 | |
Es muy dulce, pero muy rica. | 0:49:22 | 0:49:25 | |
As they say where I live, "something different". | 0:49:29 | 0:49:32 | |
It is like drinking treacle. | 0:49:32 | 0:49:35 | |
It's a very big glass, but I will endeavour. | 0:49:37 | 0:49:41 | |
Charles Darwin visited Chile on the voyage of the Beagle, | 0:49:49 | 0:49:53 | |
and he noted the Chilean palm | 0:49:53 | 0:49:55 | |
and he said he thought it was a remarkably ugly tree. | 0:49:55 | 0:49:58 | |
Well, each to their own, but I think he was wrong. | 0:49:58 | 0:50:01 | |
I think there's something really splendid about them, | 0:50:01 | 0:50:04 | |
and I love these great elephant's feet of the trucks. | 0:50:04 | 0:50:08 | |
It may be not worth travelling in the Beagle round the world | 0:50:08 | 0:50:12 | |
just to see these but certainly worth a stop-off. | 0:50:12 | 0:50:14 | |
At last the rain stops, and I get back on the road. | 0:50:20 | 0:50:24 | |
One of the real treats of travelling | 0:50:40 | 0:50:42 | |
is when you come across plants you've nurtured in your garden growing wild, | 0:50:42 | 0:50:46 | |
and these eschscholtzias are just spilling down the hillside. | 0:50:46 | 0:50:50 | |
They're everywhere! | 0:50:50 | 0:50:51 | |
And they're just as exotic as something you'd find in the jungle. | 0:50:51 | 0:50:55 | |
These eschscholtzias are not native to Chile, | 0:50:57 | 0:51:00 | |
but they do love it here and have naturalised from their home in California. | 0:51:00 | 0:51:05 | |
For my final garden of this trip, | 0:51:11 | 0:51:13 | |
I'm bound for Los Vilos on the Pacific coast | 0:51:13 | 0:51:16 | |
to meet a Chilean designer whose gardens celebrate the native flora of his homeland. | 0:51:16 | 0:51:22 | |
It's by a man called Juan Grimm, Chile's leading garden designer, | 0:51:22 | 0:51:26 | |
very well known in South America. | 0:51:26 | 0:51:28 | |
He's modern, he's contemporary. | 0:51:28 | 0:51:30 | |
The site is supposed to be really dramatic. | 0:51:30 | 0:51:32 | |
And I know that he's passionate about using Chilean plants, | 0:51:32 | 0:51:36 | |
of combining the landscape and house with indigenous species. | 0:51:36 | 0:51:40 | |
The first thing that is striking about Juan Grimm's garden | 0:51:56 | 0:51:59 | |
is it's hard to see where the garden begins or, indeed, where it ends. | 0:51:59 | 0:52:04 | |
There are certainly no showy displays of flowers | 0:52:13 | 0:52:16 | |
and no neatly defined borders, | 0:52:16 | 0:52:18 | |
just an infinitely sophisticated use of local plants, | 0:52:18 | 0:52:21 | |
gently coerced into colonising this rocky site, | 0:52:21 | 0:52:25 | |
which tumbles into the Pacific. | 0:52:25 | 0:52:27 | |
When I was a child, I really remember the sensuality, | 0:52:30 | 0:52:34 | |
how the landscape | 0:52:34 | 0:52:36 | |
touched the leaves, touched the rocks. | 0:52:36 | 0:52:40 | |
I loved that when I was a child. | 0:52:40 | 0:52:41 | |
The garden swells up from the very edge of the sea | 0:52:43 | 0:52:46 | |
in an unbroken, flowing progression lapping around the house. | 0:52:46 | 0:52:50 | |
Every part of the landscape, including the sky and sea, | 0:52:50 | 0:52:54 | |
seemed to be part of the garden. | 0:52:54 | 0:52:56 | |
I'm interested in following this idea | 0:52:57 | 0:52:59 | |
of where a garden begins and ends. | 0:52:59 | 0:53:02 | |
How do you phase the garden out into a big landscape like this sea | 0:53:02 | 0:53:08 | |
-or into woods or whatever? -Mm-hm. | 0:53:08 | 0:53:10 | |
Your sight doesn't have limits. | 0:53:10 | 0:53:13 | |
Even though it's a small space, | 0:53:13 | 0:53:16 | |
you can borrow the tree from your neighbour. | 0:53:16 | 0:53:20 | |
Or in this case, you don't feel where the sight ends. | 0:53:20 | 0:53:25 | |
-So, you're looking to use the landscape? -Absolutely. | 0:53:25 | 0:53:28 | |
The landscape says to you what you have to do, | 0:53:28 | 0:53:31 | |
and that's the important thing. | 0:53:31 | 0:53:33 | |
That covered wall looks, actually, remarkably like a clipped hedge. | 0:53:48 | 0:53:51 | |
Uh-huh, yes. That's the idea. | 0:53:51 | 0:53:55 | |
I left this window here in the hedge because this plant was here | 0:53:55 | 0:54:01 | |
but was very small, but in ten years it has grown. | 0:54:01 | 0:54:05 | |
And I like to see the landscape very far from here. | 0:54:05 | 0:54:10 | |
I think it's very important to have references for the landscape. | 0:54:10 | 0:54:14 | |
-And fundamentally, you use native plants here. -Native plants. | 0:54:14 | 0:54:17 | |
All of these are native plants. | 0:54:17 | 0:54:19 | |
They resist the wind and the salt of the ocean. | 0:54:19 | 0:54:23 | |
It must have been quite a challenge making the steps, | 0:54:26 | 0:54:30 | |
-getting a route through the garden. -Uh-huh. | 0:54:30 | 0:54:33 | |
Yes, and I think it was very important | 0:54:33 | 0:54:38 | |
not to see the stairs from the house, | 0:54:38 | 0:54:41 | |
and that's why I plant all the shrubs. | 0:54:41 | 0:54:43 | |
How long did it take until the shrubs | 0:54:43 | 0:54:46 | |
formed the bulk and the volume that you needed? | 0:54:46 | 0:54:50 | |
Five years, more or less. | 0:54:50 | 0:54:52 | |
And the swimming pool. Was this part of your original plan? | 0:54:52 | 0:54:55 | |
I always wanted to have a part of the ocean, like an eye of the ocean. | 0:54:55 | 0:55:00 | |
It makes you conscious with the house. | 0:55:00 | 0:55:02 | |
So looking back up at the house... | 0:55:02 | 0:55:04 | |
..you've got the hard lines and then softness, | 0:55:06 | 0:55:09 | |
just everything organic in shape and form. | 0:55:09 | 0:55:11 | |
The house is inside the plants. | 0:55:11 | 0:55:14 | |
It emerges from the rock and from the plants. | 0:55:14 | 0:55:17 | |
So the house is growing with the plants. | 0:55:17 | 0:55:20 | |
To what extent have you planted up the rocks? | 0:55:20 | 0:55:22 | |
All these plants near the swimming pool, I plant them, | 0:55:22 | 0:55:25 | |
and some of those I planted around there because it was very dry there. | 0:55:25 | 0:55:30 | |
But all the plants that grow in the rocks, they grow spontaneously. | 0:55:30 | 0:55:34 | |
I tried to be more natural. | 0:55:34 | 0:55:36 | |
All these flowers you see here, the alstromerias, | 0:55:36 | 0:55:40 | |
when I watered this part of the garden, | 0:55:40 | 0:55:43 | |
the seeds came here and they grew here. | 0:55:43 | 0:55:47 | |
I love the way the garden gently and without any self-consciousness | 0:55:47 | 0:55:52 | |
goes completely to nature, completely wild, | 0:55:52 | 0:55:56 | |
in the space of, what, ten metres? | 0:55:56 | 0:55:59 | |
I like how the plants are very green, | 0:55:59 | 0:56:04 | |
and the green starts to disappear here, and the rocks the other way. | 0:56:04 | 0:56:08 | |
Too much rocks and the rocks disappear. | 0:56:08 | 0:56:11 | |
Presumably that relationship between the green and the rocks | 0:56:11 | 0:56:14 | |
and the ground changes all the time. | 0:56:14 | 0:56:16 | |
Do you manage that or do you let it happen? | 0:56:16 | 0:56:19 | |
Well, just a little. I put some plants. | 0:56:19 | 0:56:22 | |
You see those yellow one there? | 0:56:22 | 0:56:25 | |
That's a native plant. I put it there. | 0:56:25 | 0:56:27 | |
And some of the shrubs also. | 0:56:27 | 0:56:29 | |
So minimal intervention, minimal gardening, for maximum effect. | 0:56:29 | 0:56:34 | |
That's the idea. | 0:56:34 | 0:56:35 | |
You know, I think Juan Grimm's garden is one of | 0:56:38 | 0:56:40 | |
the most beautiful and brilliantly conceived that I have ever seen. | 0:56:40 | 0:56:45 | |
It is a glorious masterpiece. | 0:56:45 | 0:56:48 | |
And more than that, I'm sure that his use of native plants, | 0:56:48 | 0:56:52 | |
working with the landscape rather than trying to dominate it, | 0:56:52 | 0:56:55 | |
is the key for any sustainable future. | 0:56:55 | 0:56:58 | |
This journey has shown me fascinating gardens, | 0:57:01 | 0:57:04 | |
created in such incredibly diverse natural conditions, | 0:57:04 | 0:57:07 | |
that you can hardly believe that the same landmass can harbour such varied places. | 0:57:07 | 0:57:12 | |
But in all those places, | 0:57:15 | 0:57:18 | |
you have this common desire to create something from nature | 0:57:18 | 0:57:23 | |
that is domesticated and yet in tune with it. | 0:57:23 | 0:57:26 | |
And I think this is the really extraordinary, exciting thing about South America, | 0:57:26 | 0:57:30 | |
that it has very recently realised that it must work with its surroundings respectfully, | 0:57:30 | 0:57:38 | |
and yet what it does have is that intense enthusiasm and creativity which is very, very exciting. | 0:57:38 | 0:57:44 | |
This has been my first trip here, but it won't be my last. | 0:57:44 | 0:57:48 | |
My next journey will take me across the Atlantic | 0:57:52 | 0:57:55 | |
to see what the United States of America is doing | 0:57:55 | 0:57:58 | |
with all its wealth and power in the garden. | 0:57:58 | 0:58:02 | |
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd | 0:58:12 | 0:58:15 | |
Email [email protected] | 0:58:15 | 0:58:18 |