0:00:02 > 0:00:07I believe that a really good way to understand a culture is through its gardens.
0:00:07 > 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 - the Taj Mahal, the Alhambra.
0:00:17 > 0:00:22And I'm also challenging my idea of what a garden actually is.
0:00:22 > 0:00:25So I'm visiting gardens that float on the Amazon,
0:00:25 > 0:00:27a strange fantasy in the jungle,
0:00:27 > 0:00:30as well as the private homes of great designers,
0:00:30 > 0:00:33and the desert flowering in a garden.
0:00:33 > 0:00:37And wherever I go I shall be meeting people that share my own passion for gardens
0:00:37 > 0:00:44on my epic quest to see the world through 80 of its most fascinating and beautiful gardens.
0:01:00 > 0:01:04If you set yourself to visit 80 gardens around the world,
0:01:04 > 0:01:06then you have to come
0:01:06 > 0:01:10to the richest and most powerful nation in the world.
0:01:10 > 0:01:14America is a country that has been built on optimism,
0:01:14 > 0:01:16amazingly diverse natural resources
0:01:16 > 0:01:19and an enthusiasm that, in my experience,
0:01:19 > 0:01:23empowers it to tackle anything with a real sense of creative purpose
0:01:23 > 0:01:26that is incredibly invigorating.
0:01:26 > 0:01:30And what I want to see on my journey around this vast country
0:01:30 > 0:01:35is how America takes all that wealth,
0:01:35 > 0:01:40all that incredible energy, and expresses it in the garden.
0:01:46 > 0:01:50I'm starting my journey in New York, where garden guerrillas
0:01:50 > 0:01:53are creating community gardens from derelict land.
0:01:53 > 0:01:56Then I shall travel south, to Virginia, to visit a garden
0:01:56 > 0:02:00that embodies the history and birth of the nation.
0:02:00 > 0:02:02Finally, I shall go west
0:02:02 > 0:02:05across to the other side of the continent to California,
0:02:05 > 0:02:09to see gardens touched by the glamour and glitz of show business.
0:02:18 > 0:02:22New York might be synonymous with the cityscape of Manhattan,
0:02:22 > 0:02:25but most of the state is actually very rural,
0:02:25 > 0:02:29and the upstate suburban towns have a very different feel
0:02:29 > 0:02:32to the intense, edgy energy of the city.
0:02:44 > 0:02:50My first garden of this trip is right down at the end of Long Island, in the Hamptons,
0:02:50 > 0:02:56and it's the LongHouse which is the home and garden of the textile designer and weaver, Jack Larsen.
0:02:56 > 0:02:58Now, he is hugely successful,
0:02:58 > 0:03:00and what I want to see is how someone
0:03:00 > 0:03:04who is very successful in one field applies it to their garden.
0:03:04 > 0:03:07It's a garden that self consciously nurtures the other arts.
0:03:07 > 0:03:10In fact, it's even a garden as a gallery.
0:03:10 > 0:03:14Now, nothing could be more different from European gardens,
0:03:14 > 0:03:16and that's why I've come here.
0:03:17 > 0:03:20Larsen began the garden in the mid 1980s,
0:03:20 > 0:03:22expressly as a place to display works of art
0:03:22 > 0:03:26with an eclectic mix of cultures and styles, which, paradoxically,
0:03:26 > 0:03:30seems to me to be a good way to try and pin down some kind of
0:03:30 > 0:03:32American culture and style.
0:03:44 > 0:03:46This is not what I'd expected at all.
0:03:53 > 0:03:58The gardens house temporary and permanent installations from Larsen himself
0:03:58 > 0:04:01and a variety of established artists, like Dale Chihuly,
0:04:01 > 0:04:04who was responsible for this blown-glass sculpture.
0:04:05 > 0:04:06Ooh art!
0:04:10 > 0:04:12Dunno.
0:04:12 > 0:04:14Dunno about that.
0:04:18 > 0:04:19Oh!
0:04:22 > 0:04:23I love this.
0:04:27 > 0:04:33I didn't realise it was so self-consciously and up front a sort of display of artwork.
0:04:39 > 0:04:42Most contemporary sculpture
0:04:42 > 0:04:44is best in the garden.
0:04:44 > 0:04:48It's best in the open air, where you get strong highlight and shadow.
0:04:48 > 0:04:55The changing of different weathers and so forth, times of the day,
0:04:55 > 0:04:58enlivens surfaces that you don't get
0:04:58 > 0:05:00in a museum or gallery,
0:05:00 > 0:05:07and that the organic textural backdrop is kind to these hard forms.
0:05:09 > 0:05:13One thing that I find very attractive
0:05:13 > 0:05:18is that one can be rather spontaneous in gardens.
0:05:18 > 0:05:24I'm a fabric designer, and a design takes at least a year,
0:05:24 > 0:05:27but gardening is much more direct.
0:05:27 > 0:05:31It's like performing art, you get a feedback quickly.
0:05:31 > 0:05:33I like that.
0:05:44 > 0:05:47Isn't that beautiful?
0:05:47 > 0:05:49Isn't that wonderful?
0:05:55 > 0:05:59LongHouse covers nearly 16 acres of East Hampton Great North Woods.
0:05:59 > 0:06:02Since he acquired the land in 1975,
0:06:02 > 0:06:06Larsen has laid out major spaces as settings for plant collections,
0:06:06 > 0:06:09ornamental borders and sculpture.
0:06:09 > 0:06:12Just like a gallery, the artwork comes and goes.
0:06:17 > 0:06:20That's good.
0:06:20 > 0:06:25The rams' heads with the white birch next to it.
0:06:30 > 0:06:32How beautiful is that?
0:06:35 > 0:06:39Well, of course, you get that effect by letting a tree grow and then
0:06:39 > 0:06:46just cutting it off at the base, and it resprouts with multi stems.
0:06:46 > 0:06:50But this has done it so beautifully.
0:06:51 > 0:06:57The great thing about having artwork of any sort in a garden
0:06:57 > 0:06:59is you start to look at planting.
0:06:59 > 0:07:01You start to look at plants as works of art.
0:07:11 > 0:07:16I mean, one wonders which came first - the sculpture or the planting.
0:07:16 > 0:07:20They look like fastigiate hornbeams to me.
0:07:29 > 0:07:33As a gardener, I think the fact these are in pots is really significant.
0:07:33 > 0:07:39It means you can create avenues like this overnight, if you've got the money.
0:07:39 > 0:07:42So, the garden becomes a sort of stage set.
0:07:45 > 0:07:48One of the permanent installations is the red garden,
0:07:48 > 0:07:50which was designed by Larsen himself.
0:07:53 > 0:07:55Now, I like that very much indeed.
0:07:55 > 0:07:57I like that a lot.
0:07:57 > 0:08:01I think it works instantly, partly because it's so simple.
0:08:01 > 0:08:04Brilliant red forms and the clipped azaleas.
0:08:05 > 0:08:09What you don't see from here is the posts, diminished right down,
0:08:09 > 0:08:12to give you the sense of perspective.
0:08:16 > 0:08:19I love the elephant balancing on his trunk.
0:08:36 > 0:08:39The inspiration for the design of the house
0:08:39 > 0:08:43is taken from the seventh-century Shinto shrine at Ise in Japan,
0:08:43 > 0:08:47which is one of Larsen's favourite buildings,
0:08:47 > 0:08:53and the planting around the house is very sculptural and architectural.
0:08:53 > 0:08:55I love looking underneath buildings.
0:08:57 > 0:09:00There's more garden on the other side.
0:09:02 > 0:09:07See, that's great. That's a really, really nice view.
0:09:12 > 0:09:17This has been a fascinating beginning to this journey.
0:09:17 > 0:09:24The mixture and the abundance of everything is quite difficult to absorb.
0:09:24 > 0:09:26But it does seem that what you have here
0:09:26 > 0:09:33is an extraordinary breadth and confidence of vision.
0:09:36 > 0:09:39But Jack Larsen has a large canvas to work with,
0:09:39 > 0:09:43here in the bucolic setting of the New York State countryside.
0:09:45 > 0:09:51Now I want to go to Manhattan and see how gardens are shaping INSIDE the big city.
0:09:58 > 0:10:01New York City is a uniquely dynamic metropolis,
0:10:01 > 0:10:03with eight million inhabitants.
0:10:03 > 0:10:08Manhattan, the central island, is one of the most densely-populated places in the world.
0:10:08 > 0:10:12Any green space is valuable in every sense of the word,
0:10:12 > 0:10:15so any available land that might possibly become real estate
0:10:15 > 0:10:18rarely gets made into private gardens.
0:10:18 > 0:10:24This means for many New Yorkers, Central Park is the only green space they have access to.
0:10:24 > 0:10:29It's a huge rectangle, two and a half miles long by half a mile wide,
0:10:29 > 0:10:31right in the centre of Manhattan,
0:10:31 > 0:10:34and the most widely-visited park in the whole United States.
0:10:34 > 0:10:38It was designed in 1857 by Frederick Olmsted.
0:10:38 > 0:10:40Although it looks very naturalistic,
0:10:40 > 0:10:43it is, in fact, entirely man-made and landscaped.
0:10:51 > 0:10:54This part of Central Park has real meaning for me.
0:10:54 > 0:10:58It's Strawberry Fields, which is the memorial garden to John Lennon,
0:10:58 > 0:11:01who lived in the Dakota Building just across the road.
0:11:01 > 0:11:03Now, John Lennon was a huge hero of mine.
0:11:03 > 0:11:06He influenced me when I was growing up more than anybody else,
0:11:06 > 0:11:12so that his death, and the resulting garden, had great impact,
0:11:12 > 0:11:15and Central Park then becomes personal.
0:11:15 > 0:11:18I guess that's the way people work in vast parks.
0:11:18 > 0:11:20The whole thing is too big, it's too big an idea,
0:11:20 > 0:11:23too big geography to be any kind of garden.
0:11:23 > 0:11:27But people come and take little bits of it,
0:11:27 > 0:11:29and I think that's the way it works in a big city.
0:11:29 > 0:11:32You take bits of public space and you start to possess them,
0:11:32 > 0:11:35even though you don't literally own them,
0:11:35 > 0:11:38and what I'm really interested in doing here in Manhattan
0:11:38 > 0:11:44is seeing how public space can become personal,
0:11:44 > 0:11:48connected to an area and, therefore, be properly called a garden.
0:12:05 > 0:12:10I've come across the East River from Manhattan to Queens, to Gantry Plaza,
0:12:10 > 0:12:15which is a public space designed by the landscape architect Thomas Balsley.
0:12:15 > 0:12:19And I want to meet and talk to him to explore the possibility
0:12:19 > 0:12:23of creating public spaces that have sufficient meaning,
0:12:23 > 0:12:27that they then become, by default, gardens.
0:12:29 > 0:12:32The gantries that give this two-acre park its name
0:12:32 > 0:12:38were used until the 1970s to load railway cars and cargo onto river barges.
0:12:38 > 0:12:41Thomas Balsley is one of America's leading public landscape architects
0:12:41 > 0:12:43and feels his design for Gantry Plaza,
0:12:43 > 0:12:46with its strong links to its history and surroundings,
0:12:46 > 0:12:51transform it into a legitimate garden space for the local community
0:12:51 > 0:12:52in this dense urban landscape.
0:12:56 > 0:12:59I'm really interested in the way that
0:12:59 > 0:13:04a space, a green space, moves from being a park to a garden,
0:13:04 > 0:13:08and, of course, gardens is what I'm interested in.
0:13:08 > 0:13:12What, for you, defines a public garden?
0:13:12 > 0:13:15A garden, when you put that word together with public,
0:13:15 > 0:13:18in my mind, doesn't have to have horticulture at all.
0:13:18 > 0:13:22It's that place where we can all escape our lives,
0:13:22 > 0:13:26our apartments, the places we live, or work, or the streets we walk down,
0:13:26 > 0:13:30and it's that place where we can transport ourselves into another realm.
0:13:30 > 0:13:34If we've done a good job, it's that we have created this common ground
0:13:34 > 0:13:40for people to find themselves and each other and to build social connections.
0:13:40 > 0:13:45I'm really interested how you've created the garden, or the park,
0:13:45 > 0:13:49using the iconography of the place.
0:13:49 > 0:13:53The space must have a meaning. That meaning can be translated in different settings.
0:13:53 > 0:13:58We all wanted to celebrate the heritage of this place.
0:13:58 > 0:14:03The decision to really bring the gantries out front and centre
0:14:03 > 0:14:09came from this need of ours for there to be real icons of this railroad history of this place.
0:14:09 > 0:14:11The more and more we thought about the gantries,
0:14:11 > 0:14:14the gantries are the icon of this place,
0:14:14 > 0:14:17and it didn't require lots of little historical motifs
0:14:17 > 0:14:20to be scattered around to tell the story.
0:14:20 > 0:14:22They tell the story in such a compelling way
0:14:22 > 0:14:24that there was very little more that we could do.
0:14:33 > 0:14:36This is an amazing sight, with that incredible skyline,
0:14:36 > 0:14:40and there are elements here that anybody would recognise as a garden.
0:14:40 > 0:14:42But I feel this is a process,
0:14:42 > 0:14:45and it's one that is very difficult to pin down,
0:14:45 > 0:14:48it's when a garden is not a garden,
0:14:48 > 0:14:51or when it's just an interesting public space.
0:14:51 > 0:14:55That may not matter. I suspect in the scheme of things it's not important.
0:14:55 > 0:14:59If it works and it's enjoyable, so be it.
0:14:59 > 0:15:01But I think I want to take this one step further.
0:15:01 > 0:15:05But is there a way that people can actually possess it from day to day,
0:15:05 > 0:15:08where they can manipulate the change?
0:15:08 > 0:15:10That seems to me the really interesting thing.
0:15:22 > 0:15:25Down on the Lower East Side is the Liz Christy Garden,
0:15:25 > 0:15:28the first community garden to be made in the city.
0:15:41 > 0:15:43Tell me, how did this garden begin?
0:15:43 > 0:15:45What's the history behind it?
0:15:45 > 0:15:48The Liz Christy Garden is the first of the community gardens
0:15:48 > 0:15:50in Manhattan and the five boroughs.
0:15:50 > 0:15:53- Right.- It was begun by a woman named Liz Christy.
0:15:53 > 0:15:55She and her friends lived in the neighbourhood.
0:15:55 > 0:15:59She was a painter, and I believe she did some kind of social work.
0:15:59 > 0:16:01- When was this?- 1973.
0:16:01 > 0:16:08- Right, '73.- And she and her friends would make seed bombs and throw them into vacant lots.- Right.
0:16:08 > 0:16:12And that was one way to reclaim abandoned areas.
0:16:12 > 0:16:16This was owned by the city, and when the Liz Christy Garden began,
0:16:16 > 0:16:21they rented it for about a dollar month, so 12 a year.
0:16:21 > 0:16:24And we, the gardeners, I became a gardener in '85,
0:16:24 > 0:16:26maintained it as a community garden
0:16:26 > 0:16:31before it became officially part of the New York City Parks Department.
0:16:31 > 0:16:35So these gardens went from being vacant lots with seed bombs
0:16:35 > 0:16:39to something that people were prepared to campaign to preserve
0:16:39 > 0:16:43- and spend money to preserve. - Yeah, right.
0:16:43 > 0:16:45What's their function? What are they for?
0:16:45 > 0:16:50To provide an outlet for our very fundamental human desire
0:16:50 > 0:16:53to dig the dirt and to work with plants.
0:16:53 > 0:16:57And the will to keep them is strong.
0:16:57 > 0:17:00- Didn't Giuliani want to sell them all off?- Oh, sure he did, exactly.
0:17:00 > 0:17:03There's been always a struggle between developers
0:17:03 > 0:17:05and the interests of developers for housing,
0:17:05 > 0:17:08and I've always said that it's not housing or gardens,
0:17:08 > 0:17:11it's housing AND gardens that people need.
0:17:11 > 0:17:12And housing and noise!
0:17:12 > 0:17:18The soundtrack in this garden is always completely opposite of what you see.
0:17:33 > 0:17:36Well, I like everything about this garden.
0:17:36 > 0:17:39I like the way it looks, I like what they've done to it,
0:17:39 > 0:17:42but above all I like the fact that it exists.
0:17:42 > 0:17:48I even like the traffic hammering behind it because that's what it is.
0:17:48 > 0:17:52It's reclaimed space in the middle of downtown Manhattan,
0:17:52 > 0:17:55and it's a very noisy, busy place.
0:17:55 > 0:17:58It's part of the identity of the gardens.
0:18:00 > 0:18:03But now I'm leaving all that noise and business
0:18:03 > 0:18:05and going south to Maryland,
0:18:05 > 0:18:07to visit one of America's foremost garden designers,
0:18:07 > 0:18:11who is creating gardens that are new and very American.
0:18:20 > 0:18:23This is part of Chesapeake Bay,
0:18:23 > 0:18:26which is the largest estuary in America,
0:18:26 > 0:18:31where the rich and the successful politicians
0:18:31 > 0:18:34come to spend their weekends and their holidays.
0:18:37 > 0:18:42The big Atlantic skies, with its wide horizons and the natural flora,
0:18:42 > 0:18:45drew James van Sweden to this coast,
0:18:45 > 0:18:47about an hour away from his Washington base,
0:18:47 > 0:18:51because it reminded him of the Michigan meadows where he grew up.
0:18:53 > 0:18:54Well, here I am.
0:18:54 > 0:18:58This is James van Sweden's weekend holiday home.
0:19:09 > 0:19:13James van Sweden is one of America's leading landscape designers,
0:19:13 > 0:19:16and has created gardens for Oprah Winfrey and other celebrities.
0:19:16 > 0:19:19His gardens are always natural, free spirited,
0:19:19 > 0:19:23and are designed for low maintenance and high sustainability.
0:19:23 > 0:19:27His work pays homage to the natural grasslands of North America,
0:19:27 > 0:19:31but it's also a reaction against the tightly-mown lawns
0:19:31 > 0:19:34that still dominate the American suburban garden.
0:19:36 > 0:19:42This garden inverts the relationship between houses and gardens
0:19:42 > 0:19:45that I've seen endlessly on the road here,
0:19:45 > 0:19:48where you have mown grass going up to the front door
0:19:48 > 0:19:51and you keep looking for the garden to begin.
0:19:51 > 0:19:55Whereas here, you keep looking for the garden to end.
0:19:55 > 0:20:00But it doesn't, it just dissolves out into the landscape.
0:20:03 > 0:20:08Where you have a garden that merges so completely with the surrounding landscape,
0:20:08 > 0:20:12there can be a bit of confusion about what's garden and what's not garden,
0:20:12 > 0:20:16and just by cutting this curving path through the grass
0:20:16 > 0:20:20it brilliantly defines the space around it, it makes it into a garden.
0:20:20 > 0:20:22It's not a lot, but it's enough.
0:20:45 > 0:20:50When you came here, did you have in your mind what you wanted to do?
0:20:50 > 0:20:54I did. When I bought this land it was empty and flat.
0:20:54 > 0:20:58And what I wanted to do was build a house that floated over a meadow,
0:20:58 > 0:21:01and I thought this was the perfect place to do it.
0:21:01 > 0:21:06Now, for clients you often have to design a very gardenesque kind of garden, you know, pretty.
0:21:06 > 0:21:09But I wanted a garden that was not pretty.
0:21:09 > 0:21:11In fact, I said, "I want an ugly garden,
0:21:11 > 0:21:13"I'm so sick of pretty, pretty."
0:21:13 > 0:21:19And so I designed a garden that I thought was tough, was sustainable,
0:21:19 > 0:21:23and I have no watering, I don't water anything here.
0:21:23 > 0:21:27Not having chemicals and just a minimum of weeding...
0:21:27 > 0:21:30I'm very flexible about weeds,
0:21:30 > 0:21:33so that's why the whole garden looks quite a bit like a meadow.
0:21:33 > 0:21:39One thing about having no lawn, it brings nature right up to the house.
0:21:39 > 0:21:42Snakes, foxes, turkeys...
0:21:42 > 0:21:45I have wild turkeys walking right by, ten feet from the windows.
0:21:45 > 0:21:49I have deer coming up. It's fantastic, it's just wonderful.
0:21:49 > 0:21:52But it terrifies Americans, I think, to some extent.
0:21:54 > 0:21:59Driving along and seeing these very large houses often,
0:21:59 > 0:22:03with no cultivated garden, there'll be lawn mown outside,
0:22:03 > 0:22:06is a very strange experience for a European.
0:22:06 > 0:22:11Why is it that you think the garden culture doesn't seem to express itself very freely here?
0:22:11 > 0:22:14I don't think Americans necessarily want to be outside.
0:22:14 > 0:22:19When they are outside they want to play golf and they want to swim and so on, and play.
0:22:19 > 0:22:23But I don't think they really want to garden. I think it's too much work.
0:22:23 > 0:22:25It's very hot so they don't want to be outside.
0:22:25 > 0:22:27They're also afraid of a bug.
0:22:27 > 0:22:30They're afraid they'll be cold or hot, whatever.
0:22:30 > 0:22:33So it's not really a gardening country.
0:22:55 > 0:22:58This garden is a synthesis
0:22:58 > 0:23:04of the very modern and natural indigenous plants,
0:23:04 > 0:23:10taking a garden with huge skill to make it look effortless
0:23:10 > 0:23:12and carefree, and it's brilliant, I think.
0:23:12 > 0:23:17It works wonderfully well and is a real model for the way gardens could go.
0:23:17 > 0:23:21But now, from here, I'm going to go back in time.
0:23:21 > 0:23:24I want to go back to the roots of modern America,
0:23:24 > 0:23:27to perhaps the most famous American garden of all,
0:23:27 > 0:23:32which is the garden of Thomas Jefferson, at Monticello.
0:23:36 > 0:23:38Monticello is 100 miles
0:23:38 > 0:23:39south-west of Washington,
0:23:39 > 0:23:41in Charlottesville, Virginia,
0:23:41 > 0:23:44and this grand neo-classical mansion
0:23:44 > 0:23:48has become a symbol of nationhood and independence.
0:24:00 > 0:24:03Monticello was one of those places
0:24:03 > 0:24:08that I knew I absolutely must visit when I came here to the States.
0:24:08 > 0:24:13It was created and lived in by Thomas Jefferson, who was an extraordinary man.
0:24:13 > 0:24:16He was the third president of the United States,
0:24:16 > 0:24:19and the author of the Declaration of Independence.
0:24:19 > 0:24:24He was also a great gardener, a horticulturist, a landscaper and architect,
0:24:24 > 0:24:28a man with furious curiosity and energy,
0:24:28 > 0:24:32and he believed that plants had social significance.
0:24:32 > 0:24:35So what we have here at Monticello is not just a garden
0:24:35 > 0:24:40but also the founding of modern America.
0:24:40 > 0:24:44His energy and curiosity were boundless,
0:24:44 > 0:24:47and everything at Monticello is a testament to this.
0:24:47 > 0:24:53Jefferson began the Palladian villa in 1767 and worked on it,
0:24:53 > 0:24:57designing every quirky detail, for the next 40 years.
0:24:57 > 0:25:01This was his home, a sanctuary away from the demands of public life,
0:25:01 > 0:25:05but it was also always a place of almost manic work.
0:25:05 > 0:25:08He was a polymath, spoke seven languages,
0:25:08 > 0:25:13was versed in all the sciences and recorded everything he ever did.
0:25:13 > 0:25:17And if that wasn't enough, he was also, like me,
0:25:17 > 0:25:19passionate about growing vegetables.
0:25:22 > 0:25:27It's been very, very dry, so the garden is quite empty,
0:25:27 > 0:25:30but as a vegetable gardener that doesn't matter at all,
0:25:30 > 0:25:31it's still fascinating.
0:25:31 > 0:25:35It's actually quite wide. It's a hugely long space.
0:25:35 > 0:25:42These 24 squares - each of them is about half an allotment.
0:25:42 > 0:25:45And as well as this huge vegetable garden terrace,
0:25:45 > 0:25:49there's an eight-acre fruit garden and a large floral garden,
0:25:49 > 0:25:52which were all part of the original 5,000-acre plantation.
0:25:52 > 0:25:57Peter Hatch is the director of gardens and has written several books about Jefferson.
0:25:57 > 0:26:02Now, I think it's clear that this wasn't a fancy garden,
0:26:02 > 0:26:05where an ex-president pottered out his waning years.
0:26:05 > 0:26:07There was a much more serious purpose to it.
0:26:07 > 0:26:09I think there was a real profound function
0:26:09 > 0:26:13that Jefferson was experimenting in order to sort of transform
0:26:13 > 0:26:17the socio and economic culture of this new country he was working on.
0:26:17 > 0:26:20I'll just stop you there for a moment because that is
0:26:20 > 0:26:24A, an extraordinary statement, it's a really big idea.
0:26:24 > 0:26:29Jefferson said the greatest service which can be rendered to any country
0:26:29 > 0:26:31is to add a useful plant to its culture,
0:26:31 > 0:26:35and a lot of these were kitchen vegetables that he planted
0:26:35 > 0:26:38in this kitchen garden that's so remarkable at Monticello.
0:26:38 > 0:26:42This was really a revolutionary garden in the way that it contained
0:26:42 > 0:26:47330 varieties of 170 species of vegetables,
0:26:47 > 0:26:51and he was growing really new things in this garden,
0:26:51 > 0:26:54unusual plants that came, literally, from around the world.
0:26:54 > 0:26:59330 different varieties of vegetable. That's not necessary.
0:26:59 > 0:27:02That's interesting, but it's obsessive, isn't it?
0:27:02 > 0:27:05Right. I think he grew 38 varieties of peach,
0:27:05 > 0:27:09or 27 varieties of bean, and then would winnow out the inferior types.
0:27:09 > 0:27:12- So this was an experimental laboratory.- Right.
0:27:14 > 0:27:20Now, here in what one might call the floral part of the garden,
0:27:20 > 0:27:25what was Jefferson's thinking and how did it evolve?
0:27:25 > 0:27:27He planted all the flowerbeds first,
0:27:27 > 0:27:30as he was about to retire from the presidency,
0:27:30 > 0:27:32and there were 20 oval flowerbeds.
0:27:32 > 0:27:34He planted them and went back to Washington.
0:27:34 > 0:27:38His daughter wrote to him and said the bulbs had done splendidly
0:27:38 > 0:27:40but none of the seeds had come up.
0:27:40 > 0:27:45Despite that temporary setback he said, "I need more room for a greater variety of flowers."
0:27:45 > 0:27:47He sketched a plan with a border alongside of it.
0:27:47 > 0:27:51One garden writer said Jefferson was like all good gardeners,
0:27:51 > 0:27:54when he couldn't successfully garden in a small space,
0:27:54 > 0:27:56he just decided to make it three times larger.
0:27:56 > 0:27:57It's exactly the truth!
0:28:03 > 0:28:06In its day, Monticello was a frontier garden.
0:28:06 > 0:28:11To its west lay largely undiscovered land for Europeans.
0:28:11 > 0:28:15But for the man who wrote that, "All men are created equal",
0:28:15 > 0:28:19Jefferson's Monticello enshrined the deepest of American dilemmas.
0:28:20 > 0:28:23All the way along this mulberry avenue were buildings,
0:28:23 > 0:28:27and in those buildings, all the needs of the estate were serviced,
0:28:27 > 0:28:33from making nails to splitting wood, and also lived slaves.
0:28:33 > 0:28:38Now, there were about 100 slaves working here at Monticello,
0:28:38 > 0:28:43which, for the man who wrote the Declaration of Independence,
0:28:43 > 0:28:46is confusing to the modern mind.
0:28:48 > 0:28:55Slaves were a largely accepted element of 18th and 19th-century life in the American south,
0:28:55 > 0:29:00and although Jefferson wrote and spoke against the evils of slavery,
0:29:00 > 0:29:05the bald fact remains that Monticello depended upon slave labour
0:29:05 > 0:29:08for its creation and maintenance.
0:29:10 > 0:29:17This is a beautifully-restored and maintained late-18th century garden,
0:29:17 > 0:29:21set in the glorious Virginia countryside and, as such, is worth a visit.
0:29:21 > 0:29:27But what makes it really special is the extraordinary man that made it.
0:29:27 > 0:29:30There's still something slightly austere about Jefferson,
0:29:30 > 0:29:33something almost ruthless at the heart of it.
0:29:33 > 0:29:38Again, I suspect that's to do with being a successful politician.
0:29:38 > 0:29:43But what it did do in its age was to inspire people
0:29:43 > 0:29:48to go out and conquer what they saw as wilderness,
0:29:48 > 0:29:54and set up a series of settlements, increasingly further west.
0:29:56 > 0:29:59So now I'm going in the footsteps of those early settlers,
0:29:59 > 0:30:03as they struck out westwards into what is now called Kansas.
0:30:04 > 0:30:08Kansas takes its name from the Kansa tribe,
0:30:08 > 0:30:11who inhabited the area long before Europeans arrived,
0:30:11 > 0:30:15and for thousands of years native Americans had lived in this stunning landscape.
0:30:15 > 0:30:20However, as the emerging nation expanded into the prairies of the mid-west,
0:30:20 > 0:30:23their way of life would be changed forever.
0:30:25 > 0:30:30Jefferson encouraged and sponsored the exploration of the west,
0:30:30 > 0:30:33and following this were settlers,
0:30:33 > 0:30:37forever moving inexorably westward looking for more land,
0:30:37 > 0:30:40and there was, seemingly, a limitless amount of it.
0:30:40 > 0:30:43And they came to the prairies,
0:30:43 > 0:30:47thousands of square miles of rolling grass.
0:30:48 > 0:30:54These vast grasslands once stretched unbroken for hundreds of miles across the continent's interior,
0:30:54 > 0:30:58and when this landscape was first seen by the French explorers,
0:30:58 > 0:31:03they called the sea of grass "prairie", the French term for "meadow".
0:31:04 > 0:31:08Seeing this trail wind through the grasses,
0:31:08 > 0:31:10you see exactly the inspiration
0:31:10 > 0:31:15that James van Sweden has taken and used in his garden.
0:31:18 > 0:31:22Native Americans lived harmoniously with this landscape,
0:31:22 > 0:31:26and the ecosystem was sustained by a cycle of natural fires
0:31:26 > 0:31:29and the grazing by tens of thousands of wild buffalo.
0:31:29 > 0:31:32Today, the buffalo and the indigenous people have all but gone,
0:31:32 > 0:31:35as well as most of the prairie,
0:31:35 > 0:31:39but what remains still has to be sensitively managed.
0:31:39 > 0:31:44Only 2% of the 19th-century grasslands remain, and two thirds of that is being preserved here,
0:31:44 > 0:31:48the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve.
0:31:48 > 0:31:52Ron Clark is one of the park rangers.
0:31:52 > 0:31:55The prairie can contain about 60 different types of grasses.
0:31:55 > 0:31:59We have approximately 40 that we've identified,
0:31:59 > 0:32:02but we have four that we consider our signature grasses,
0:32:02 > 0:32:07and those, of course, are the two blue stems, big and little, Indian and switchgrass.
0:32:07 > 0:32:11The blue grass has these very deep roots, I understand.
0:32:11 > 0:32:15Exactly. Most of these grasses root down at least eight feet.
0:32:15 > 0:32:18Some of them can go down to 15 or 16 feet.
0:32:18 > 0:32:2280% of the plant is actually under your feet.
0:32:22 > 0:32:27And the grasses are extraordinarily subtle and beautiful.
0:32:27 > 0:32:30They repay you steady, don't they?
0:32:30 > 0:32:32I think this is the prettiest time of the year here.
0:32:33 > 0:32:35They're just so majestic.
0:32:41 > 0:32:44Standing here, the grasses are taller than us.
0:32:44 > 0:32:47Yes. The one right behind you is just about your height.
0:32:47 > 0:32:49One at the back, that's old big blue stem.
0:32:49 > 0:32:55- Right.- And this time of year you really don't see that blue stem colour, mid summer.
0:32:55 > 0:32:58This stock has a kind of blueish-green colour to it.
0:32:58 > 0:33:00Now, this grass is called turkeyfoot.
0:33:00 > 0:33:05It's one of our big four, right here, a big blue stem.
0:33:05 > 0:33:08Right in front of us here, I see some Indian grass,
0:33:08 > 0:33:12which people who had a good imagination thought looked like the feather of an Indian.
0:33:12 > 0:33:19The science community tells us that only the rainforest has a greater diversity than the prairie.
0:33:19 > 0:33:24- Really?- That's something that people have a hard time understanding
0:33:24 > 0:33:28or even contemplating, because they just see it as a grassland,
0:33:28 > 0:33:32that's got a few steers out on it, and a coyote or two,
0:33:32 > 0:33:37but, actually, if you spend any time here, every rock has life under it.
0:33:37 > 0:33:38Yeah. Yeah.
0:33:39 > 0:33:42OK, as we kind of walk down out of the prairie,
0:33:42 > 0:33:45you begin to pick up the woody vegetation, trees to our left,
0:33:45 > 0:33:49and this beautiful red-leafed plant called sumac.
0:33:49 > 0:33:51It's an astonishing colour.
0:33:51 > 0:33:53It's an interesting plant. It's very pretty,
0:33:53 > 0:33:56- and we like to see it on the prairie. It belongs here.- Yeah.
0:34:07 > 0:34:11I'm so glad that I came out here
0:34:11 > 0:34:14to the Kansas prairies.
0:34:14 > 0:34:18It puts everything into context and takes plants that you can see
0:34:18 > 0:34:22and admire in a garden and gives them another dimension.
0:34:22 > 0:34:26But the thing that changed this prairie,
0:34:26 > 0:34:28it probably changed this country, actually,
0:34:28 > 0:34:32more than anything else as it developed,
0:34:32 > 0:34:33was the railroad.
0:34:36 > 0:34:40The final leg of my journey is on to the west coast and California.
0:34:44 > 0:34:48Modern transport is dominated by the aeroplane and the motor car,
0:34:48 > 0:34:52but in the pioneer days it was the railroad that truly opened up the west.
0:34:55 > 0:34:58Henry Huntingdon was a railroad magnate,
0:34:58 > 0:35:01and he used the vast wealth that he accrued
0:35:01 > 0:35:06to finance his collections of manuscripts, paintings, rare books and plants.
0:35:07 > 0:35:11In 1904, he met a talented gardener named William Hertrich,
0:35:11 > 0:35:15whom he charged to build the most beautiful garden in California.
0:35:15 > 0:35:18The result is the Huntingdon Botanical Gardens.
0:35:23 > 0:35:27The thing that has drawn me here, first of all in California,
0:35:27 > 0:35:31is because it seems to me an extraordinary thing that Huntingdon,
0:35:31 > 0:35:36who had so much power, who blazed a trail into California,
0:35:36 > 0:35:41who loved California, decided to build a garden as his memorial.
0:35:44 > 0:35:47He didn't just build any old garden, he built a garden on a grand scale,
0:35:47 > 0:35:51bearing in mind California was only part of the US from 1850 onwards.
0:35:51 > 0:35:57So it was an amazingly optimistic, grand gesture.
0:36:03 > 0:36:08Huntingdon's Botanic Garden covers 127 acres,
0:36:08 > 0:36:12with over 15,000 species of plants divided amongst 12 themed areas.
0:36:12 > 0:36:15The desert garden is 100 years old,
0:36:15 > 0:36:19and one of the oldest collections of cacti and succulents in the world.
0:36:21 > 0:36:23Mmm.
0:36:25 > 0:36:28Many of these cacti are night blooming.
0:36:28 > 0:36:33So this wonderful, extraordinary flower is only open now
0:36:33 > 0:36:36because it's rather a grey, chilly morning,
0:36:36 > 0:36:39and, for once, I'm glad that the sun is slow to come out
0:36:39 > 0:36:42because when it gets sunny, which it will do later on,
0:36:42 > 0:36:44that will just close up.
0:36:47 > 0:36:49But I confess that these are plants
0:36:49 > 0:36:52as far from my own familiar botanical terms of reference
0:36:52 > 0:36:54as anything found outside a coral reef
0:36:54 > 0:36:57and to help me find out more about the garden and its plants,
0:36:57 > 0:36:59I met up with Jim Folsam,
0:36:59 > 0:37:02who's been director of gardens here for the past 23 years.
0:37:04 > 0:37:08I'm intrigued that the place existed at all.
0:37:08 > 0:37:12What did Huntingdon expect people to get out of this?
0:37:12 > 0:37:13What was the purpose?
0:37:13 > 0:37:17One of the things that we've lost, "we" in the broader sense,
0:37:17 > 0:37:20is a feeling that an earlier generation had
0:37:20 > 0:37:22that plants were important,
0:37:22 > 0:37:25and that plants were almost important from an imperial sense,
0:37:25 > 0:37:29and he felt that this was the new world, southern California.
0:37:29 > 0:37:33If you could grow anything here, then you could be anybody, couldn't you?
0:37:33 > 0:37:37The collections were an expression of what southern California can do.
0:37:37 > 0:37:41You can grow all these plants, so you can do something wonderful, can't you?
0:37:43 > 0:37:47It's partly, as you say, a sort of imperial statement.
0:37:47 > 0:37:52It's partly an expression of sort of energetic optimism.
0:37:52 > 0:37:54An understanding modern society has lost,
0:37:54 > 0:37:56the understanding that plants are important.
0:38:00 > 0:38:03Now, that looks, to me, terribly like a London plane,
0:38:03 > 0:38:08and yet I can't imagine what you would want with a London plane tree in this environment.
0:38:08 > 0:38:15Well, of course it's the more rugged, western cousin, of the hybrid regimented London plane,
0:38:15 > 0:38:17and this is the way the tree looks in nature.
0:38:17 > 0:38:21This is one of the few trees that was on the property when Huntingdon bought it.
0:38:21 > 0:38:24It still looks incongruous to me, I have to say!
0:38:24 > 0:38:26It looks perfectly natural here!
0:38:34 > 0:38:37If you understand how your garden works,
0:38:37 > 0:38:41you have gained a lot of understanding in science and culture
0:38:41 > 0:38:44and a lot of understanding in just practical matters.
0:38:44 > 0:38:49So, we hope that what we can do is we can cause people
0:38:49 > 0:38:53to love to learn more about the world around them through their garden.
0:39:03 > 0:39:06I confess that I'm feeling pretty shattered.
0:39:06 > 0:39:13To try and take in ten acres of succulent plants that you're not very familiar with,
0:39:13 > 0:39:19and that's less than one tenth of the whole Huntingdon estate, is exhausting.
0:39:19 > 0:39:25But it's a great way to be introduced to California and its gardens.
0:39:25 > 0:39:29It's a vast place, and the one message that comes through this
0:39:29 > 0:39:35is the sense that the weather, and the land, and the general atmosphere,
0:39:35 > 0:39:38the sense of possibilities here, are limitless.
0:39:38 > 0:39:44And all that optimism, combined with the marvellous weather,
0:39:44 > 0:39:46is really what drew the movie business here,
0:39:46 > 0:39:48just after the First World War.
0:39:48 > 0:39:53The next garden I want to go and see is one made by an entertainer.
0:39:59 > 0:40:03The 1920s and '30s were the golden age of cinema in California.
0:40:03 > 0:40:06Movie moguls and Hollywood stars built palatial homes
0:40:06 > 0:40:09with suitably luxuriant gardens.
0:40:09 > 0:40:12It was a time of extravagance and glamour, a period when
0:40:12 > 0:40:16celebrities would flaunt their wealth through their gardens.
0:40:25 > 0:40:29I've come here to Lotusland in Santa Barbara
0:40:29 > 0:40:31because it is one of the very few gardens
0:40:31 > 0:40:34that survived from the heyday of Hollywood.
0:40:34 > 0:40:39And what we see now is down to one extraordinary woman,
0:40:39 > 0:40:41called Madame Ganna Walska.
0:40:45 > 0:40:49Ganna Walska was a Polish opera diva who married six times,
0:40:49 > 0:40:52obviously wisely, if not successfully,
0:40:52 > 0:40:55because she accumulated great wealth in the process.
0:40:55 > 0:40:59She bought the property in 1941 and immediately began to renovate its grounds.
0:40:59 > 0:41:03And today, Lotusland is 37-acre estate
0:41:03 > 0:41:05made up of over 20 idiosyncratic gardens,
0:41:05 > 0:41:09and it's become famous for its botanical diversity and richness.
0:41:12 > 0:41:15A-ha.
0:41:15 > 0:41:19Now, I've read that this used to be the original swimming pool
0:41:19 > 0:41:25and it's been created into a series of ponds, not least to house the lotus,
0:41:25 > 0:41:28which gives the garden its name, Lotusland.
0:41:33 > 0:41:36The blue garden was one of the first of its kind
0:41:36 > 0:41:39and created almost entirely without flowers,
0:41:39 > 0:41:43and its weave of glaucous foliage, all intermeshes subtly,
0:41:43 > 0:41:46set against a very yellow-green backdrop,
0:41:46 > 0:41:50and it's one of a whole series of individual gardens,
0:41:50 > 0:41:52each which has its own theme.
0:41:54 > 0:41:58It's not just the physical scale of this garden.
0:41:58 > 0:42:02Whether you like it or not, it's this mix.
0:42:02 > 0:42:05Here am I, looking out on sort of a bit of Islamic garden
0:42:05 > 0:42:07and a bit of Italianate garden,
0:42:07 > 0:42:10and then there's a zoo or something in topiary down there.
0:42:10 > 0:42:12Now, I actually really like it.
0:42:12 > 0:42:16I like the kitschness, I like the sort of way it's all pulled together
0:42:16 > 0:42:20in this quirky jingle-jangle of plants
0:42:20 > 0:42:23because underneath that is a really assured performance,
0:42:23 > 0:42:27as if someone's saying, "We're putting on a show and we're good at it.
0:42:27 > 0:42:29"Stand back because you're going to be amazed."
0:42:35 > 0:42:38But I'm curious to find out how a singing diva
0:42:38 > 0:42:42came to create such an array of gardens on such a scale.
0:42:42 > 0:42:46Ganna Walska's niece, Hania, grew up at Lotusland,
0:42:46 > 0:42:48and her first wedding took place here, too.
0:42:48 > 0:42:51What was it like growing up in this extraordinary garden?
0:42:51 > 0:42:54Well, my friends, who I would invite for a swim,
0:42:54 > 0:42:59were always kind of shy when they walked in here,
0:42:59 > 0:43:02and it was kind of overwhelming for my teenage friends
0:43:02 > 0:43:04when I would have a party here.
0:43:04 > 0:43:06They were quite overwhelmed.
0:43:06 > 0:43:08What was your aunt like as a person?
0:43:08 > 0:43:10It's hard to describe my aunt.
0:43:10 > 0:43:12She'd sort of the life of the party.
0:43:12 > 0:43:15Let's put it this way, when she walked in, everybody knew.
0:43:15 > 0:43:19I don't know why but they all stopped talking when she walked in,
0:43:19 > 0:43:21and she was such a strong personality.
0:43:21 > 0:43:23And it was extraordinary back then
0:43:23 > 0:43:28that somebody like her should become so involved in gardening
0:43:28 > 0:43:31because she became effectively the head gardener, didn't she?
0:43:31 > 0:43:33Yes, she did, actually.
0:43:33 > 0:43:36No-one was allowed to touch anything, or move anything,
0:43:36 > 0:43:41or plant anything, or cut anything without her specific permission.
0:43:41 > 0:43:46If it was a question of planting, she'd say, "Dig a hole, then wait."
0:43:46 > 0:43:49Then she'd walk around the garden.
0:43:49 > 0:43:53Two hours later she'd come back, the gardener's standing over the hole,
0:43:53 > 0:43:57and she'll say, "All right, now put the plant in and I'll come back and look."
0:43:57 > 0:44:01So, she puts the plant in the hole, then she'll come back an hour later
0:44:01 > 0:44:05and she says, "No. More to the left. I'll be back."
0:44:12 > 0:44:18I think, perhaps more than any other garden, this is specifically hers
0:44:18 > 0:44:22because other gardeners may have landscape designers, you know,
0:44:22 > 0:44:24and she did,
0:44:24 > 0:44:27but she wouldn't take their word for it!
0:44:27 > 0:44:31She would get their plans, and then she would change them!
0:44:33 > 0:44:38I think I'm beginning to understand how Madame Walska got through her six husbands.
0:44:38 > 0:44:40But there's no question that her approach has led to
0:44:40 > 0:44:44a very individual garden, and that's always good.
0:44:49 > 0:44:51Now this is very weird,
0:44:51 > 0:44:55although I like that lion, with his shaggy mane.
0:44:55 > 0:45:00Here we have a set of slightly Disneyfied animals, topiary,
0:45:00 > 0:45:03and this enormous clock in the middle.
0:45:06 > 0:45:11I think this is Madame having fun, and she did everything big.
0:45:11 > 0:45:15So if she's going to do tacky, do it big.
0:45:26 > 0:45:28This is the aloe garden,
0:45:28 > 0:45:32with a large collection of aloes.
0:45:32 > 0:45:38But it is centred around, and dominated by,
0:45:38 > 0:45:44a pool of such monstrous hideosity
0:45:44 > 0:45:49that it's hard to see the plants for what they are, which is fascinating.
0:45:50 > 0:45:52But it's interesting.
0:46:01 > 0:46:03I'm amazed.
0:46:16 > 0:46:20Here we have a garden where money seems to be no object,
0:46:20 > 0:46:23where ambition doesn't stop anything,
0:46:23 > 0:46:26where everything is unfettered, including taste.
0:46:26 > 0:46:32And that is a real picture of America and its optimism and energy
0:46:32 > 0:46:35in the '40s and '50s and '60s.
0:46:35 > 0:46:38And I think the next step, whilst I'm here in California,
0:46:38 > 0:46:44is to see what people are doing with their money and energy in the modern day.
0:46:51 > 0:46:53The movies are still the driving force
0:46:53 > 0:46:56behind the cultural and economic life of California,
0:46:56 > 0:46:59and the next garden I'm going to see belongs to the director
0:46:59 > 0:47:02who made the huge Hollywood blockbusters,
0:47:02 > 0:47:05Independence Day, The Patriot and Stargate.
0:47:05 > 0:47:08I'm fascinated to see what he's done with his garden.
0:47:13 > 0:47:20Here, right in Hollywood, we have the homes of the rich and the powerful in the movie business.
0:47:20 > 0:47:23Next door is the house and garden of Dame Helen Mirren,
0:47:23 > 0:47:27and this one belongs to the director, Roland Emmerich.
0:47:27 > 0:47:30But when he bought it, it was actually very destitute and rundown,
0:47:30 > 0:47:33so he was going to revamp the whole thing,
0:47:33 > 0:47:36and he hired a garden designer and gave her very specific instructions.
0:47:36 > 0:47:43He said he wanted her to create something that evoked the glamour of a 1920s starlet.
0:47:43 > 0:47:48He wanted a garden that was exotic and other-worldly.
0:48:02 > 0:48:05Compared to Lotusland, this is a relatively small garden.
0:48:05 > 0:48:07It's only a couple of acres.
0:48:07 > 0:48:11But actually everything about it is on a colossal scale.
0:48:11 > 0:48:14Apparently it needed an enormous crane to bring in
0:48:14 > 0:48:18these enormous trees, and the expenditure matches it.
0:48:18 > 0:48:21The initial flush of pots set them back 100,000,
0:48:21 > 0:48:22and then they got more.
0:48:22 > 0:48:27The total cost of the garden came to round about 3 million.
0:48:31 > 0:48:36Now, another aspect of the brief was that Roland wanted the view blocked because he didn't like it,
0:48:36 > 0:48:39and he also wanted to make sure people couldn't look in,
0:48:39 > 0:48:41so he had complete privacy,
0:48:41 > 0:48:46not least from the paparazzi, as film stars often come and stay here.
0:48:46 > 0:48:48And he wanted that NOW.
0:48:48 > 0:48:51He wanted his mature garden as quickly as possible.
0:48:51 > 0:48:54Well, of course, the only way you can do that
0:48:54 > 0:48:57is by buying in enormous trees, which they've done.
0:48:57 > 0:49:01So, money, power and the positive thinking
0:49:01 > 0:49:06can create an extraordinary garden like that.
0:49:12 > 0:49:15The garden is designed around a central stairway
0:49:15 > 0:49:17that leads from the front door,
0:49:17 > 0:49:20right the way down through the middle of the garden,
0:49:20 > 0:49:25to the pool, the archetypal Hollywood swimming pool.
0:49:25 > 0:49:30Now, I confess that I came here prepared to mock.
0:49:30 > 0:49:34I somehow couldn't believe that all that I'd heard about this garden,
0:49:34 > 0:49:38the energy, the desire to have it completed fast,
0:49:38 > 0:49:40the money that it cost,
0:49:40 > 0:49:45could result in anything that wasn't a bit brash, a bit vulgar.
0:49:45 > 0:49:48But, actually, I was completely wrong.
0:49:48 > 0:49:50It's fantastic.
0:50:08 > 0:50:12When you consider the brief of this garden, to make something that
0:50:12 > 0:50:17evoked a glamorous 1920s starlet, something exotic and other worldly,
0:50:17 > 0:50:20the designer could have been forgiven for chucking colour at it.
0:50:20 > 0:50:22Actually it's much more restrained.
0:50:22 > 0:50:27It's all gradations of green, and what that gives it,
0:50:27 > 0:50:29other than a sense of great peacefulness,
0:50:29 > 0:50:32is substance, almost dignity.
0:50:32 > 0:50:36And instead of being blousy with colour,
0:50:36 > 0:50:38the few dots of brilliant flowers are like jewels,
0:50:38 > 0:50:43jewels against the starlet's beautifully-cut frock.
0:50:59 > 0:51:01I've really enjoyed this garden.
0:51:01 > 0:51:04I like almost everything about it, and I particularly like
0:51:04 > 0:51:10the way that it uses restraint, combined with confidence.
0:51:10 > 0:51:12Now, it's not a gardener's garden.
0:51:12 > 0:51:15There's nothing to do and there's no sense of it
0:51:15 > 0:51:18growing and being nurtured by an individual hand.
0:51:18 > 0:51:22But it's a performance, like everything here in Hollywood,
0:51:22 > 0:51:25and I think the most appropriate response is just to applaud.
0:51:25 > 0:51:30However, when I left Lotusland I said I wanted to see what was going on now,
0:51:30 > 0:51:33and this garden draws a lot of its inspiration from the past.
0:51:33 > 0:51:36There is a sort of retrospective feel about it,
0:51:36 > 0:51:37and before I leave Hollywood,
0:51:37 > 0:51:40I want to see something truly modern,
0:51:40 > 0:51:43to see what people are looking forward to.
0:51:49 > 0:51:51I'm off to Brentwood in the west of the city,
0:51:51 > 0:51:53one of LA's most affluent suburbs,
0:51:53 > 0:51:57to visit a garden that represents a dramatic break with the past.
0:51:57 > 0:52:02The owners of this house and garden, the Greenbergs, having reached retirement age,
0:52:02 > 0:52:07decided to start all over again and pull down the home they'd raised their family in
0:52:07 > 0:52:11and rebuild a new, very modern house, literally in its place.
0:52:20 > 0:52:24Walking in here I'm immediately struck by the great slabs
0:52:24 > 0:52:27of colour on the surfaces and the build up of shapes,
0:52:27 > 0:52:31and these fantastic palms!
0:52:50 > 0:52:52I find it an extraordinary notion
0:52:52 > 0:52:57that on this site was the family home where the children grew up,
0:52:57 > 0:53:00with all the memories and associations,
0:53:00 > 0:53:05and yet it was felt an exciting thing to do
0:53:05 > 0:53:10to scrub it all away and reinvent themselves, to build something new.
0:53:10 > 0:53:13And that kind of optimism and bravery
0:53:13 > 0:53:16seems to me to be very Californian.
0:53:25 > 0:53:28This boldness of vision led the owners to collaborate
0:53:28 > 0:53:31with the Mexican architect Ricardo Legorreta.
0:53:31 > 0:53:36He's famous for using elements of Mexican regional architecture in his work,
0:53:36 > 0:53:39including bright colours and plays of light and shadow.
0:53:39 > 0:53:45The wonderful garden, however, is the work of the landscape architect Mia Lehrer.
0:53:45 > 0:53:48It was a wonderful sort of
0:53:48 > 0:53:51experience working with Mr Legorreta,
0:53:51 > 0:53:53and working with the Greenbergs.
0:53:53 > 0:53:58They really responded to the notion that the garden
0:53:58 > 0:54:04and the house had to have sort of an equal billing, so to speak.
0:54:06 > 0:54:12Some of my gardens, and especially this one, was relatively instant.
0:54:12 > 0:54:15The fact that you can roll out a lawn,
0:54:15 > 0:54:21you know, and actually, to a degree, Hollywood plays a part in this.
0:54:21 > 0:54:25You know, the instant gardens that need to be created
0:54:25 > 0:54:30for drama, film and TV
0:54:30 > 0:54:34have become sort of an expectation in my world,
0:54:34 > 0:54:37for a certain level of client.
0:54:53 > 0:55:00- All the trees around the house were actually saved from the original property.- Really?
0:55:00 > 0:55:04It occurred to me that we could bank, so to speak,
0:55:04 > 0:55:10the large existing specimen trees and work with them,
0:55:10 > 0:55:13and that that would be a wonderful way of bringing
0:55:13 > 0:55:18what was part of the original family place back
0:55:18 > 0:55:22and integrate that into the garden.
0:55:22 > 0:55:27We had these two beautiful jacaranda trees, in this courtyard.
0:55:27 > 0:55:33We had the scattering of Washingtonia palms throughout the site,
0:55:33 > 0:55:38and we decided to plant them before the house was built.
0:55:38 > 0:55:42So literally locate them, with a surveyor,
0:55:42 > 0:55:47in their location on the plan and then build the house around it.
0:55:50 > 0:55:55I think one of the ultimate compliments I ever got was when
0:55:55 > 0:56:00Mr Legorreta walked around the house after it was done and we had a party,
0:56:00 > 0:56:05and he said, "You know, this is a garden with a house,
0:56:05 > 0:56:08"not a house with a garden."
0:56:29 > 0:56:31This is the best place to see the garden.
0:56:31 > 0:56:36It looks absolutely fantastic from here, and, significantly,
0:56:36 > 0:56:40the best place to see it from is the swimming pool.
0:56:40 > 0:56:43Swimming pools are right at the heart of
0:56:43 > 0:56:45the whole Californian lifestyle, really,
0:56:45 > 0:56:47certainly of homes and gardens.
0:56:53 > 0:56:56And the very European idea of garden rooms,
0:56:56 > 0:56:58where you have compartments where you discover
0:56:58 > 0:57:02separate sections of the garden, is totally absent from here.
0:57:02 > 0:57:07The whole thing is open, open to the eye and, above all, open to the sun.
0:57:07 > 0:57:11And yet it works together with its various sections
0:57:11 > 0:57:14in a very balanced, harmonious way.
0:57:14 > 0:57:17The thing I most like about this garden
0:57:17 > 0:57:19is not actually just the physical layout,
0:57:19 > 0:57:22which I think is beautiful, but it's the spirit behind it.
0:57:22 > 0:57:28It seems to me this garden represents that very Californian spirit,
0:57:28 > 0:57:33that if you've got the energy, the optimism and the money,
0:57:33 > 0:57:35then you can do anything.
0:57:42 > 0:57:45This is the end of my journey across America,
0:57:45 > 0:57:47and I've visited some amazing gardens
0:57:47 > 0:57:51that reflect the diversity and energy and of its people.
0:57:51 > 0:57:55But the truth is that the wider American public are slow to embrace the concept
0:57:55 > 0:58:01of tending for their land as part of a sense of personal responsibility and pleasure.
0:58:01 > 0:58:04However, there is a movement in America that
0:58:04 > 0:58:08is starting to think about issues of sustainability and stewardship,
0:58:08 > 0:58:12which can be best expressed through the daily care of a domestic garden.
0:58:12 > 0:58:15I think if America got gardening,
0:58:15 > 0:58:18this idea of a sort of generous nurturing of the soil
0:58:18 > 0:58:22that we'd all benefit from, then that could change the world.
0:58:24 > 0:58:28Next time, my journey takes me to the Far East,
0:58:28 > 0:58:31where I'll travel through China and then on to Japan,
0:58:31 > 0:58:37to uncover the history and meaning of their enigmatic gardens.
0:58:43 > 0:58:46Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd
0:58:46 > 0:58:49Email subtitling@bbc.co.uk