Hampshire Glorious Gardens from Above

-CHRISTINE WALKDEN:

-Britain has some of the finest gardens anywhere in the world.

For me, it's about getting in amongst the wonderful plants that

flourish in this country

and sharing the passion of the people who tend them.

However, there is another way to enjoy a garden.

And that's to get up above it.

I love ballooning,

because you get to see the world below in a whole new light.

From up here, you get a real sense of how the garden

sits in the landscape.

How the terrain and the climate has shaped it.

And I want you to share that experience with me.

Today, we're firing up the burners to get a bird's eye view

of the glorious countryside of one of England's largest shires.

We're above Hampshire.

It's an enormous county.

It's also one of the warmest and the sunniest in the country.

Roughly halfway between the east and the west ends of England's south

coast, Hampshire's countryside has something for everyone.

The landscape is just like a tapestry.

From open shoreline to ancient forests, rolling hills

and river valleys.

It's staggeringly beautiful.

Yet let's not forget what I'm up here for.

I'm looking at gardens, and Hampshire's got some real belters.

Today I'll be sampling perfumed perfection.

The scent will knock your socks off.

One, two, three - hoist away!

Trying my hand at underwater weeding.

-Don't you come near me, mate!

-HE LAUGHS

And saying thank you for a lifetime's dedication to gardening.

He who would have beautiful roses in his garden

must have beautiful roses...

-Roses in his heart.

-There you go.

-Well, that's wonderful. wonderful.

-THEY CHEER

Today I'm visiting Hampshire's picturesque Test Valley

to explore one of the county's most important rose gardens.

This is so exciting. I'm above Mottisfont Abbey.

It's unbelievable.

Converted from a medieval priory, this grand Georgian country house

is set in 34 acres of beautiful riverside gardens.

This National Trust-run estate attracts a whopping

quarter of a million visitors each year,

who flock here to see arguably the most famous rose garden in Britain.

And what could be the country's largest living trees.

Those flipping plane trees!

God, they look big from down there,

but from up here, look at the vastness of them!

Look at the walled garden. Oh, the colour!

Wow!

You can see the pedestrian strands running through, those pathways,

the enclosed areas, how the trees just melt into it.

It's really exciting.

And I'm just itching to get down there and have a look.

But where better to start than the jewel in Mottisfont's crown -

its walled garden.

Step in here in June

and you'll plunge yourself into a sea of plump-petalled,

blush-coloured, old-fashioned garden roses in full bloom.

Look at that!

You just salivate at the very sight of these things.

This four-acre plot is full to bursting with

over 700 varieties of wonderful heritage roses,

which evoke the romance of bygone days

and they're a feast for the senses.

The blousiness, the gentleness and the scent will knock your socks off.

Mottisfont is home to Britain's National Collection of old roses,

so the team here certainly has got its work cut out.

David Stone has been Head Gardener for nearly four decades

and is passionate about his work.

I think all gardeners have got a creative spirit.

This is what gardening is all about -

creating and developing beauty.

One of the things I got from growing

was this sense of the miracle of life.

You know, you put a tiny dried-up little seed in the soil,

water it, and in a few days or maybe a few weeks later,

green leaves appear and then a stalk

and then it gets bigger and bigger and bigger.

It's absolutely amazing.

After a lifetime's work, David will shortly hand over

responsibility for Mottisfont's garden to a new guardian

who will plant the seeds for another generation.

But before he goes, I'm keen to hear all about his experiences here,

over the years.

David, it was roses that brought you here, wasn't it?

Absolutely, yeah.

I mean, Mottisfont then was the only place you could go to actually have

hands-on experience of working with these old roses,

because, quite simply, they weren't grown anywhere else.

So this was the one and only garden

and it was my one and only opportunity to work with these roses.

And what a lucky lad you are.

Where did your passion for roses come from?

I guess, well, from boyhood really.

Um, my father, who worked in a shop,

used to give me the rejects from the roses and I used to take them home

and put them in a bucket and try to grow them.

But one year, I had a success.

A Peace rose that actually grew and survived

and I planted it in a bucket with some dirt

and, a few months later,

it produced this wonderful bloom

and I'd never seen anything so beautiful in all my life

and I was hooked from there.

-And it only takes one bloom.

-Exactly.

And it can influence your life forever.

Yeah, yeah.

For me, it was three campanulas stuffed in the bath

during Blackburn Wakes Week and they were blooming when I got home.

David inherited the custodianship of the garden

from Graham Stuart Thomas,

one of the most important figures of 20th-century gardening.

He created Mottisfont in the early 1970s

to house his own collection of old-fashioned roses.

At the time, these blooms were disappearing fast,

replaced in popularity by the modern rose which could flower several

times a year, not just once.

But when David first started here in 1976,

he was Graham's right-hand man.

-What was your relationship with him?

-He was a perfectionist.

He knew exactly what he wanted out of the Mottisfont garden

and it was my job to understand that,

to understand his planting ethos, to capture his vision

and try to present him with the garden that he first desired.

But, you know, he was quite terrifying.

Oh, he was. I was scared stiff of him as a young man.

He was very passionate about his plants.

Very passionate about his garden, very demanding.

He's known for that passion.

Not just roses, but other plants as well, wasn't he?

Anything that grew in the ground, he loved.

What do you think Graham passed to you?

Knowledge, most of all.

Knowledge, not so much about the care of roses,

cos I had to learn that myself,

but knowledge about the history of roses, the various varieties,

how they came about, that sort of thing.

Thanks to Graham Stuart Thomas's stunning planting

and David's dedication to realising his vision,

Mottisfont changed our perception of the old-fashioned rose,

reinventing it as a fashionable garden plant.

For me, this is simply the most beautiful rose garden in Britain.

Now, you may think a rose is a rose is a rose.

But you'd be wrong.

Garden roses come in all sorts of shapes and colours and sizes,

but my favourite are the old-fashioned ones.

An old garden rose is defined as any rose that

existed before the introduction of the first modern rose in 1867.

But what are the differences?

Well, unlike the stiff modern rose,

old-fashioned roses are rosette in shape.

Their blooms are blush-coloured, white, pink, red and purple,

whereas the modern rose also comes in shades of yellow and orange.

Real old roses flower only once a year

but the memory of their wonderful fragrance stays with you forever.

In his four decades here, David Stone has helped make Mottisfont

a world famous garden, a real gem.

But now the heavy responsibility for maintaining it,

along with the rest of the estate,

is about to pass to a right whipper-snapper -

24-year-old Jonny Bass.

So, to ease the pressure of this daunting inheritance,

I'm meeting him away from those treasured roses.

So what's your background, Jonny?

This is the only thing I've ever really wanted to do.

I started when I was 14, in my local plant nursery,

and carried on from there, really.

What do you mean that it's what you wanted to do?

It's just the only job I've ever envisioned doing.

Some people want to be a policeman,

some people want to be Superman,

I've wanted to be head gardener on a big country estate.

And you're about to become that, aren't you?

Yes, that's right.

Do you find it intimidating?

You're not just taking on any old rose garden.

This is internationally famous.

You know, you think of Mottisfont Abbey

and you think of excellence of these roses.

Are you scared?

I'm a little bit nervous

and I'm, yes, a little bit intimidated.

But most of all, I just can't wait to get in and get going.

And how are you going to move things forward?

Well, I mean, there's always scope to increase our collection of roses.

The more rare varieties we can get, the better, in my opinion.

Do you have a favourite rose?

It's so hard to pick one particular rose.

But I think I would say Adelaide d'Orleans.

Absolutely lovely. Graceful, elegant and very, very beautiful.

Yes, very much so.

Jonny's certainly got his work cut out for him here at Mottisfont.

Beyond the walls of the rose garden there are 30 more glorious

acres of formal gardens, gently sweeping parkland,

velvet lawns and ancient trees to look after.

Now, I'm never one to shy away from a bit of hard graft

so when the lad asked me if I'd mind helping him

with a spot of scything down the river, I jumped at the chance.

OK, then. Come on. What's this about?

Well, we're going to jump in and we're going to do a little

bit of weed cutting.

-It's going to be a great laugh.

-For who?

I'm looking forward to seeing you wielding a scythe.

Hey, I can wield a scythe.

I don't know if I can wield a scythe in there though, mind.

-Let's go for it, then.

-We'll get these on.

-I'm in for this.

-And we'll jump in.

Hey, are these meant for men?

Us women have curves you know, and bulges.

SHE LAUGHS

Shall I give you a hand?

-Come on - pull, pull me into them.

-We'll do some hoisting. You ready?

-One, two, three - hoist away!

-SHE LAUGHS

OK, we're nearly there. Look.

The things I do.

-Are we ready?

-OK, let's give it a go.

You got it? Excellent.

You keep it low, don't you?

-Keep it low.

-Yeah, and a nice sweeping action.

-A nice sweeping action.

-Yeah, we'll have a...

Have a quick go like that, you'll see it float up.

Hey, it worked. Look at that. Yeah, look.

Hey, no getting into this.

-Don't you come near me, mate!

-HE LAUGHS

Else I'll get you! This is quite hard work, isn't it?

It is a bit of hard work.

And, you know, I'm surprised that it's part of your sort of remit.

So, you know, we tend to think of Mottisfont for its roses,

but, you know, why are you actually doing this?

What's it about?

Well, it's all about the management of the water systems here.

Clearing off some of the weed

so that we can produce nice clear gravel beds

for the spawning of the trout and the salmon.

This stretch of water is a man-made branch of the Test,

the world famous trout-fishing river.

The monks who founded Mottisfont diverted the water here to improve

and farm the land around the abbey.

So when did the monks actually come here?

Well, the priory was first built in 1201,

so we've got well over 800 years of history here and for them,

it was all about what they can get from the land and what they can use.

Monks were the great gardeners and farmers of the Middle Ages.

They created kitchen gardens, vineyards

and orchards to produce food, herbs and flower gardens to make drugs

for their infirmaries, and would use the outdoor space for contemplation.

Pilgrims came from far and wide to visit the abbey and drink the clear

waters of the natural chalk spring that bubbles up in the grounds.

And did the monks use it for making a little tipple?

They most certainly did, yes, yeah.

The cellarium on the bottom of the house

was where they would sit in there and brew their beer.

And what finer water could you use than natural spring water

from a chalk stream?

-Absolutely - right on your doorstep.

-That's it. Perfect.

We're never going to finish it at this rate,

so come on and then we can clear off.

I think dry land beckons.

The abbey was dissolved in the 16th century

and Mottisfont became a private home, rebuilt and remodelled

over the centuries by its owners.

By the turn of the 19th century,

the use of landscape as a feature of great gardens was fairly widespread.

One of the best ways to appreciate that is by looking down from above.

And what's exciting for me is I can see how the formal garden sits in

and then blends off into the landscape.

The river just running around as a ribbon.

And a classic example of blending landscape

and formal garden is Chawton House,

36 miles down the road from Mottisfont,

and a regular haunt of Hampshire's most famous daughter.

Jane Austen did almost all of her mature writing here,

the Hampshire home of her brother Edward.

She lived with her mother and sister in a cottage in the grounds of this

fine Elizabethan manor, set in parkland and walled gardens,

designed and laid out in the 18th century.

During this period in garden design, there was a fashion amongst

the rich for remodelling estate parkland as 'natural' landscapes,

which spread beyond the boundaries of the house and formal gardens.

Dr Stephen Bending is a senior lecturer in English

at the University of Southampton,

and an aficionado of Austen's life and writings.

These big park landscapes are created with their serpentine paths

running through them, with their open spaces,

are imagined as places which allow for a liberty of movement.

And a language is often used of liberty, which is associated with

these gardens, but it's a language often associated with men.

It's also the case, though,

that there are spaces which are imagined to be specifically for women

and these are frequently enclosed, confined and so on.

So there's a way in which kitchen gardens

and flower gardens are thought of as the proper domain for women.

The formal garden was considered as an extension to the house,

so was a safe place for women to be.

In Austen's day, unmarried young women

and men weren't supposed to be left alone together.

But a perfectly respectable stroll around the garden sometimes offered

opportunities for a bit of a kiss and a cuddle

that was lacking in the house.

Most of the proposal scenes in Austen's novels take place outside.

But there was also something else beyond the confines

of the walled garden.

What we see in Austen, I think,

is a recognition that women can move beyond those spaces.

That sense of boundaries, of proper boundaries

and of stepping beyond them, moving beyond the boundary is more

dangerous for women, but also more exciting.

One of Jane Austen's best-loved heroines is

Elizabeth Bennet from Pride and Prejudice,

a woman who is rather unconventional by the standards of the time.

When she hears that her sister is ill,

rather than wait for a carriage,

rather than think that she should take a horse, starts to just walk

across these open spaces to get to Netherfield, to get to her sister.

"Crossing field after field, at a quick pace, jumping over stiles

"and springing over puddles, with impatient activity,

"and finding herself at last within view of the house."

Now, once she gets there, the responses to the way in which

she's moved through that landscape, how she has behaved, become important

because, on the one hand, she's met with disapproval

from the women at Netherfield, who are fashionable city women,

who disapprove of her and say she's got muddy shoes,

she's got muddy stockings, that this is not a decorous form of behaviour.

On the other hand, the men, including Mr Darcy,

who she'll finally marry, look at her and think she looks beautiful,

she has a sparkle in her eyes,

the exercise has done marvellous things to her complexion.

There you go, ladies!

A bit of colour in the cheeks can do wonders for your love life.

The garden at Chawton was a great inspiration to Jane Austen

and she loved walking in the woods there.

Trees play an important role at Mottisfont too.

Having nurtured 30 acres of ancient woodland,

David is now handing over that responsibility,

together with those precious roses, to his protege, Jonny Bass.

David, Mottisfont's known for its roses,

but there are other special areas aren't there, as well?

Oh, we've got some marvellous trees in and around the abbey grounds.

And when were they planted?

Well, most of the trees, the major trees,

were planted in the mid 18th century, I would have thought.

-OK, and are they all as magnificent as this green cathedral?

-Not quite.

I mean, come on. I mean, look at that!

-That's a tree and a half!

-That is a tree and a half, isn't it?

This was probably planted round about 1720, 1730

and it's supposed to be the largest tree in the country,

in the area covered by its branches,

so when you're standing underneath here and looking up into that crown,

you're standing underneath the largest living thing in the country.

-Oh, oh!

-It's incredible, isn't it?

It's... I mean, truly, truly amazing.

-And the stories it could tell.

-Yeah.

The gardens here at Mottisfont are magical.

It's no wonder David has chosen to spend

so much of his working life here.

As the head gardener, you know, everybody's got this idyllic

impression that you've got this fantastic job,

but there must be moments when you're both pulling your hair out.

So where do you disappear to?

Do you have a special spot, David, in the garden,

that you disappear to?

Well, I did have a special place, until recently

and that was down by the font, there was a lovely catalpa,

an Indian bean tree with a bench underneath

and when things got too hot for me in the rose garden,

I'd pop down there for five minutes

and just chill out in the shade of the tree with the music of the water

rippling over the cascade

and that would just calm me down,

restore me and I could get back into the business again.

That catalpa blew down in the January storms.

I really did feel its loss.

Whenever you lose a tree, it's like losing a friend.

That was like losing a special friend.

You come into work one morning and there it is flat out on the ground.

-Laid flat.

-Yeah.

-Dead.

-Yeah.

-Gone.

-Yeah.

That's one of the hardest things about being a gardener,

the loss of plants you've nurtured and loved for years.

But I wonder, how did that Indian bean tree get to an English country

garden in the first place?

Hampshire's got two vast expanses of green space.

Going into Sussex, the South Down National Park.

And to the west of the county is the deep green vastness

of the New Forest.

And sitting between the two,

we've got what some people would call the perfect port.

Historians believe there's been a port at Portsmouth

for around 2,500 years.

Duncan Redford is a naval historian with a particular

interest in Portsmouth.

The Romans recognised that Portsmouth Harbour was an ideal

place for Saxon raiding parties

and they built Portchester Castle to defend the area.

Once fortified, the area's natural geography allowed the port to

come into its own as an ideal trading post.

Portsmouth Harbour is an excellent natural harbour.

It's got a very narrow harbour mouth,

which makes it easy to defend.

It's got that really good anchorage just off shore, Spithead,

where ships that are ready to be used

can wait, be resupplied, can wait for the right wind, the right tide

and then go off and do their business.

It's also relatively sheltered.

The Isle of Wight acts as a massive windbreak.

So that means that the prevailing winds, when they come in,

don't come thundering across Spithead, causing damage to ships.

It's nice and sheltered.

So it's the combination of all these different factors that make

Portsmouth a good natural harbour and a good place for a port.

Today, Portsmouth is one of the UK's busiest container ports,

specialising in fruit imports.

In fact, 70% of the bananas eaten in this country come through here.

Over the years, Portsmouth's docks have seen plenty of comings

and goings, of people and goods.

Bananas aren't the only exotic item to make landfall here.

Hundreds of species of plants have been brought to these

shores by the intrepid plant collectors of bygone days,

perhaps including David's beloved Indian bean tree.

And one of them made his home here in Hampshire,

and created the world famous Hillier's nursery and arboretum.

Look at that.

Five miles from Mottisfont is another very spectacular garden,

created by a legendary figure with phenomenal determination

and it's down there.

It was established in 1953

by the distinguished plantsman Sir Harold Hillier,

and covers 180 acres of undulating Hampshire countryside.

There are over 42,000 species of hardy trees

and shrubs from around the world, that grow here.

Look at the rhododendrons.

In this one garden you'll find 12 national plant collections

and over 500 champion trees.

And it's beautiful. Look at this. Look!

And alongside the garden,

lie the vast glasshouses of the Hillier nursery business.

Look at that. Wow, look at the glass.

Sir Harold was a busy man.

He not only created a world-famous garden, he also revolutionised the

sale of plants to the great British public, introducing a mail-order

service and opening some of the first garden centres in the country.

Production horticulture. Look at that. That is amazing.

God, a sheet of glass. Look at it.

Chances are you've got one of their plants in your garden.

I've got to go and have a look. I've got to go and have a shufti.

I've come to meet Sir Harold's youngest son, Robert,

to find out more about his dad and the history of this great garden.

What was your dad like?

Oh, he was a lovely man. He was very, very genuine.

How did it start and how did this site develop?

Well, I think, when he bought this place, which we were told was to be

a nursery, or that's what we thought, he saw the potential of it

as a collection of plants, as a home for plants and that's what

he was passionate about most and that's what he wanted to do.

And do you think, for him,

it was pound notes or the plants that really motivated him?

That's a very easy question to answer. It was always the plants.

And although sometimes, when he'd got a very special plant

and he knew a lord or a lady who wanted to buy it,

I think the price was quite steep.

-THEY LAUGH

-Lovely.

All the while Sir Harold was developing the land for the family's

nursery business,

he was also forever trying to find room for his own plant collection.

He even dug up the tennis courts.

This area, which was so hilly and slopey, when I came here,

I was actually tobogganed down this hill.

Can you imagine this with all the trees? But Dad started here.

3.5-acre plot and he wanted to start planting

the collection of trees and so this part of land, he thought,

wouldn't be used commercially, so this is the right place to plant.

But he knew he had to conserve them to save them and they'd be

available as mother plants, you know, for seed and cuttings

and so on, propagation generally.

Sir Harold's ambition was to create as great a collection of plants as

he was able and, by the mid-1970s, he'd realised it.

The garden covered 110 acres but it was too big a responsibility,

so he handed it over to the Hampshire County Council.

It's going from strength to strength

and I'm sure Dad would have been very, very proud of it.

I think your dad would have been blown away by it.

The garden's new managers have maintained Sir Harold's original

vision, while creating new features like this double Centenary Border.

The herbaceous border is a collection of perennials,

planted closely together to create a dramatic effect through colour,

scale or shape, and is a feature of many British gardens.

This style of planting

first became popular here in the Victorian period.

But what really made them popular was the work of Gertrude Jekyll.

She was one of the most influential designers of 20th-century British

gardening.

Her herbaceous planting typically featured a graduated colour palette.

The Centenary Border here at Hillier's is the length of two

cricket pitches.

Although the Hillier family may no longer own it,

their connection with the garden remains strong.

Fran Clifton married into the family

and has been head gardener here for the last 12 years.

I'm joining her for a quick chat

while she does a little bit of planting in the herbaceous border

Hi, Fran, can I give you a hand?

Oh, brilliant! Hi, Christine. Yeah! Grab a fork.

Great. So what are you planting here?

Oh, I'm just popping a last few salvias in actually,

just to complete the borders and fill the gaps.

OK. Well, which one's this?

This is Salvia leucantha, a lovely flowering one from Mexico actually,

so great stuff.

Absolutely lovely blue flowers but it's got that white little tongue

out, that always reminds me of kids who are going, "Uh, uh, uh, uh."

-THEY LAUGH

-I love it.

Long-flowering salvias such as Salvia leucantha are popular garden

plants in the summer herbaceous border.

Salvias are a relative of the herb, sage.

These tall, flowering plants produce spikes of small,

densely packed blooms, in shades of blue and violet.

What's your role? What do you feel about this garden?

What excites you about it all?

Well, I've been coming in every morning for the last 20 years.

It's pretty special.

And seeing the things grow.

Just seeing it develop over the years.

And how did you get into it?

It was always my passion actually, from, right from an early age,

as a teenager really, or a 10-year-old, really.

Wow. Tell me about that because I started when I was ten.

Oh, great stuff.

Well, a friend of mine had a nursery

and I would always just help every Saturday, to just propagate plants

and pot them on and look after them and water them and...

And what was it that turned you on?

It's being in the outdoors and enjoying that

and also seeing things grow and develop and actually,

people enjoying the outdoors as well.

So it's doing something for other people, which they like, which is lovely.

Yeah. I mean it's a great joy.

When it kicks in and it grabs you, it's got you forever.

And it keeps going, doesn't it? Yes.

It does.

And would you water these in at all?

They'll probably water them towards the end of the day,

then when it gets a bit cooler as well.

So, you know, when people whack on water in the heat of the day,

it's a waste of time, isn't it? Cos most of it evaporates off.

Goes up in the air, really.

-So first thing in the morning or last thing at night.

-Last thing at night is good.

So I think we're done, aren't we? So let's cover up our footprints.

Yeah, and that'll make a nice froth, won't it?

Absolutely.

-Do you garden at home?

-I do.

So you've got your own little garden

and then you've got a big playground.

Yes, yes, absolutely and it's good fun, actually. It really is.

Big back garden though, isn't it?

THEY LAUGH

This part of England is heavily populated, with over a million

and a half people living within the county's boundaries.

Most on the coast.

But there's something I've come to realise about gardens over the years.

It's not just their location that matters.

They're all about people and passion.

A little patch of green in a crowded city can give a huge

amount of pleasure.

And just 10 miles south of me is inner-city Southampton, where the

Ropewalk Community Garden is doing just that!

It's on the site of an old factory and provides a green space where

people can relax and enjoy learning about gardening.

The brains behind the project are husband and wife team Branka...

The roots have started growing around.

Come on, let's go.

..and Paul Butler.

I'm going to roll this towards me.

Pick an insect, and see if you can catch it.

Are we ready?

-ALL:

-Yeah.

-Good.

We get a whole range of people in the garden, from young to old.

There are no green spaces here. This is it.

So in a very diverse community, this is a space they can all enjoy.

Gardens like this are a little oasis where people can escape the hustle

and bustle of the city.

I've been coming here for the last four years, you know.

So we come here to barbecue, do stuff, you know.

For the adults that come from different communities,

the countryside they might come from is completely different.

We had a gardening course and people were asking us,

so what is it, how can I grow it, what can I grow?

Just found a place that I can get rid of energy in a positive way.

Get out, from instead of sitting in, watching telly.

People need to get out to appreciate trees and nature and wildlife.

What have we got?

As well as offering gardening advice,

Paul and Branka run a special creepy-crawly course for children.

See, you've got two different types of centipede here, look.

It's really important that the children can see what wildlife

looks like and that it is not dangerous.

You know, the worms do not have any teeth.

I found him crawling along. It's slimy.

It feels tickly.

OK, so today we are going to plant up some nettles for these little

guys and then we're going to plant up some grasses and hopefully,

when we have next generation, they will be able to eat the nettle

we planted and there will be many, many more.

Hopefully we'll have hundreds.

So you two start making holes there and how about Lillian and Joseph,

they start making some holes here?

These children are learning real gardening skills

and having fun at the same time.

I think it's brilliant, and so do their parents.

They enjoy the space. I mean, obviously this garden provides much

more space than we've got at home and it's encouraged us, at home,

to sort of grow tomatoes and strawberries and lavender, which the

kids love looking at the butterflies and bees and things on the lavender.

Let's hope these youngsters get the gardening bug.

I like finding all the little insects and stuff.

I think they enjoy it a lot.

But it's also a chance to have a bit of fun and get a bit messy and...

Yes!

SHE LAUGHS

That's really muddy. Well done.

You can't beat a bit of dirt.

After nearly 40 years, David Stone, head gardener at Mottisfont,

is about to retire.

Letting go is a bittersweet feeling.

It may be difficult in years to come, I don't know.

You know, one of the things I am looking forward to in retirement,

is waking up at six o'clock on a January morning, pulling back

the curtains and knowing that I can get back into bed again.

But should he feel like popping into the garden, I'd like to

re-create his special spot by replacing his Indian bean tree.

And I know just the man.

Martin Hillier is Robert's nephew, and Sir Harold's grandson.

This is a native of North America and China,

introduced back in the 1800s into Britain.

It's one of the best for leaf shape, leaf size

and there aren't many golden trees that we can put in the garden.

It's a really, really gorgeous tree.

If you're lucky enough to have the space in your own garden,

this could just be the ticket.

It's a fast grower, loves sunny spots in well-drained soil,

and is generally frost resistant.

What more could you want?

Transporting a tree needs care.

Down.

But I know it's in safe hands and it'll soon be on its way.

Managing a world-renowned garden like the spectacular Mottisfont is

a daunting task, and David's are very big shoes for his successor,

Jonny Bass, to step into.

And before David joins the rest of his team for a farewell drink,

Jonny's got to plant the new bean tree.

By heck, Jonny, you're working hard at that.

I know, yes, it's a big hole. Really big hole.

Now, have you checked that it's going to go in there?

It's going to go in, no problem at all.

-You're absolutely confident?

-I'm sure. We just need help.

-Yeah, well, you and me ain't going to shift that.

-No.

No, I'm going to recruit some lads.

-Good idea.

-Hang on a minute.

This young bean tree looks small now, but in years to come, visitors

to Mottisfont will be able to sit beneath its wonderful parasol-like

canopy, just like David used to with the one that he lost in the storm.

That is going to sit lovely.

-Now, it's a bit of a hot day, Jonny.

-It is warm.

You know, how are we going to make sure this tree survives?

Well, we're going to have to keep a close eye on it.

Plenty of irrigation and we'll just keep looking at it for the first

couple of weeks, make sure we're staying in.

I know where David is, so I'm going to go and find him

and then we'll surprise him.

-Perfect.

-Yeah?

It's the end of an era here at Mottisfont

and David's colleagues will miss him.

I've only been here just under two years, but I always saw him

as the head of the garden, wasn't he? The fount of all knowledge.

I think David was a fantastic example of how the National Trust

and someone with such an enthusiasm for the gardens can come together to

make something so special, which people want to enjoy forever more.

He's a bit like a father figure for the property, actually

and we were saying this last week.

It's going to be really funny when he's not there.

He's so wise. We will really miss him.

But before David joins the party, I want to grab a quiet chat with him.

What do you actually think you're going to do every day, you know?

You know, does it excite you? Does it frighten you?

What are your emotions?

I've got to learn what it means to be a husband again.

You know, gardeners' partners,

whether it's husbands or wives or whatever, for so much of their lives

they take second place to the garden and, you know, my wife has been

so patient with me over the years, that it's about time

I need to actually start giving her the time that she deserves.

So we're going to buy ourselves a little camper van

and we're just going to go off wherever and whenever we fancy.

-That is lovely.

-Yeah.

Look at this absolutely breathtaking garden, you know, and perhaps,

you know, as a gardener, I sometimes think we don't see the creation.

We don't appreciate what we're giving on a daily basis.

The pleasure, the highlights. You know, in 15 years' time,

somebody's going to be stood in the garden, saying, "I went to

"Mottisfont Abbey and I saw this beautiful rose and it's given me

"pleasure for years," and that's because you planted a rose here.

And what an amazing tribute to leave.

-Well, that is what gardening is all about, isn't it?

-Should be.

THEY APPLAUD AND CHEER

A bean tree. My very own bean tree.

There you go.

Absolutely brilliant. Wow.

-There you go.

-What can I say? What can I say?

Well, I just thought that we should leave you with something that means

something very special to you

and that you can pass on to future generations.

I really do appreciate that. It's wonderful.

-So your own golden bean tree.

-That's wonderful.

Yeah, well, what can I say, except thank you all very much.

So, Jonny, do you think it's... you know, does it look all right?

I think it looks absolutely perfect. It's a present for you, boss.

You can come and sit under here again,

when you decide to come for a wander round the garden

and keep a check to make sure I'm doing it right.

You can keep a watch from here.

And I've got a little personal present for you.

-Had this made up for you.

-My goodness.

-So you can still work while you're at home.

-What is it?

HE LAUGHS

There's a lovely little inscription on the handle there,

which I know is a personal favourite of yours.

Well, I haven't got my glasses.

-From Dean Hold. Will I read it to you?

-Please do.

"He who would have beautiful roses in his garden must have..."

"Beautiful roses in his heart."

-There you go.

-Oh, that's wonderful.

SHE CHEERS

Well, what can I say?

And this is just the right size for the wife to use.

THEY LAUGH

-Here's to David.

-Thanks very much.

-Cheers, David.

I've had the most amazing day in Hampshire.

Some real characters, old gardeners passing on to new gardeners,

planting trees, keeping regeneration going, the fragrance of roses.

Couldn't be better.