Northumberland Glorious Gardens from Above

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 have shaped it.

And I want you to share that experience with me.

It's so early in the morning that I reckon most people round

here are still asleep.

But I can't resist picking up a few souvenir snaps!

I'm heading to a county with some of the most stunning landscapes

anywhere in the UK.

Today, we're in Northumberland,

England's most northerly county.

To the west lies Cumbria, with its gentle fells and its hillsides.

And to the north, the Scottish borders.

Northumberland is Britain's most sparsely populated county,

but it has huge historical importance.

Over the years, Vikings invaded it, shipbuilding brought

prosperity to it, and two nations fought bitterly over it.

The history of the county is full of stories of battles

between the English and the Scots.

But I'm here for its gardens.

Today, I'm visiting two gardens that in their time both saw dreams

come true.

One, where a Victorian inventor was inspired by nature

and changed the world.

It's the simplicity of turning water into light.

And the second, where one man's longing for a country retreat

led to the creation of this tiny masterpiece.

-Couldn't be nicer, could it?

-Not on a day like today.

And along the way, I'll be meeting the people lucky enough to look

after these two very special places.

SHE LAUGHS

Whoof!

The first garden I'm dropping in on is not just a wonder

of the gardening world,

it's pretty significant in the history of science, too.

Nearly 150 years ago what happened in this house, Cragside,

transformed the way we power our homes.

And the secret lies in the water that flows through the estate.

Because this was once the home of a very remarkable man indeed.

From the air, you can see how large the estate of Cragside is.

The hillsides are planted with conifers and rhododendrons.

It has one of the largest rock gardens in Europe.

And the formal terraces are planted with stunning Victorian bedding.

And I can't wait to get down there.

Of all the gardens I've visited,

Cragside is one of the most dramatic.

It's remote - over 30 miles from the nearest city, Newcastle.

Its nearest town is Rothbury

and the house itself is nestled deep in a setting of forests and lakes.

But although this countryside looks natural,

it's actually a completely artificial landscape.

Cragside, a Victorian period piece that zings with colour and history.

Beautiful colours smeared across the landscape on a hill

and fantastic trees, maintaining traditions of the long-gone.

But not in this garden.

History, colour, and zing to excite any garden visitor.

Cragside was the home of Victorian industrialist

and inventor William Armstrong.

Armstrong was born in Newcastle in 1810.

After an early career as a solicitor,

he followed his childhood dream

and became an inventor.

He came up with a design for the world's first hydraulic crane

and developed an improved battlefield gun.

He set up a factory employing thousands and, in the process,

became one of the wealthiest men in the north of England.

In an age of industrial innovation, Armstrong was a giant character,

becoming the first engineer to take a seat in the House of Lords.

He bought the land here to create a country retreat,

and he and his wife, Margaret,

commissioned this unconventional mansion.

And they set about creating an equally extraordinary garden.

It covers four square kilometres

and truly emphasises the drama of Cragside's location.

There are the outsized boulders of the rock garden and

the steep valley of rhododendrons.

And a formal garden with terraces, beds, and borders.

There's also a pinetum, or conifer collection, which contains

trees from around the world, some of them over 140 years old.

It's said that Lord and Lady Armstrong planted

over seven million trees in the estate.

Mind you, they did have 150 gardeners to help them.

Today, I'm going to add one more tree to the collection.

I'm heading down to the pinetum to help plant Cragside's latest

addition, a South African mountain cypress.

I'm meeting Dale Stephens, who's worked here for 22 years

and has been in charge of the garden since 2014.

-Hi, Dale, how are you?

-Hi, Christine. I'm very well, thank you.

-I'm in a super setting for it.

-It's fantastic, isn't it?

-Yeah.

-It's wonderful.

-So, shall we drop this in?

-Yeah, let's just get this in.

I'll just dig a small hole.

So, how did you get into gardening?

Basically, just spent a lot of time at my grandparents' house.

They had a small holding of 2.5 acres.

-It had pigs and...

-Right.

-..a veg patch and all that kind of thing.

-Yeah.

-So I got the bug, really,

and then I saw a little ad that was advertised to come and do training

-at Cragside.

-Yeah.

So I was on that placement for 11 months and then, luckily,

a job came up. So I've been here 22 years now.

-Goodness! Right.

-And gradually worked my way up from, basically,

-apprentice right through to...

-Excellent.

..what is the head gardener's position at the moment.

-Great.

-It's a fantastic, fantastic place.

-I love it.

-Absolutely.

So what makes Cragside so special to you?

Look around, really. It's a fantastic spot.

Atmospheric. As a horticulturalist, you get to play around with trees,

plants, shrubs, you name it, things that are unusual,

-things you never see elsewhere.

-Yeah.

And just working in this, it's just absolutely to die for, you know?

It really is. It's one of them places,

you know you've made it when you get here.

'This sapling won't become one of the giants of the pinetum,

'but will grow into a pretty, medium-sized evergreen tree.'

-Are you happy with that depth?

-Perfect.

Absolutely perfect. So...

Would you like to get some of that muck in there?

Do you have a favourite place in the garden?

Not one particular, no.

It's a combination, little bit of everything.

I like the pinetum that we're in at the moment.

I like the rock garden. And I also like the formal garden.

Again, every bit has its own little idiosyncrasies,

you know, so it's quite nice to manage them in that sort of way.

-Yeah.

-We've only got a small team of gardeners.

There's four of us full-time

to look after approximately 40 acres.

And how many volunteers?

Ten volunteers, three garden guides,

one trainee, and one seasonal gardener.

Right. So they're busy.

To put it in perspective,

the rock garden is 4.5 acres.

-One person looks after 4.5 acres.

-And you work hard.

You do, yes, that's right.

Talking about hard work, come on, let's go

-and put some more things in.

-Come on, then.

Like lots of couples,

Lord and Lady Armstrong split their gardening duties.

She was in charge of the plants

and he looked after the hard landscaping.

In the grounds of the estate,

he dammed several rivers, creating five lakes.

All this water was to prove the inspiration for his greatest

achievement, generating the power to make Cragside the first house

to be lit by electricity.

Andrew Sawyer has worked at Cragside for over 30 years.

Better than anyone, he knows the story of how Lord Armstrong's vision

changed the modern world.

His great dream really was water power, and that was

the essence of everything he did right from the start.

By the time he bought Cragside, Armstrong had made a fortune

from water power by inventing the world's first hydraulic crane.

It revolutionised every ship dock, every railway.

It meant that men weren't lifting things physically.

It was all done by the power of water.

After this success, his ambitions for using water power grew.

He'd used every bit of technology that he'd both developed

as an engineer and what was available at the time.

He used this lake here at Tumbleton to run

a hydraulic engine,

which pumped 5,000 gallons of water to the house each day,

which gave him the ability to run a passenger lift in the house

so he didn't even have to walk up the stairs to go to bed.

He even turned the meat in front of the kitchen fire

with a water-powered rotisserie.

He had an enclosed boiler system,

which meant he had hot and cold water throughout the house.

It really was the standard of living that we have today

almost a century and a half ago.

It was a bit like someone wanting all the latest gadgets today,

and Armstrong had the money to buy every modern convenience.

And when he heard his friend Joseph Swan had invented

an electric light bulb, he had to have that for Cragside, too.

And so he invented the first-ever domestic hydroelectric generator,

once again powered by water from the estate.

This is Lord Armstrong's original hydroelectric system.

The water comes from the top lakes in the big blue pipe

into the turbine. Water revolves the turbine

and turns the shaft

that then revolves the generators

and then the electricity is sent up to the house.

Turbines would have been used for all kinds of things,

but he connected the dynamo to the water turbine

to produce hydroelectricity.

It's the simplicity of turning water into light.

In time, the house switched to mains power, but visitors were always

asking if the house was still lit by hydroelectricity.

In January, 2014, Andrew could finally answer, "Yes,"

when this wonderful Archimedes screw was installed.

Once again, power was being generated from water at Cragside.

It's a modern way of producing hydropower

which still lights the house,

which means we can still have our proudest boast -

Cragside was the first house in the world

to be lit by hydroelectricity, and it still is.

The Debden Burn that Armstrong dammed to create his lakes still

tumbles through the grounds close to the house.

It's spanned by this beautiful footbridge, the Iron Bridge.

From here, the path winds up to Cragside's formal gardens.

This is where Lord and Lady Armstrong worked together

to transform a series of fields

overlooking the valley into these three glorious terraces.

In Armstrong's day, the top terrace would all have been glasshouses.

Now, only the walls remain,

enclosing the estate's two fern collections.

The clock on the tower would have rung at the beginning

and end of the estate workers' day.

On the middle terrace is the orchard house,

home to exotic fruit trees in pots -

peaches and apricots, lemons and limes.

Each pot sits on a turntable, which Armstrong designed

so the trees can revolve to catch as much sunlight as possible.

At the foot of the garden,

the lower terrace takes the form of an Italian-style loggia,

also designed by Armstrong.

The pool and fountain have been recently restored to the garden

as they would have been when Lord and Lady Armstrong lived here.

The entire formal garden is famed for its colourful flower borders.

Here, the new Archimedes screw is being celebrated

in a fabulously colourful way.

Oh, hey, traditional carpet bedding.

You know, you don't often see it.

No, this is one of our feature beds - keeping the skills alive,

cos obviously, this kind of thing is a dying art.

-Yeah. Do you want a hand trimming, then?

-Yes, if you don't mind.

I've been doing this...

The Parks Department. We'll have a go at this, yeah.

If I work down here...

Yeah, if you work down there, Christine, that would be fantastic.

-So, basically, what we want is...

-Just trimming over.

-Yep,

just keep it nice and flat, keep the edges nice and crisp.

That would be brilliant.

Carpet bedding first became popular in the 19th century.

It was wildly fashionable in the new municipal gardens springing

up around the country.

The best plants for carpet bedding are low growing, slow growing,

and colourful - echeveria and sedum are popular choices.

When I first started working in Clitheroe's Parks Department,

one of my first jobs was keeping bedding neat.

I used to spend hours and hours and hours doing this.

But it's not often you see such an intricate display.

How did these carpet beds fit into the overall garden?

It was the fad, it was the phase, that's what they wanted.

It's all about celebrating something.

That's what carpet bedding's about - it's to celebrate,

in a planting design,

to celebrate something -

anniversary, coronation...

Because it was a showpiece that had to be absolutely pristine

and perfect.

And certainly in Armstrong's day, if it wasn't perfect,

the head gardener would have come down

-on someone like a tonne of bricks, I would imagine.

-Yeah!

Every year, Dale and his team put over 20,000 individual plants

into these beds.

Each year, they work to a different design,

taking six weeks to plant it up.

Do you raise the plants yourself?

Yes. Yes, we do. It works out a lot cheaper for us to do that.

All the succulents, all these echeverias

are all kept behind the scenes, and they go to bed for the winter.

So that you're maintaining not only planting out,

-but the actual plant raising and...

-Yes.

That's nice, actually.

To buy the plants in for these two beds,

-you're looking at somewhere in the region of £35,000.

-Yeah.

And that's why it's not done that often these days, because

-the vast cost is enormous.

-Yes, it's a huge cost.

The skills are disappearing from the old parks departments,

and it's nice that we're trying to keep that alive,

nice that the National Trust is trying to keep that alive,

and the skills that they're trying to promote as well.

Right. Well, I think we could do with a cup of tea, couldn't we?

I certainly think so, yes, yes.

-Well, we'll come back to this later.

-Absolutely, I quite agree.

Brew time.

Dale and his colleagues are keeping the art of carpet bedding

alive in the hills above Rothbury.

But 30 miles from here, on the outskirts of Newcastle,

sits a garden that's reviving uses for plants dating back 3,000 years.

This is Dilston Physic Garden.

The brains behind the garden is Elaine Perry.

She's not a gardener or a botanist,

she's comes from a very different branch of science.

She's a professor based at Newcastle University

with a particular interest in conditions, like Alzheimer's,

associated with memory loss.

It became clear that we certainly weren't going to get a cure

for Alzheimer's disease just like that.

And I started to wonder if perhaps the plant world

had something to offer.

So we looked back hundreds of years through the archives

and found that yes, indeed, there were plants

that were said to improve the memory -

plants like sage and lemon balm.

And of course what's really exciting is that when you then take a look

at that information

and look at, for example, what chemicals the plants contain

and what effects they have

on, you know, laboratory tests,

you find that all that information that has been passed down

is actually verified in terms of modern science.

Elaine needed a garden to grow plants for her experiments,

and the Dilston Physic Garden was born.

The first physic gardens were founded in medieval times.

Elaine's garden follows a tradition stretching back over 500 years

when, instead of popping pills,

people would've found remedies in gardens and hedgerows.

So your doctor was using plants,

the old ladies in the village were using plants, the grandmothers

were using plants.

It was knowledge that was passed down from generations.

And people, in a way, self medicated. They knew the plants,

they knew how to prepare the extracts,

when to take it, how much to take.

There are over 800 different species of plants grown here now,

and a team of volunteers helps maintain the garden.

They use the plants to make a range of products including herbal

soaps and ointments.

One of the volunteers, Dennis,

is already feeling the benefit of what he's learned.

I have got a problem with oesophageal acid reflux,

and it's through Elaine that I've learnt about

the wonderful healing properties of the herbs.

I'm taking conventional medicine, as well.

This is not a substitute.

But it is having a beneficial effect,

reducing the acidity and the soreness,

which it can be a very serious medical condition.

It's estimated that, in some countries, 80% of people

rely on herbal remedies as their first source of treatment.

Perhaps in the future, Elaine's work with the plants in this garden

will help prevent some of the world's most distressing diseases.

But it's not just plants themselves that have therapeutic powers.

Many people believe that gardening itself improves memory

and can even help depression.

And that's great news for tens of thousands of people

who spend their time volunteering in the great houses and gardens

around the UK.

One of Cragside's volunteers is Jennifer Horner.

She first caught the plant bug when she was a student,

but in 1980, she moved from her native Newcastle to Switzerland.

The house that we lived in in Switzerland was a beautiful house.

It had quite a big garden around it,

but it was on top of a hill at about 800 metres,

which is probably about as high as Cheviot is here.

And in summer, it was a beautiful alpine meadow, if you allowed it.

But in winter, it was just a bog

covered with permafrost or snow.

Trying to plant anything, it was just a waste of time,

so it was all very frustrating.

After 27 years, Jennifer came back home to Northumberland,

and at last, she could make her dream come true

and have a proper garden.

I would go to a nursery or into friends' gardens

and just look at plants.

I would look at plants every day if I had the chance.

I look at the plants and say, "Do I like you?"

And if I like the plant, would it work in my garden?

And if it did, then I would go and search for that particular plant.

I liked alpines, so I had to collect alpines.

And I like fuchsias, so I've got lots of different fuchsias.

And then the tree was shady, so I thought, "Well, ferns will go there."

And so I started collecting ferns to put different shapes and sizes

and colours to plant under the tree.

There's probably about 200 different plants in the garden,

that was at the last count.

And I know there are at least 90 pots,

cos my husband has to water them.

But even 200 plants weren't enough for Jennifer - she wanted more!

It was just one day I was visiting Cragside with a friend

and one of the gardeners was working there, and I went up to her

and I said, "Do you have volunteers in the garden?"

And she kind of went, "Oh, yes!"

And that was it. It's just fantastic

because I've now got two gardens.

I've got my garden at home

and then I can enjoy the bigger garden at Cragside.

It's a bit like a dream come true.

It's the icing on the cake to my retirement.

At Cragside, Jennifer's taken on a project of her own - employing

her love of ferns in reviving the two ferneries in the formal garden.

Ferns were the huge craze with Victorians.

You could buy special glass cabinets to show them off,

while the rich could build grottos to house their collections.

The basic structure of the fern hasn't evolved much

for over 140 million years -

they're one of nature's greatest success stories.

Ferns don't only grow well in shady areas.

There's a fern for most situations, including sunny spots.

In Armstrong's time, there were two ferneries at Cragside.

But as ferns fell out of fashion, so they fell into disrepair.

I've arranged to meet Jennifer in one of them,

where she's been replanting.

-Hi, Jennifer.

-Hiya.

-Nice to see you.

-And you. What are you doing?

I'm planting this fern in this crevice here.

It's a bare spot in the fernery.

-It'll look lovely in there.

-Yeah, I think it will.

How long have you known about Cragside?

Well, Cragside itself I've known about since about the 1980s,

but I'd heard of Armstrong when I was a child.

How did you get involved with the ferns, then?

-I got involved with the ferns because it was a bit neglected.

-OK.

And it was a bid sad.

And my garden at home has an area where the only thing that we grow are

ferns, so I just started collecting loads and loads of different ferns,

-and I knew about the ferns that could grow in different places.

-Mm.

So I just gradually sort of winkled my way in, I suppose.

Excellent. And what fascinates you about the place?

Cragside is... Well, one of the visitors came

by me the other day and they said,

"This is the most amazing place,

"it's full of corners. And round every corner,

"is something different." And it's true.

-You could just come to Cragside and visit the garden.

-Mm.

And that's got lots of corners with lots of different things.

Or you go into the estate, drive around

and there's all sorts of amazing walks

and drives and lakes.

And then you go in the house and, well, it's full

of Armstrong's amazing inventions.

So, a really fascinating man.

-Chuck that last bit off.

-Yeah, chuck it in.

-And then...

-It needs a bit of water, doesn't it?

-It does.

-Well, we can get that. So let's go and get some more plants.

-Okey-doke.

Jennifer's one of a team of ten volunteers working in the garden

at Cragside.

But whether volunteer or full-time staff, it's clear that everyone

associated with the garden really loves this very special place.

What surprises me about this garden is how it oozes history.

-You know, I mean, horticultural history...

-Yes.

-..you were commenting on earlier.

-Yes, absolutely.

The history goes all the way back through from 1870,

just carrying that theme on, obviously.

Lady Armstrong was the horticulturalist.

Armstrong was the man who put this kind of thing in,

these giant lumps of stone.

These metal frames, that was his thing, the engineering side of it.

Lady Armstrong was the gardener, basically.

But these aren't just stanchions, are they?

No, no, these are drain pipes as well, dual purpose.

Detriment to the building because they freeze in winter

and blow the building,

but, yeah, there's sort of gutters along the top and it all runs down

into these, runs down underneath and then

the hollow underneath here, the big tunnel runs out,

right the way out into the parkland.

And it just takes the water away from this terrace,

-takes the water away from the border behind.

-Right.

It was all thought out long before the pretty bits went in.

But, Jennifer, you've been saying how fascinated you are

with all the inventions he got up to.

Well, yes, I have been fascinated, especially

when I first learned about Cragside and visited the house

and saw all the amazing things inside of the house.

The equipment for the kitchen and...the lift!

Can you imagine working in a house in those days and having a lift...

-I know!

-..to get up and down stairs with?

And the fact that the house was one of the first to be electrified.

And that's given me some food for thought.

In every wonderful garden I've visited during my balloon tour,

I've left behind a little thank you.

For my gift to Cragside,

I'm thinking something with an industrial edge.

Stephen Lunn is a local blacksmith turned artist,

and he knows the garden well.

When my children were growing up, that was...

Our weekend event was to go to Cragside.

We're a bit bad because we didn't go round the house.

We actually adored the trees and the grounds.

And I cannot believe how them trees just grow so well.

It's inspired myself, actually, to plant my own tree arboretum.

And some of my trees are from seeds from Cragside itself.

It's not just Cragside's trees that's inspired him.

Lord Armstrong was an inventor and I feel I'm an inventor as well.

I invent designs.

So I feel quite an affinity to Lord Armstrong and his grounds and garden.

Except mine's very small scale

and his was absolutely grand, amazing scale.

Stephen's love of Cragside and his admiration for Lord Armstrong's

inventiveness make him the perfect person to create something

distinctive to donate to the garden as a souvenir of my visit.

I'm going to leave the actual design up to him, but whatever it is,

I'm sure it'll be worthy of Cragside and its first owner.

Meanwhile, I'm getting back in my trusty basket

and heading off on the next stage of my Northumberland adventure.

About 40 miles north of Cragside, very close to the Scottish border,

sits Holy Island. The island is cut off twice a day by the North Sea.

The timing has to be right to visit, but when you do,

you see a rather spectacular garden

and a fascinating castle.

But I'm there to see it's beautiful, tiny, little special garden.

This is the Holy Island of Lindisfarne.

Just three miles long by a mile and a half wide,

the island was first settled by monks in 635.

Nowadays, over 600,00 visitors a year come to the island,

over the causeway or by boat.

They visit for bird-watching or to enjoy the beauty of the landscape.

But I'm here to visit the castle

and find out more about its special little garden.

Lindisfarne Castle dates back to 1550.

In 1902, the owner of Country Life magazine, Edward Hudson, asked his

friend, the architect Edwin Lutyens, to transform it into a holiday home.

Lutyens often worked with self-taught garden designer

Gertrude Jekyll.

He'd designed her house, Munstead Wood,

and they were great friends as well as collaborators.

But when they came to work together on Lindisfarne,

the costs for renovating the castle itself spiralled.

The plans to surround it with an ambitious garden of lakes

and parkland were scaled back.

Lutyens and Jekyll ended up making a garden in what had been

the castle's vegetable plot.

But in this case, small really is beautiful.

I've arranged to meet the lucky person

who's in charge of looking after this tiny gem.

Her name is Carol McLeod.

-Hi, Carol.

-Hi, Christine.

-Nice to meet you.

-And you.

-God, you've got a lovely job here, haven't you?

-I have, thank you.

So, what do you know about Lutyens and Jekyll

and this garden?

Lutyens and Jekyll visited the castle,

they were invited by Hudson,

who was the owner of Country Life magazine.

And Jekyll had written articles for Country Life magazine.

So, did they work together in this garden?

They did work together. Lutyens designed the paths and the beds.

-Right.

-He also reduced the wall.

-OK.

He moved the gate from the north wall,

so that you could come across the field.

And then Jekyll, her magic planting touches.

She did.

Jekyll had studied at art school

and used sweeps of colour like brushstrokes in her planting plans.

Texture was also incredibly important to her,

and she often used plants like this stachys.

Here, it sits in perfect harmony against the grey of the pathways

Lutyens designed.

How on earth did you end up working somewhere as beautiful as this?

It's amazing, isn't it?

-Beautiful here.

-It's beau...! I mean, how did you end up here?

I came here from Hertfordshire, where I had been working,

and I wanted to come back to the area.

I couldn't find a job

and I volunteered in the garden.

-From there, I've landed this job.

-Wow!

And did you have any gardening experience before that?

No, just gardening at home.

I trained as a photographer. My background there was portraits

of maternity and newborns.

-Wow!

-So I had to learn a lot of patience working

with newborn babies, and it comes in handy for this job.

I can say, that now makes a tremendous amount of sense.

Caring, sensitive, loving,

capturing moments.

-And that's exactly what you do in this garden.

-That's right.

This can't be an easy site to garden, can it?

-What are the challenges?

-Obviously, being on an island

and surrounded by the North Sea,

the wind can be a major challenge on this garden.

The plants come in when they are very, very young.

They're hardened off so they can withstand the winds when they come

into the garden when they're very young seedlings.

And from there, they should be strong enough to grow in these conditions.

Have you got any plans to move this garden on?

No, we stick to the Jekyll plan.

This was Jekyll's creation and all we're doing is keeping

her plants as they were and how she created them in her mind.

Cos she never ever saw the garden planted,

-so...

-Right!

-It's lovely for people to see

what she had in her mind.

So how come Jekyll never saw it planted up?

Jekyll was quite elderly when she visited here, and she only came once.

She lived down in Surrey, so it was quite a long way for her to come.

I'll say, in them days.

But what does this garden and your role mean to you now?

It's wonderful to create the garden every year.

There's always lots of planning involved.

And it gives great pleasure when people come in

and are just stunned by the vibrancy of the colours of the plants.

-It's all here...

-That's right.

-..in a nice little envelope,

sitting on Holy Island.

-Couldn't be nicer, could it?

-Not on a day like today.

Now, it has to be said that not all of Jekyll's planting schemes

went so well to plan.

Back at the castle, I'm meeting Nick Lewis,

the curator of the building, who's going to show me

how even a renowned plantswoman sometimes got things wrong.

-I believe you're having problems with this, Nick.

-Yeah,

this is red valerian, which was part of the planting scheme

carried out by Gertrude Jekyll.

And it can cause the crag to become unstable.

Right. But how on earth was it planted?

She was not able to reach some places, so she used a shotgun

and loaded it with seeds

-and marched around...

-Whoof!

-..blazing away, yeah.

-Wow!

She also used a young boy in a wicker basket, who she dangled off

the batteries here to the more hard to reach places.

But this red valerian in particular is...

has caused us some problems recently.

And when we've been doing surveys of the natural rock crag,

-which is this thing...

-Yeah.

..the roots are burrowing their way down into natural crevices...

-And busting it.

-..as they're opening up, yeah, with frost and ice.

-Yeah.

And we are getting quite substantial areas

where the rock is unstable.

It is causing us a lot of concern.

So, how do you deal with it?

Because we're in a particularly significant part of the world -

the area we're standing in around the castle is Grade II listed park -

-we have contractors who have sailed down...

-OK.

-..and they treat

-individual plants with just an off-the-shelf weed killer.

-Right.

And that happens every sort of four or five years.

And it is a way of keeping down growth

so it allows this to stay as a feature

-and be true to what Gertrude intended.

-Yeah.

Even though it is causing some problem, we try to balance the two.

Shooting seeds into the rock was a bit eccentric.

But there's now a technique for spreading seeds that's not

a million miles away from Jekyll's shotgun method.

It's called hydroseeding.

A mixture of earth and seeds is sprayed onto steep slopes,

like this one.

It's really come into its own on a site close to Newcastle.

This amazing woman is Northumberlandia.

In 2010, the owners of this opencast coal mine

commissioned landscape architect Charles Jencks to design

a public park, making use of the earth dug out to create the mine.

She's the biggest woman in the world - seven times

the size of a football pitch!

She's now looked after by the Land Trust

and the Northumberland Wildlife Trust.

And Dan is one of their wildlife rangers.

Northumberlandia is an art park, it's a reclining human figure,

it's a lady lying on her back

and pointing one way and offering an open hand of friendship and welcome

with the left hand.

The lady was created with spoil from the surface mine.

There's a million and a half tonnes that have gone into the land form.

And it was created with 900 millimetre high stone blocks.

And then covered with top soil to create the gradient and the slopes.

And then blasted with grass seed and some wild flowers as well.

The grassy banks aren't the only feature that Dan

and his team look after.

Northumberlandia is surrounded by water and they need to keep these

plants in check.

They're called typha - or more commonly, bull rushes.

Without attention, they can be very invasive.

The idea with these ponds around the lady is

that they're reflection ponds, so on a day like today,

you see the reflection of the land form in the ponds.

And pond-edge vegetation is good for wildlife,

but we need to stop it from spoiling the definition of the pond edges,

so we'll just take a little bit of it out today

and we'll allow some of it to continue to grow

to provide home for invertebrates and other wildlife.

Northumberlandia hasn't just regenerated the countryside,

she's changed the lives of some people who work here.

Wayne started here as a volunteer and is now an assistant ranger.

I'm the site warden and I meet and greet the visitors

and give them information about the site

and about Northumberlandia,

check that everything's OK

and that it's clean and tidy for visitors.

I came here as a volunteer,

but ended up with a full-time job.

Just meeting different people every day, it's just fantastic.

As well as maintaining the ponds,

the whole site is maintained with the idea of keeping nature

in balance.

We don't carry out a lot of manicuring kind of work

and cutting grass.

The grass on the lady is cut once a year, in July, and the surrounding

areas we manage as a meadow,

so that's cut later in the season, kind of middle of August.

So again, you get invertebrates on the wild flowers

and then bird species associated with it,

and that kind of keeps the interest,

the wildlife interest, of the site going.

It's not only animals and birds that enjoy the site.

It's estimated that in 2012, the year she opened, 100,000 people

came to walk on Northumberlandia and enjoy these spectacular views.

The vast majority of visitors are absolutely astounded by the place,

especially when you see the land form for the first time

and kind of have a walk round it. It's got its own atmosphere.

It's a really unique place.

And most people seem to appreciate that really well.

I'm finishing my trip to Northumberland at Cragside.

It's a unique place with links to the industry of the North East,

created by Victorian engineering genius Lord Armstrong.

I want to leave a souvenir of my visit with the fantastic

people who look after this place.

Estate workers and their friends and family have

gathered in the formal garden to see the artwork I've had made,

by the artist and blacksmith Stephen Lunn to celebrate Cragside.

I've asked Jennifer, who told me about her volunteering here,

to accept it on behalf of them all.

Do you know what's been really nice about today?

Is how much Armstrong is alive and kicking in this garden.

And as a little gesture, as a tribute, just to show

the influence this man has had on gardens and the county,

we thought that we might like to leave you

just a little tribute to the genius of the man.

Now...

Created by a local blacksmith.

And the curves are to represent the turbines.

The swish and flow of water.

-And the sparks of hydroelectricity.

-Wow.

So, Armstrong alive and kicking,

sitting amongst his countryside,

in his garden. So, I hope for many, many years to come,

you'll look at this and remember a truly amazing bloke.

So, what do you think, Jen?

I think it's absolutely amazing.

Splendid, I've had a lovely day, so thank you all very much.

This work of craftsmanship will stay here in the formal garden,

a great reminder of a man who dreamed of energy

generated from water.

It's time for me to leave Northumberland,

but I'm taking away with me

fabulous memories of people who've had a dream and made it come true.

They've created tiny gardens and huge landscapes.

They've found medicine in plants and power in water.

And all in a part of the country with views as spectacular

as its achievements.