Tom Hart Dyke talks about Lullingstone Castle

Tom Hart Dyke talks about Lullingstone Castle gardens

Transcript

00:00The other weekend it was 25 years since me and a friend tried to cross this area on the

00:04Panamanian-Colombian border looking for new species of orchids.

00:09Idiots!

00:10And we got ourselves kidnapped by this Colombian guerrilla group.

00:13We should never have been there in the first place, but after being kidnapped, ten months

00:18in total we were kidnapped for, three months into our captivity they said you've got

00:23five hours before we shoot you and I started dreaming up the world garden in the centre

00:27pages of my diary.

00:29It was petrifying and it's as if I'm talking about somebody else, I mean I cannot believe

00:34that we got through it and I cannot believe that we were silly enough to go and I cannot

00:38believe that we survived, especially that day when they said they were going to execute

00:43us.

00:44But the garden, although I didn't believe I was really going to fulfil my dream because

00:48they said they were going to kill us, but it just kept me going.

00:51It distracted me from the thought of the terrifying circumstances around us and the thought of

00:57death.

00:58It was a fantastic distraction and I know gardening is therapeutic, but this is absolutely

01:03ridiculous.

01:04It was a way of complete, pure and utter botanical escapism and it saved my life.

01:10Dreaming up the garden during captivity saved my life during very, very scary times.