- 2 months ago
Snowdonia episode 2
Category
🦄
CreativityTranscript
00:00BODNANT GARDEN
00:27BODNANT GARDEN stands on a dramatic hillside in North Wales,
00:30overlooking the mountains of Snowdonia.
00:35It's a National Trust property attracting 160,000 visitors a year.
00:42But with annual running costs of £1 million and visitor numbers in decline,
00:48BODNANT is working hard to raise its profile.
00:51It's embarking on a £2 million improvement programme
00:54led by head gardener Troy Scott-Smith.
00:58BODNANT is a world-class garden, and it's a garden that's developing.
01:02All gardens do.
01:04For me, it's one of the joys of gardening,
01:06is this idea that it's a work that's never finished.
01:11Troy has been at BODNANT for two years,
01:14and he's well aware of the mammoth task ahead.
01:17Well, of course, we're not just gardening any back garden.
01:20We're gardening an historic garden.
01:22It's 130 acres large, and so you need a large team of gardeners
01:26to assist me in achieving my and the National Trust and Michael's vision for the garden.
01:33We're very fortunate at BODNANT.
01:34We've got a team of 21 gardeners,
01:36some with specialisms such as tree surgery and propagation.
01:39Troy and his team are giving BODNANT a facelift
01:44across the whole of its 130 acres.
01:48Rising above the River Conway,
01:50the steep slopes are laid out in two utterly contrasting areas,
01:54the formal terraces
01:55and the woodland known as the dell.
02:06The dell is home to Dave Larta.
02:09After 12 years as the supervising gardener,
02:11his passion is undiminished.
02:13I'm one of the lucky ones in the world.
02:18When I walk to work,
02:20I can take any path I want.
02:22Depends how much time I've got.
02:24If you want to listen to the river,
02:25I can listen to the river,
02:26catch the birds.
02:28The kingfish is flying past.
02:30No traffic.
02:33Beautiful.
02:33Amidst the leafy cover of the dell,
02:44there are hidden treasures to be found.
02:48When I was seven or eight,
02:51we had a lily growing,
02:52Mum's favourite flower.
02:55I remember looking through her plant book,
02:59N to Z,
03:00and finding these.
03:01The book tells you how scented it is.
03:05It said it grew up to four metres,
03:0712 feet,
03:08and I wanted one ever since then.
03:11Then I came to Bodnant
03:12and found these in the dell.
03:18Claudia crinum giganteum.
03:21Dave's boyhood enthusiasm
03:23has turned into an obsession.
03:25Every year he gathers seed pods
03:27to grow more giant lilies.
03:29It's a labour of love.
03:31Plant for a patient person.
03:34Seven years or more from seed.
03:37Not easy to germinate.
03:40This year, he has 35 lilies in bloom,
03:43but his ambitions go much further.
03:46I want, before I retire,
03:47500 of these flower spikes in this dell.
03:49Deputy head gardener,
03:56Deputy head gardener,
03:57Adam Salvin,
03:58has worked at Bodnant for over a decade.
04:01He's responsible for the Italianate terraces
04:03that define the formal part of the garden.
04:06Everyone that comes here visits this top half of the garden.
04:11It's where everyone can get to,
04:13and it also has a lot of the main features of the garden,
04:16so it's a real privilege to work in this area in particular.
04:20There's a major project beginning in one of the terrace areas.
04:32Created 100 years ago,
04:34it's known as The Stage,
04:35inspired by an Italian outdoor theatre.
04:39Bodnant's stage has rarely seen any actors,
04:41but its elegant lines and symmetrical planting
04:44have made it a magnet for visitors.
04:49Like many areas of the garden,
04:52the stage is in need of a makeover,
04:54as the yew hedges have come to the end of their useful life.
04:58Adam and his team have removed the old yew trees
05:01and are preparing to put in new plants,
05:04but there's a serious problem.
05:07Well, these are the new yews that we've had for the stage,
05:09and a portion of them have actually got vine weevil,
05:14and it's causing this damage to them.
05:16Normally, they'd be nice, obviously, green and healthy,
05:19but the vine weevil larvae actually start eating the roots,
05:23and it causes the plants to wilt and die like this.
05:27It's a big setback, and a costly one too.
05:31350 newly purchased yew trees
05:34are infected with the dreaded vine weevil.
05:36These should be absolutely full of roots.
05:39These pots, and you can see
05:41this little white larvae with a light brown head on it.
05:46They actually gnaw away at the roots
05:49and also the stem bases.
05:51Half the trees are beyond rescue
05:53and must be thrown away.
05:55The remaining trees must be treated
05:57with a biological agent that devours the weevils.
06:00There won't be any planting any time soon.
06:07In the meantime, Adam takes a delivery
06:10and gets on with what he can.
06:13Could you bring that to the tractor here?
06:14The turf's just arrived.
06:15It's 400 square metres that should be on there.
06:23It's now Adam's job to organise his team
06:26to lay and recreate the perfect lawn of the stage.
06:29Basically, it's just to put a few of the turfs out
06:33where we need them most.
06:35Some of these tricky bits around the edges.
06:37You can see there's four in that first section in the wing,
06:39and then the majority of them for this central section
06:41will stack somewhere behind this bench as best we can.
06:45There's the first turf going down.
06:49One of many today.
06:55Hopefully, that should stand up
06:56and get a bit fair to it
06:57after it's been in the wagon overnight.
07:00Yeah, I'll be happy when it's all down.
07:03As long as he doesn't make a mess in there,
07:06we'll be all right.
07:07Hope he doesn't start scratching it all up.
07:09We can certainly see where you've been,
07:17so it makes a big difference.
07:18Having seen this project
07:19for nearly seven, eight months now,
07:22and most of the time we've been looking
07:24at bare dirt and soil.
07:27Hopefully, in a couple of days' time,
07:29we'll be showing a bit more life, really.
07:34Within a few weeks,
07:36the turf is looking as though it's been there for years,
07:38but with the new yew tree still in quarantine,
07:41the stage isn't quite ready for its new audience yet.
07:47The revamp of the stage area
07:49is driven by head gardener Troy
07:51and also by the family that gave Bodnant
07:53to the National Trust.
07:56Michael McLaren and his mother Anne
07:58are taking an active role
07:59in the whole garden improvement programme.
08:02It's a little bit unique at Bodnant.
08:04We've still, of course, got the donor family here
08:06and very much involved with the garden.
08:09And so, really, the day-to-day garden management
08:12is really activated by Michael McLaren
08:15discussing with me jobs, tasks, renovations.
08:20Michael's day job is in London as a barrister
08:23and he visits Bodnant every three weeks
08:25to check on progress.
08:26Yeah, and what I said to Tom is
08:28that I'll have a look with you today
08:30and we'll sort of agree for sort of plan of action.
08:32Sure, let's do that.
08:34Troy and I have a very good relationship.
08:36I actually have a direct line with him
08:38as far as the garden's concerned.
08:40We want to restore, revitalise parts of the garden
08:42which are a bit over-mature and needing restoration.
08:47And it all works extremely well.
08:49It needs to be cut back a bit.
08:51It's so wonderfully symmetrical enough,
08:53it has a wonderful architectural feel to it.
08:56In the dell, visitors come to admire the hydrangeas
09:02in late summer.
09:03But glorious displays like this
09:05don't happen by chance.
09:09Heyo, here he is.
09:10Looking forward to this.
09:12How are you?
09:12How are you?
09:14Looks cold down there.
09:15It's very cold, isn't it?
09:17I'm going to do a bit of pruning,
09:19get those hydrangeas tidied up.
09:21Tidying up the bushes is easier said than done
09:26because of the steeply sloping riverbanks.
09:29Adam and Dave must indulge in a fairly extreme form of pruning.
09:33Hopefully it's still strong enough to affect my huge weight.
09:44I love the hydrangeas.
09:47It's the aesthetics, isn't it?
09:48You know, we tidy them up, get deadhead them, etc, etc,
09:50get all the dead wood out.
09:51But part of it as well is to sort of keep the vigour.
09:55Get rid of some of the old wood.
09:57Get some of that new, nice, vigorous growth
09:59coming up for the flowers.
10:02Never a dull moment here, Bodmin.
10:03Anybody lucky enough to get a job here like me.
10:08This is the kind of thing that we get up to quite often.
10:11It's not just pushing a hoe or pulling a rake.
10:16Yeah, it's good fun, you know?
10:21Bodnant Garden is famous for its Laburnum Arch,
10:28which blooms every spring.
10:30A magnificent tunnel of yellow,
10:32it attracts 50,000 visitors each May.
10:38There's lots of imitations now, as I always call them,
10:41but, I mean, Bodnant's Laburnum Arch was, I think, the first.
10:43I mean, 1880-something, so it's, you know, 130 years old.
10:48Amazing feature at the time to conceive, I think.
10:52With that in mind, we were really conscious that we had to preserve it.
10:56So what we did is we went through a process last winter
10:58of all these original metal archers.
11:03You can see the bottom.
11:04They look sound here, but as they went into the ground,
11:06they were completely rotten,
11:07and you could just push it over, really.
11:09So they're all, they have all been renewed.
11:11Every year, it takes about five weeks to cut back dead wood
11:17and replace the ties on the arch.
11:20It's time-consuming, but essential for a good show of spring flowers.
11:25After flowering, deadheading is a two-day operation.
11:29Troy's always looking for ways of saving time
11:31and came up with what he thought was a brilliant idea.
11:36One year, when I first came, I did actually want to speed it up.
11:39I thought two days was too long,
11:41and I got a mechanical hedge cutter in.
11:44Because I thought, actually, if you use a hedge cutter,
11:46you could just go along like that.
11:48And it was quick, 40 minutes, I did it all.
11:54But it looked really awful, to be honest.
11:56So I admitted I was wrong, and Tony and Laura did it again,
11:59and it looked a lot better.
12:05Down in the dell, some of the magic has been lost in recent years.
12:10The river is cloudy due to a build-up of silt and shale.
12:13Dave is determined to make this little tributary
12:19of the River Connery crystal clear again.
12:21We've got major water work projects coming up.
12:25The big problem that we've got is further down in the mill pond,
12:29just above the waterfall there,
12:31there's a huge collection of material that's built up over the years.
12:36That needs to go, else does what's in the river here.
12:39If we didn't maintain this, then the whole river,
12:45right through to where it needs to look on with,
12:48would basically fill up with silt and shale.
12:51To make the dredging easier,
12:53he's decided to build a dam to divert the river.
12:56That will give the team better access to the riverbed.
13:01All right, grab some bags.
13:02We're going to dam the river tomorrow,
13:08divert it through that way, through the pond,
13:11so that basically we've got free access up and down with machinery here,
13:18clearing out as much of this shale as we can.
13:23Dave is building his dam with large bags,
13:33each filled with a tonne of stones.
13:37The heavy manual work doesn't worry trainee gardener Fiona Braithwaite.
13:42Oh, I love it.
13:43At the end of the day, you might feel physically tired,
13:46but you feel as though you've achieved something
13:49and you feel a lot healthier as well after doing it.
13:55Day one went well.
13:58Day two is not getting off to a good start,
14:01not least because the weather's against them.
14:04Mechanical problems this morning, first thing.
14:07That's fixed.
14:08We're back in action again now.
14:11But now look at it.
14:11The rain has swollen the river
14:14and the volume of water is threatening all their hard work.
14:19The potential is that the river picks up
14:21and undoes everything that I'm just about to do.
14:27Whatever Dave tries, the river is too much for him.
14:31He just can't hold it back.
14:33The dam will not be built today.
14:36I didn't think it was a good sign.
14:37I was down there and the river was flowing strong.
14:40That's not a good sign.
14:42Steve said you were almost there.
14:44Too much water, not enough weight in the bags.
14:48No old bags.
14:49No old bags.
14:51A non-gardener or a non-professional gardener,
14:54you do have this image of gardening being sort of deadheading roses
14:57and doing pretty things,
14:58but a large proportion of our work is, yeah,
15:02dealing with diggers, machinery, drainage work.
15:06Dave's got several weeks' work here in the river and his team,
15:10and during that time, of course,
15:12there'll be not much gardening happening in the dell.
15:16Once the water level has dropped,
15:18the dam can be finished
15:19and Dave will be able to start dredging.
15:22Alison Clarke's role in the improvement programme at Bodnant
15:31is to catalogue and protect the plants.
15:34Well, we've got a collection of about 50,000 plants here.
15:39Some of the plants are very, very rare.
15:43Some of them are threatened in the wild.
15:46Some of the material was collected anything up to 100 years ago
15:50by famous plant collectors.
15:53So it's really important that we keep them going.
15:57All we're looking for is a few specimens
16:00to make sure that that plant doesn't go extinct, basically.
16:09So where are we off to?
16:11Well, if we just go over and have a look at this big old chestnut tree
16:14and that kind of is a nice introduction.
16:16Alison is training Fiona in the art of propagation.
16:19Today's lesson is layering,
16:21a method gardeners use to create a new plant
16:24by laying a branch of an established plant on the ground
16:26where it grows roots.
16:28So all layering is really is exploiting what nature does.
16:34You can see with the chestnut where it's touched the ground.
16:39I mean, that's been rooted in there for years now.
16:42But, and here again, over there,
16:45the branch has gone down low, touched the ground,
16:48and roots have formed.
16:54Alison uses this layering technique
16:56to propagate many plants around Bodnant Garden.
17:02I'd like to have a go at this one first, this rhododendron.
17:08Bodnant is world famous
17:10for its unique collection of rhododendrons.
17:13With 800 varieties,
17:15some of them are very rare indeed.
17:17Ensuring their survival is an enormous challenge.
17:20If anything happened to one of them
17:22and I hadn't propagated it,
17:24I'd feel quite responsible and a bit guilty, really,
17:27as though it's my fault for letting it die out.
17:31So I'm just going to scrape away
17:33a little bit of the bark at the base there.
17:35And that does two things.
17:39It makes sure the cambium layer there
17:42is going to be in contact with the soil.
17:45And also, it causes all the plant hormones
17:48to concentrate in that area.
17:51So hopefully rooting will take place there.
17:55So I'm just going to get one of these little pegs.
17:57I think it's probably the only one of this type
18:02that we've got in the garden.
18:04In a couple of years' time,
18:06the branch will have taken root
18:07and become a new plant in its own right.
18:10Peg.
18:11Once it's properly rooted,
18:12you can just sever it here,
18:15dig it out,
18:15move it to where you want it
18:17or pot it up.
18:17If we don't preserve it for the future,
18:20I think we'll lose it.
18:22And I think the plants here,
18:23they are precious.
18:25And the people who do the work,
18:28they're invaluable as well.
18:36The improvement programme at Bodnant
18:38includes every aspect of the garden,
18:41from planting and propagation
18:42to fixtures and furniture.
18:45Well, this is one of our classic seats at Bodnant.
18:47It's a William Kent design seat.
18:50We've got two of them,
18:51one on the stage
18:52and one on the Lily Terrace.
18:54You can see it's well past any use, really.
18:58So we've had actually two new seats made.
19:01This is the original colour here.
19:03We just felt it a nice opportunity
19:05to actually select a new colour
19:08because we weren't really that happy
19:11with the original colour.
19:12And actually, lots of visitors this year
19:13had put on their comment cards
19:15who love the garden
19:16but don't like the green on the seats.
19:18The old bench from the stage
19:20has been painted with a selection of possible colours.
19:23But before making a final choice,
19:25there's someone Troy must go and see.
19:27Someone who is certain to have an opinion.
19:30Hello, Troy.
19:34Morning, Lady Aberconway.
19:35Morning.
19:35How are you?
19:35Very well, thanks.
19:37Anne McLaren married the late Lord Aberconway
19:39over 50 years ago.
19:42She lives part-time at Bodnant Hall
19:43and is devoted to the garden.
19:46Now, you have to tell me
19:47what all the latest news is
19:49because I've been away.
19:50Yes, it's been a little while, hasn't it,
19:51since we've got together.
19:52That's right, it is a long time.
19:54I mean, there's quite a few bits happening.
19:55Troy wants to know what colour
19:58she thinks the bench should be painted.
20:00I don't... I hate coloured seats.
20:02Well, for me, maintenance-wise,
20:04they're a bit of a nightmare
20:05because you, of course, have to constantly keep up to them.
20:07It's so difficult to get the right colour, anyway.
20:09You did a seat just overlooking the canal.
20:12Yeah.
20:13I didn't like that colour at all.
20:14It was much, much too blue.
20:16All sort of, you know,
20:18beige-y, green-y, olive-y sort of colours.
20:21That's what I'm for.
20:22So we'll...
20:23Not sort of duck-y blue.
20:24Yeah.
20:25I don't think you'll want anything strident at all.
20:27Yeah, we'll look at that show with them back, wouldn't it?
20:29Mm.
20:36Bodnant is home to many ancient and beautiful trees.
20:40It's vital that any rotten trees
20:42are identified and assessed
20:43before they become dangerous.
20:46Adam is a qualified tree surgeon.
20:50Basically, this abyss tree,
20:52it's been dying back for quite a while.
20:54And as you can see here,
20:56there's quite extensive decay on this buttress here,
21:00with bark peeling off.
21:02So on here, we've got quite a bit of decay.
21:04If you look up into the crown,
21:06there's quite a bit of dieback.
21:08It's been steadily declining over the last few years, really.
21:12So now we've got the chance to actually remove it.
21:15The tree has to be felled.
21:18If left, the rot would spread
21:20and cause this ten-ton giant to fall of its own accord.
21:24So we know it's hopefully OK to climb,
21:28it's safe enough to climb.
21:29So what we want to do is climb it,
21:31remove it before it does extend even further.
21:35OK.
21:36Paul and Adam have 35 years tree surgery experience between them,
21:40and they know how important safety is
21:43when you're working at heights.
21:44If you're a hundred foot up a tree,
21:47you're on your own.
21:47The only person that's going to look after you
21:50while you're up there is yourself, really.
21:53I think he's enjoying it.
21:55At least the wind's staying down a bit.
22:02Spot on.
22:03Very good.
22:07All he does now is to snap it.
22:08While Paul clears the path for a safe landing,
22:18Adam makes one last check
22:20to ensure that the tree will fall in the right area
22:22without damaging any other plants.
22:25Because it has a slight lean to the right-hand side
22:28as we're looking at it,
22:30so we'll aim it slightly further to the left,
22:33and then it should end up somewhere in the middle there.
22:35As long as we've got plenty of muscle on the rope,
22:39we'll be all right.
22:42Timber!
22:48Even the best-laid plants can go wrong.
22:51The tree veered off course and damaged a conifer.
22:57It's just a shame about that, isn't it?
22:58Bet you were a bit where you sickened, wouldn't you?
23:01You saw it moving as it was going down.
23:03You thought, ah, that's going to go hard.
23:05You can see, you can do that.
23:07The felled tree is completely rotten.
23:10It might have fallen at any moment,
23:12so the main job of the day has been a success,
23:16in spite of the damage to the conifer.
23:20You have to take the rough with the smooth.
23:22If something does happen,
23:24it would be unfortunate and unplanned,
23:26but we'd have to accept it,
23:28because once it's happened, it's bare, isn't it?
23:30You can't put it back.
23:31Troy is not the only one who's attached to the trees in the garden.
23:39I don't want to see many of my old favourite trees chopped down,
23:43because I'm sentimental,
23:45but I realise that, you know, everything has a life period,
23:49and you can't keep a tree when it's got sort of untidy and old and shabby-looking.
23:55Bodnunt often sends specimens to other gardens and nurseries around the UK.
24:02These links have proved to be enormously beneficial.
24:06I planted these two trees in memory of my husband.
24:10He always wanted to have a magnolia here,
24:13and I wanted a very tall, straight one,
24:16and I managed to find one.
24:18And then this is a Judas tree,
24:21which is supposed to be the tree that Judas Iscariot hanged himself on
24:24after the crucifixion.
24:27And we used to have a wonderful Judas tree here many years ago,
24:31and it died.
24:33And I discovered that Hilyas had had a cutting from my father-in-law
24:38and had been propagating our Bodnunt Judas tree,
24:42and I was able to get that for his second tree,
24:45which was very appropriate.
24:48Now that the river in the dell has been dammed
25:02and is no longer flowing freely,
25:04the excavation of the shale is underway.
25:07The process has reached industrial proportions,
25:10and Dave is missing his plants.
25:13It does run through your mind several times
25:17that I'm only meant to be a gardener,
25:19and can I just go back to pulling my paths and pruning my shrubs?
25:26It's a lot more straightforward than doing something like this.
25:28It was Dave's idea to use these conveyor belts.
25:35Really, it was the best way possible of moving so much tonnage
25:40up a very steep bank, as you can see.
25:43And we're currently moving, we're doing about 18 to 20 trailers a day.
25:48Now one trailer is about 12 tonne of material.
25:51So, as you can imagine, we've been doing it a few weeks now,
25:55so it's a fair tonnage we're taking away.
25:59Months of heavy work have really paid off,
26:02and many hundreds of tonnes of material
26:04have been removed from the riverbed alone.
26:07The dam has been dismantled,
26:09so the water now flows free,
26:11sparkling in the dell once more.
26:13And Dave has an ingenious use for all this shale.
26:22He's improving the 10 miles of paths around the garden.
26:28I'm just tidying up the paths down here a little bit.
26:31I tend to get a bit muddy through the season.
26:34Give them a bit of a scrape earlier in preparation.
26:36Some new gravel there, I'm just going to whack it down now,
26:40just make it all nice and neat.
26:43Up on the terraces,
26:57the stage is being set for some long-awaited newcomers.
27:01Well, what we're doing now this morning,
27:04finally, is planting up some of the yew hedges on the stage,
27:07which we started now almost 12 months ago.
27:10We were hoping to have done it in the spring,
27:12and we decided to leave it till the autumn.
27:16And now, finally, the day's come
27:18when we're trying to get some of these in
27:20and make the stage look like it used to.
27:2355 on the edge and a 55 gap.
27:25I've spent a lot of time now just measuring between each plant,
27:30making sure the rows are the right distance apart,
27:32to try and encourage a nice, thick, uniform hedge with no gaps,
27:36but allowing the plant some room to expand.
27:41The paint colour has finally been agreed for the new bench too.
27:46It's called Bothy Green.
27:47It's taken over a year to improve the decaying stage area,
27:53and Troy is delighted with the result.
27:57Now we've got new hedges that will grow and live 100 years,
28:01and, you know, it's a big area of a garden,
28:05and a significant area of a garden,
28:08which is now complete and we can move on elsewhere.
28:10From the formal terraces to the wild woodland,
28:25Troy and his dedicated team have renewed and refreshed Bodnant.
28:30The hope is that their efforts will be rewarded
28:32with more visitors coming to this beautiful garden in Snowdonia.
28:40We'll see you next time.
Be the first to comment