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00:00I have made a garden journey following one of the world's great rivers.
00:06This has taken me criss-crossing through frontiers along six different countries, right through
00:12the heart of Europe, from the mountains to the sea.
00:20By traveling almost the entire length of its 800 miles, I've seen its huge influence on
00:26people and places.
00:32And to understand more about that rich and complex story that lies along its banks, I've
00:38visited as many gardens as I can.
00:43Along the way I found great community spirit.
00:47Are you enjoying our gardens?
00:49I love your garden.
00:51And people with real passion.
00:53We have nothing.
00:56I've seen how it has attracted power and money as well as shattered dreams.
01:03And a warning about man-made changes and how at every point this river continues to shape
01:12Europe's history, its culture, even its geography.
01:16It is, of course, the mighty Rhine.
01:26In this part of my journey, I'm following the Rhine due north, remaining in Germany throughout.
01:36This is the second of three programmes that I'm making along the entire length of the Rhine.
01:44And I'm starting it near Schwetzingen, in the south-west of the country.
01:52This is the old Rhine, because until the 19th century, the Rhine moved around, it meandered,
01:58it created islands and sandbanks, it flooded in winter.
02:03This bridge crosses a small remnant of that original river.
02:07But the superhighway that we now associate with the Rhine was created in the 19th century.
02:14When great stretches were straightened, which enabled the big boats to go down, and enabled
02:20factories to grow up, and seemed to be a great sort of marvellous improvement.
02:26And in some ways it was, but in other ways, it had unintended consequences.
02:36A few kilometres to the east of this part of the old Rhine is the Palace of Schwetzingen.
02:46I've come here because this represents really the seat of power in this area, and it expresses
02:55both in the building and in the gardens, real grandeur.
03:00It went from being a medieval motive castle to the summer palace of the Elector Palatine
03:07Princes.
03:09Now, these were the most important people, the most influential people in the area.
03:13And as well as the building, they made not one, but two magnificent gardens.
03:25The first is formal and rigidly symmetrical, with a central axis flanked by parterres and
03:33water features leading in the far distance to a lake.
03:40These gardens were created in the second half of the 18th century, and everything is on
03:46a grand scale, and intended above all to impress with its magnificence.
03:57Side gardens lead off from the central axis, all beautifully restored to their formal 18th
04:05century splendour.
04:07I'm struck immediately by these wonderful arcades.
04:13These are shaped and clipped out of lime in the foreground, and the really tall ones are
04:19hornbeam.
04:20And you see them in pictures in Baroque gardens in England, but almost all of them were swept
04:26away by the landscape movement, but here they are, very European, and still exactly as they
04:31were made and intended in the 18th century.
04:43An impressively large orangery runs along one whole side of this area.
04:49I am fascinated by orangeries, which is this enormous building at the back.
04:54In the 18th century, they were the precursors of greenhouses, really.
04:58The citrus, the oranges, would be protected in winter, with stoves heating them, and then
05:05placed out in boxes in the garden in front, creating a summer garden.
05:11And you can see it today, not just citrus, but palm trees, all of which, like the citrus
05:16in the 18th century, will be brought into protection to overwinter them.
05:27The path leads on to a more enclosed space, with other paths and cul-de-sacs leading from
05:34it.
05:39This is an outdoor theatre, with a sunken orchestra pit below a grass stage, flanked by the hedges
05:49of hornbeam that act as the stage wings.
05:53A cascade rises behind the stage, and above it, presiding over the whole scene, is a temple
06:00built to Apollo, the god of music.
06:04The rock splendor, it is all suitably dramatic and incredibly impressive.
06:12What I find most extraordinary about this is, for all the magnificence of this temple and
06:18the fountain, is that the theatre, with all its resonances of the liberal arts and music
06:24and dance and painting, fundamentally is created by assembling a group of plants.
06:31It's as simple as that.
06:34Turn and face the other way, and the picture is very different, with the temple looking out
06:40onto a landscaped, informal part of this huge garden.
06:45Dominated by mature trees with paths leading to a series of follies, temples and assorted buildings,
06:54all created solely to adorn the landscape.
06:59There is a temple to Mercury, carefully constructed to look like a classical ruin.
07:06An enormous faux Turkish mosque, never meant for worship, but intended as a titillating taste
07:12of the Orient.
07:15Today the garden is a major attraction in Germany, with over 800,000 visitors a year.
07:22But whilst both garden and park are expertly cared for, it does have major challenges ahead,
07:30that are directly connected to the management of the Rhine.
07:35Karin Seber is the garden conservationist at Schwetzingen.
07:41They were straightening out the river Rhine in the 19th century, so the water level sank very
07:50low, like 10 to 12 metres.
07:53The trees can't cope with that.
07:55The roots, they can't get it.
07:56And we had some very dry summers and dry springs.
08:00They are dependent on rainfall.
08:04There are 80% of the trees in Schwetzingen which are not healthy.
08:1080%?
08:1180%.
08:11Do you think you're going to lose any species?
08:13Yes.
08:14I'm pretty sure about that.
08:15And which ones?
08:16Beaches.
08:17Beaches you'll lose?
08:18Yes.
08:21It's genuinely shocking.
08:23Yes.
08:23That to me.
08:24Yes.
08:29We try to keep the old historic species.
08:33The trees that seem to cope with climate change, we took seeds from and grow them in the nursery.
08:39And then we plant it out in the garden at a very, very young age.
08:43They might have the genetic material to cope.
08:47It will be a much younger garden, but also we will have different species.
08:54So perhaps it's also an opportunity that we're going to have an original garden.
09:04Although Carine is upbeat about the future, that combination of climate change and the 19th
09:11century engineering that created a more efficient waterway on the Rhine is clearly posing long-term
09:18harm to this historic garden.
09:21But for the moment, it remains magnificent in its splendor.
09:28It is special.
09:29It's big, so you need time here to fully enjoy it.
09:32Well, my time has run out now and I need to move on and I'm off to Heidelberg.
09:42Heidelberg is famous for having Germany's oldest university founded in the 14th century.
09:47But that's not why I'm here.
09:49Because sitting on a promontory above the city is the real reason I've come.
09:55As the road rises through the wooded hills, the ruins of Heidelberg castle come into view.
10:14Whereas the garden at Schwetzingen has been carefully looked after and maintained down the centuries,
10:20here at Heidelberg castle there's a very different story because back in the early 17th century,
10:26a really grand Renaissance garden was planned and started to be installed.
10:31But then, disaster struck.
10:42The story is a good one.
10:45It begins in 1613 with the marriage of Friedrich, the Elector Palantine,
10:50with Elizabeth, the daughter of the King of England, James I.
10:55The idea being to unite the Rhine and the Thames,
11:00although it has to be said that the river below the castle is not the Rhine,
11:03it's the Necker, it runs into the Rhine.
11:05And to celebrate, they created this marvellous garden.
11:10The garden stretched out across five enormous terraces filled with ornamental flower beds,
11:17elaborate fountains and statues.
11:22And was intended to match in scale and glory,
11:25the great Italian Renaissance gardens of the period.
11:31It was nearly completed, but then the Thirty Years' War began.
11:37And the Thirty Years' War was appalling.
11:40It devastated the whole of Germany and much of Europe.
11:45More was to follow because at the end of the 17th century,
11:50there was a war of French succession and the French came and blew up the castle.
12:02It was abandoned, gradually it became overgrown.
12:06In the 19th century, a landscape garden was made across the whole site and it was buried.
12:15It is a sad and tantalising story.
12:20This vast project, if it had been allowed to be completed,
12:24if it had been looked after and restored,
12:27would have been one of the great wonders of the world.
12:37From the horticultural ghosts of Heidelberg,
12:41I've come back to the Rhine as it continues its progress on up through Germany.
12:47When I first started thinking about the Rhine, I had this idea of this superhighway,
12:53like a liquid railway line or motorway.
12:56But actually it's more complicated than that, there's so much more to it.
12:59Because although you have this vast river cutting behind me across the horizon,
13:03carrying these enormous barges, it's also fed by big rivers.
13:08This is the mine, which also has big traffic running down to it,
13:13feeding into the Rhine, all gathering together and then pushing up through Germany,
13:18taking all these goods.
13:20And around this complex has built a whole culture.
13:24It's how people live their lives, dictated by the Rhine.
13:27The food, the transport, obviously the industry.
13:31It's all centred around this river.
13:37From the point where it joins up with the Rhine,
13:40I've decided to follow the mine to the biggest and most famous city along its banks.
13:50Frankfurt is a major financial centre, with a cityscape to match,
13:54and more skyscrapers than anywhere else in Germany.
14:00But in the heart of the city, there is a famous palm house.
14:06Which is the historical centrepiece of one of the country's biggest botanical gardens.
14:17The Palmen Garden was the creation of the landscape gardener Heinrich Seesmeier,
14:23who supplied the initial planting from his own personal collections.
14:27Then additional plants were purchased via shares by local citizens,
14:32who were eager to invest in a spectacular garden created for all the people of Frankfurt.
14:50I love the way that the grasses are used in this border on such scale.
14:55And we take grasses as very much part of every gardener.
14:59But I do remember, back at the end of the 1980s, early 1990s,
15:02a journalist friend of mine saying he was going to Germany
15:05to see borders made out entirely of grasses.
15:08And I'd never heard of that.
15:10This was this strange thing.
15:11I thought we'll never catch on.
15:13And of course now, every garden uses grasses in their borders.
15:17But it all began here in Germany.
15:24It's the back end of summer, but the roses are still looking good.
15:29And it's becoming apparent that roses of all kinds, formal and informal,
15:34are a key component of German gardens.
15:39But at that moment, the heavens opened and I dashed to the shelter of the palm house.
15:46When it was built, this was the largest palm house in Europe.
15:53It's 100 meters long and 30 meters high,
15:55and required what was then cutting edge iron framework and glass construction.
16:01This meant that it could house from the outset a mini jungle of tropical plants.
16:12What you have to remember is that in 1871 when this opened,
16:17almost nobody would have seen any of these plants before.
16:22That no one had the opportunity to travel in the way that we so freely do.
16:28And so it was truly exotic.
16:30It also suited the slightly gloomy, heavy, Victorian frame of mind.
16:41The way they dressed their houses, the way that they laid out their gardens,
16:45the way that they clothed themselves.
16:46It was all of a piece of this very full, slightly dark, green, exotic world.
16:59The 19th century palm house is not the only glass house at the Palm and Garden.
17:08Modern glass houses were built in the 1980s,
17:12specifically to house plants from different climatic regions.
17:17This is dry desert.
17:21And immediately you walk in, unlike the slightly heavy Victorian feel of the palm house,
17:27this feels bright and light and open.
17:34Dr. Katja Heubach is the director of the Palm and Garden.
17:38Do you think that Germans, in the broadest sense of the term,
17:42have particular horticultural interests?
17:44No flat in Frankfurt will give you that space to put in those big plants.
17:50So this is the best windowsill in Frankfurt?
17:53Absolutely.
17:54What I would say is very German is the Schrebergarten.
17:58It's a garden for a family to produce their vegetables.
18:03It's really lovely, you've got your neighbors,
18:05and of course Frankfurt is very international,
18:07so we've got more than 180 different ethnic groups and nationalities.
18:11And it's sometimes difficult to talk to each other,
18:15at least by words, but with the vegetables,
18:17really bringing people together.
18:25Following Katja's enthusiasm about the community Schrebergarten,
18:28I want to see them for myself, and I don't have far to go,
18:32because there are as many as a hundred of them in Frankfurt alone.
18:37So I've traveled to the south of the city, to the Siegelhütter.
18:42The weather is closing in, but that hasn't deterred some of the Schrebergarteners
18:46from showing me their plots.
18:51And the resident cat, Findus, is keeping a watchful eye on my walkabout.
18:59Lucia Sada is acting as my guide.
19:02She originally came to Frankfurt from the Czech Republic.
19:05It's now head of the association committee, which looks after 125 plots.
19:12We have over 25 nationalities here.
19:15Many levels of education, everybody.
19:20Carlos, the Portuguese guy, he has the best and biggest zucchinis always.
19:25There's the envy of everybody.
19:27Lucia takes me next to the plot of Sandra Buchner.
19:32I'm Monty. Do you speak any English?
19:34A little bit. A little, okay.
19:36I can see rhubarb. Zucchini. Broccoli.
19:39Yeah, lots.
19:41My husband makes together the garden, and we are family with my boys.
19:47Do your boys enjoy it?
19:48My little son, he loves it.
19:50You can play, you can run, you can help.
19:54So he's a gardener? Yeah.
19:55Good for him. That's fantastic.
19:59Schrebergarteners were the brainchild of Daniel Schreberg,
20:01who was a 19th century doctor.
20:04Traditionally, they are divided into three.
20:07A third for production, a third for leisure, and a third for some sort of building.
20:13Can you build anything you want?
20:15No, definitely not.
20:16Very old huts with bricks, but it's not allowed anymore.
20:21Now you can use only natural materials, wood mostly.
20:26Can people sleep, spend the night in them?
20:30Only when they got so drunk that they cannot go home.
20:36For most people, the gardens are a respite away from work.
20:41But Thomas May is employed by the German railways and brings his work with him into his garden.
20:49Will it go all over his garden?
20:52Oh, I see. Yes, there's the branch line.
20:55And the branch line serves an extra function.
20:59So there comes the Thüringer Bratwurst, fährt, fährt, fährt zum Nachbarn und das Bier kommt zu mir.
21:05Wir machen dann den Austausch.
21:06Fantastic.
21:08Thomas' daughter takes part by adding the passengers on the platform.
21:14And he says he keeps her away from the phone.
21:17But it's also a hobby for the child.
21:20And that's the beautiful thing.
21:20The children are standing here, like they are now, and have such light eyes.
21:27Me too. I can tell you.
21:28It will be fantastic.
21:30Yeah.
21:34The next plot I was taken to belonged to Rosie Lack, who's gardened here longer than anyone else.
21:41This is your garden, all this?
21:44And do you look after it yourself?
21:47Always on your own.
21:53No husband.
21:5450 years.
21:5650 years here.
21:58You don't look old enough.
22:0181.
22:02And your husband didn't help.
22:04Der hat immer zwei linke Hände.
22:08Thank you for letting me see your garden.
22:10I am full of admiration and good luck for the next 50 years.
22:15Oh, thank you.
22:17Hello.
22:19As I leave, Findus, the resident cat, who's been following and watching from a distance throughout, deigns to acknowledge me.
22:31Schreber Gardens are a really important part of German society.
22:36There are over a million of them, spread out across the country.
22:39And what is extraordinary about them is they do combine that sense of community, of people sharing a space and
22:47all that goes with it, and yet maintaining the individuality and uniqueness of each of the plots.
23:04Early next morning, I leave Frankfurt to get back to the Rhine.
23:10I'm taking a train north to visit gardens in and near the former capital, Bonn.
23:25The train passes along the Rhine Gorge, with many of its famous vantage points steeped in folklore.
23:33Like Lorelei, the cliff where a legendary siren is said to lure sailors with her irresistible song to shipwreck uncertain
23:42death on the rocks below.
23:49This is the middle Rhine, the most romantic part of the whole river, which has attracted poets and painters to
23:56Lorelei and the Seaman since the early 19th century.
23:59So you have woodland on one side and the other, these vineyards, impossibly steep, and then castles perched on the
24:06rocks.
24:07And funnily enough, from the train, you get a really good view of it.
24:11It's like being a spectator of the show that's going on.
24:20Just south of Bonn is the station of Rolandsegg.
24:25I've come here because this station is extraordinary.
24:28It was built in the 1850s, and it's hard for us to imagine now, but this opened up the Rhine.
24:34It meant that people had quick and easy access.
24:37Of course, without cars or anything like that, they could come here, get on the river, on a steamboat,
24:43and the romantic Rhine and its incredible scenery was theirs.
24:48They could stay here, too, and dine in five-star splendour.
24:57And very soon, it attracted kings and queens. Queen Victoria came here with her husband.
25:03Poets, painters, artists, and it became a centre of this idea of the Rhine as an incredibly romantic river.
25:13This was the beginning of modern Rhine tourism.
25:17Boats and trains were now affordable and fast, and this station, which is now a well-known art centre,
25:24was a convenient stop on the line from Bonn.
25:30As I've worked my way up the river, there have been castles on the skyline
25:35in various states of romantic disrepair.
25:41And I want to go and see one.
25:43And I've been told that there's one on the hillside here, Schloss Drakenberg,
25:46which is in a good state.
25:49So I'm going to get the ferry, cross the river, and have a look.
25:58As I climbed up a steep hill from the riverside,
26:01I caught glimpses of Schloss Drakenberg through the trees.
26:07The castle is the stuff of fairy tales, all towers and turrets.
26:13Yet, in fact, it's a multimillionaire's fantasy,
26:17and barely 150 years old.
26:20It was founded above all on the desire to display newfound wealth
26:25to this stream of Rhine tourists
26:27that were hungry for romantic castles of any kind.
26:35The castle was built in the 1880s by Baron Stéphane von Sater.
26:41He grew up the son of an innkeeper, went to Paris, made himself a fortune,
26:45and built this enormous building in just two years.
26:50Apparently, never lived in it, but it was a statement.
26:53And not only did it have this extraordinary view,
26:56but it could be seen and admired from the river itself.
27:00There were castles built all the way along the length,
27:03but one way or another, they were attacked and damaged
27:07and destroyed by the wars.
27:09But this one has come through relatively unscathed.
27:16The fantasy continues in the gardens,
27:19which were the height of fashion at the time.
27:23The Victorian formality of the terrace
27:25was dedicated to Venus as a place of pleasure and beauty,
27:30while the woodland represented a romanticised view of the natural world.
27:37The garden behind me was planted in the same spirit as a house,
27:43as a display of wealth and also finesse,
27:47because these were all trees imported from the west coast of America.
27:52They were new, they were expensive,
27:55they were quite tricky to get hold of.
27:56Of course, the one ironic thing was that when they were planted,
28:01they were small.
28:02And it's only now, 150 years after that,
28:06that we can admire them in their full glory.
28:09For Baron von Satter,
28:11the position of his castle brought him power and prestige.
28:16But just upriver is a garden whose owner also saw huge significance in the Rhine,
28:21but for very different reasons.
28:29This is the village of Rondorf,
28:31which from 1937 was the home of Konrad Adenhaar,
28:35the anti-Nazi politician who became the first chancellor of West Germany after the Second World War.
28:44The garden is set in a series of terraces on a steeply sloping site and extends to about an acre.
28:53Like the Parmengarten in Frankfurt, there are lots of roses, especially standards,
28:57which I see less and less nowadays in British gardens.
29:02Adenhaar also collected ornaments and statues from his foreign travels,
29:07which he then placed strategically around the garden.
29:12The reason that I decided to visit this garden was because Adenhaar was one of the most important politicians of
29:19the 20th century,
29:20and he was a truly keen gardener.
29:24He designed this garden.
29:26He laid it out.
29:27He planted it.
29:28And then he tended it for the last 30 years of his life,
29:31which coincided with arguably the most important political period of his life.
29:37So the politics and the garden and the man were inseparable.
29:44Bettina Adenhaar Biberstein, pictured here on Conrad's knee, is the fifth oldest of his 24 grandchildren.
29:52He invited the whole family around Christmas to be here in summer at the cherry season.
29:59So that was the so-called cherry eating meeting.
30:04The cherry tree behind you, did you eat cherries from there?
30:07They were taken from here, but in the end, when there were so many children, they had to be bought.
30:14Well, there's a lot of roses.
30:16He loved roses, yes.
30:17And he said they were the most beautiful, reliable.
30:22He liked the fragrance, the scent of the roses, and a good colour.
30:28Do you think there was a relationship between your grandfather's love and clear skill as a gardener and his politics?
30:35He said that gardens and politics have something in common, which is you have a lot of patience to reach
30:43your goals in the garden and in politics as well.
30:46And I think that was what made him strong to know he could wait.
30:53How important do you think the river is in shaping this area, maybe even shaping his life?
31:00It's a symbol for the unification of Europe.
31:03He said that in one of his speeches, that after this terrible war, the people living along the Rhine, not
31:09far from it and influenced by it.
31:12He warns them to see to it that peace is made between these former enemies.
31:18It has an enormous, yeah, enormous symbolic importance in his life, yeah.
31:34You have to remember just what an important figure that Conrad Adenauer was in the 20th century.
31:42He was mayor of Cologne from 1917 to 1933.
31:46He then fell foul of the Nazis and was on their hit list.
31:49I mean, it's amazing that he survived.
31:51He was on the run for a year, he hid in the monastery and then became an effective exile in
31:58his own country here in this house.
32:00And then at the age of 70, when most politicians have long given up and retired, he became the first
32:07chancellor of West Germany and was instrumental in rebuilding a completely shattered country.
32:14He was also really important as part of the unification of Europe.
32:19So one of the great political figures of the 20th century and all that time, he was gardening.
32:33There are vineyards all along this central section of the Rhine.
32:38As the well-drained and sunny south-facing slopes and the microclimate created by the river make for perfect growing
32:47conditions for the famous Riesling wine.
32:51Consequently, many of the villages here are inextricably linked to the local wine industry.
32:58This is Urpal, where the medieval streets are adorned with floral displays as well as vines.
33:05If I had come here in about a week's time, I would have been able to watch the annual wine
33:11festival.
33:12We have dozens of floats with tens of thousands of flowers decorating them.
33:17Now, whilst not all of them are produced locally, a surprising number are all from this garden, and especially dahlias.
33:29And dahlias have been a key part of this village's identity for a while now.
33:34Thanks to Bernd of Walbrook with the help of his husband, Holger.
33:41Hello. Hello.
33:43Wonderful to see you.
33:45Holger.
33:46Hello, Bernd.
33:48These are beautiful.
33:50What are you looking for?
33:52He's a gardener and does most of the work and I'm just supporting, organizing.
33:58How did it all begin?
34:00Forty years ago, when he was a young man, he decided the village needed some flowers at the shore of
34:05the Rhine.
34:05And then he cultivated a small bed, decorated with dahlias.
34:10He loves the colors and the variation of blooms.
34:13He decided that the village needed your flowers.
34:17Yes.
34:18And then he decided to change the traditional parade for the wine queen in the flower parade.
34:29So for the last 40 years, the flamboyant displays dominate the vine parade, thanks in large part to Bernd's dahlias.
34:40How many flowers?
34:42We're about eight or 10,000.
34:44Eight or 10,000 flowers from here.
34:47Yes.
34:47That's pretty amazing.
34:57But this stretch of river alongside Urphal is also known for this.
35:08All that remained today are two monolithic stumps at either side of the river of what was the Ludenorff Bridge,
35:18a huge steel railway bridge built in the First World War to ferry troops to the front.
35:23Now, in spring 1944, the Allied troops had fought their way from Normandy across towards Berlin.
35:31And they came to the Rhine and couldn't cross it because the Germans had blown all the bridges except for
35:38one, the Ludenorff Bridge, this one here.
35:41The Americans stumbled across it and tried to secure the bridge.
35:45There was a furious battle for 10 days with the Germans doing everything they could to destroy it.
35:50And eventually, after 10 days, the bridge suddenly collapsed into the water.
36:00By that time, over 100,000 American troops had crossed over to the east side and were making their way
36:07to Berlin.
36:08And undoubtedly, the presence of the bridge here shortened the wall.
36:18I'm now travelling a short distance north to the city of Bonn.
36:23This is noticeably smaller and less hectic than Germany's other major cities.
36:30But its streets are full of historic buildings.
36:33It's the birthplace of Beethoven and it spans the Rhine.
36:38And for just over 30 years, it was arguably the single most important place in the whole of the country.
36:50It's strange to think that Bonn was the capital of West Germany from 1949 to 1990.
36:58And the seat of government for another nine years after that.
37:00Because sitting here in the market square, I could be in a provincial town anywhere.
37:06It doesn't feel like a capital city.
37:09And yet the reasons for it seem to have been complicated, but they came together.
37:13To start with, you had the towering figure of Konrad Adenauer.
37:18And he was a Rhinelander.
37:20He lived nearby.
37:22Bonn had no great claims to being a capital, either regional or national.
37:28So therefore, if and when they could reunite Germany and move back to Berlin, it would be easier to give
37:35up.
37:38So it has the infrastructure of a capital city, but is much lower key.
37:45And right near the center is a remarkable garden.
37:52This is the Arboretum Herle, which is a large, ambitious garden.
37:57It's private and unusually for Germany, is open to the public.
38:03This was the home of two sisters, Maria and Regina Herle, who inherited the house and gardens in 1950.
38:11And for the next 50 years, devoted themselves to developing and caring for it.
38:18Above all, they were determined that after their deaths, despite its central location, the garden shouldn't be swallowed up by
38:26housing.
38:30The head gardener, Michael Dreiswot, explained to me how they prepared for this.
38:34They had no children. There was no real future for the garden.
38:38And they had the idea to build a foundation to save it.
38:42That the public can come and see.
38:44Mrs. Herle said, it's open for interested people.
38:47That's a very unique thing.
38:48Lead on.
38:52So gardening on these slopes, I mean, I suppose you have no choice, but just to go with it.
38:58I love it. I love it. The views. I'm a slopey guy.
39:00Yes. Yes, definitely.
39:02Which is just as well, because the garden below the house is certainly on a very steep slope.
39:09And the paths lead down through magnificent mature trees, underplanted with large borders.
39:15It was an English landscape garden. No planting around the trees. Grassland, walks and trees.
39:22And then later, the sisters as plants, people, added all the layers we have now.
39:29It feels a bit cooler in here. Is there a different microclimate?
39:34Yes, we really have several microclimates. The hot terrace up there, sunny, hot.
39:38And here it's cool, moist.
39:40The future of the cities is trees and shade, and that's what you can realise here very easily.
39:47Maria Harle was also a painter.
39:50And she brought her artistic streak to bear in another large part of the 11-acre garden.
39:57This is our so-called yellow border.
40:00She created this border with trees, shrubs and perennials to use the structures.
40:06And so she really combined the whole qualities of the plant, not only flower colours.
40:10And seemingly predominantly yellow or yellowy green.
40:15And is this something that is very typically German?
40:18No, definitely not. Definitely not.
40:19At least half of the people think, oh, that needs fertilised, they're ill.
40:24But no, we want that. And together with dark green plants, it's really a nice picture.
40:31So I'm getting the impression that by doing this, she was doing something at the time pretty new, pretty revolutionary.
40:38Yes, definitely.
40:40These lawns, are they here as part of the overall design?
40:44Because it doesn't seem quite in tune with the sort of fullness of the planting elsewhere.
40:49Maria Harle knew that you have to have these silent areas.
40:52You come into this garden and you have 500 different trees.
40:56It's too much. And then you can calm down, you can sit on one of the benches and relax just
41:02one tone of green.
41:04But there's no time for me to relax, because there was another significant section of the garden still to see.
41:13It was a woodland pond, but then we had this big storm.
41:17It was a total disaster. When I come up here this in the morning, I was really nearly crying because
41:23all the trees were damaged.
41:25And yeah, at the end, it was really a new beginning.
41:28Yeah. And we were able to change from this boring spruce into autumn colouring things.
41:34It's a very beautiful scene. Incredibly fortunate to have an area that is so natural and such sort of unspoiled
41:43countryside, so near the city.
41:45It is, it is a big luck.
41:50But without the Harle sisters, I am certain that this precious jewel in the crown of the historic city of
41:57Bonn would have been swallowed up by modern housing.
42:02I'm following the river on its unrelenting northward flow to see a garden built as a haven from trauma, pioneering
42:12private garden and a modern park.
42:15These are all in the industrial heartland of Germany near the Ruhr, which is another major tributary of the Rhine.
42:24And along the banks of the Ruhr is all the heavy industry, the ironworks, the coal, the steelworks.
42:33And it makes sense out of those huge barges laden with industrial material as they made their way through the
42:41romantic countryside south of Bonn, because this is where they are coming.
42:45And this is what is powering the industry of Germany today and has done for the last 200 years.
42:56First, I'm heading to a public park, just southwest of Essen's city centre.
43:05The reason why I've come to this Grugor Park in Essen is because it's so unlikely.
43:10This is where there were the most ironworks and steelworks and coal, and it needed hundreds of thousands of workers.
43:17And the park was specifically created for those workers to have a green space with wonderful trees where they could
43:27come maybe just for one afternoon a week to relax and enjoy the natural world.
43:37The Grugor Park stretches over 60 hectares of landscape parkland, all designed for the perfect day out, with waterfalls and
43:47rock gardens to explore, open spaces for picnics and play, and flower gardens for people to wander through and admire
43:58the blooms.
44:02I've timed this visit really well because not only is it a beautiful park on a lovely sunny day, but
44:08also they have a big plant fair, and this happens to be one of the days.
44:12And I know that it attracts plant lovers from miles around.
44:25Growers and nurseries like cyclamen specialist Renate Brinkers come here every year to sell their plants.
44:32Do you think German people love plants and gardening?
44:35Oh, yes.
44:36What are they asking for?
44:37In the last three years, especially for plants which prefer a dry place.
44:43Very interesting, because of climate change.
44:45Yes.
44:47And it's very popular.
44:49Around 15,000 people come to the fair across the weekend.
44:53Many, like Wolfgang Nehmann, hunting down unusual plants.
44:58Tell me what you're buying.
44:59Oh, we are collecting hardy exotics.
45:02Is your garden near here?
45:03No, about 100 kilometres from here.
45:05OK.
45:05So you come here all this, that way, just to buy plants today?
45:08Yes, twice a year.
45:12Bettina Hartnack is also a regular here.
45:15Most of my garden, like 90% is from here.
45:18Is gardening popular in Germany?
45:20Yes, yes, very much so.
45:22Yes, sir.
45:22And what sort of style do you think that people like best?
45:25It's sort of about feeling at home.
45:27Right.
45:28To have a tree and to be able to sit under the tree.
45:31But most people go for a very neat garden, I think, yes.
45:38It's been a treat to spend an afternoon among keen German gardeners.
45:44And observe the small but significant differences in the choice of plants and styles that perhaps we take for granted
45:52at home.
45:57Across from the market, there is an area of lush woodland.
46:00And amongst the trees is a rather strange looking building, which I was told I should definitely try and visit
46:07whilst I was here.
46:13And I have to say this is absolutely not what I expected in this setting.
46:18But the story of it is really interesting because this house actually relates beautifully to what's happening just outside the
46:29park.
46:29There's a large hospital specialising in caring for very sick children.
46:34And the inspiration for this house, which is called the Hundetwasserhaus, is to provide a space for sick children and
46:41their families to stay in.
46:43And once you know that, it makes sense.
46:46And in a funny way, fits in perfect.
46:52The building was the last architectural design of Friedensreich Hundetwasser, an Austrian painter, architect and environmentalist known for his vivid
47:05organic designs.
47:07The building curls around an enclosed courtyard.
47:12And with its bright colours and irregular shapes, couldn't feel more different from the clinical atmosphere of a hospital.
47:20The current manager is Sabina Holtkamp, who's worked here for 20 years.
47:27Is this just for children or do parents stay here too?
47:31Mainly for the parents.
47:32Usually the children are in intensive care and the parents come from all over Germany, from all over Europe.
47:39And of course we want to keep families close.
47:43Does it appeal to parents?
47:45Sure.
47:45And actually the parents often tell me that it's like coming to a parallel universe somehow.
47:53It's an escape from that.
47:54Yeah, it is.
48:01At Hundetwasser's stipulation, the planting here extends from ground to roof and everything in between.
48:10So I like the trees growing out of the windows.
48:13Yeah.
48:14You know what Hundetwasser called them?
48:15No.
48:16He called them tree tenants.
48:18Tree tenants.
48:19Mm-hmm.
48:20They rent one square meter of the room and pay their rent by producing oxygen.
48:25That's fair enough.
48:27Now, looking down, of course, you can see how many trees there are.
48:32Yeah.
48:34Hundetwasser had the opinion that the vertical belongs to mankind and the horizontal belongs
48:39to nature.
48:40So you should give that horizontal space back to nature in planting stuff on the roof.
48:50And what's the significance of the planting with the patients and the children?
48:56For the children, it's like a big, big playground.
49:00All that green and nature is making the people so calm.
49:09Hundetwasser saw the need to have trees interwoven into the building completely.
49:15The way that they move like the building itself, different heights, different shapes, but the
49:21overall feeling is absolutely one with the building.
49:25And what it does is create an environment that deals with the incredible sort of sensitivity
49:32and seriousness of a sick child, and yet, at the same time, celebrates, with joy and lightness
49:39of touch, the life of children.
49:45A few kilometers south, back on the Rhine, is the small town of Hilden.
49:51And off the busy main road is a garden that I'd heard much about.
49:59This is Hortus.
50:01It belongs to Peter Janka, a German designer who was brought up in the area,
50:07and made his garden here with an intimate local knowledge.
50:17His garden is divided into separate zones, connected by paths, alleys,
50:23and carefully manipulated sightlines.
50:26And each of these areas has a distinctive horticultural aspect or feature.
50:32The garden has an unusually wide range of plants.
50:35And Peter explained to me that this was down to his deep familiarity
50:39with the specific details of the soil here.
50:44The River Rhine was flowing here, I would say, 8,000 to 10,000 years ago.
50:50And everywhere, where you have places where a river was,
50:55you have parts of the soil which are very sandy or gravelly or even peaty,
51:03or you have these clay bits in the ground.
51:07Perfect for a gardener.
51:08And the underground water is the big secret here in this garden,
51:14why it looks so lush and green.
51:21Parts of the garden also regularly flood,
51:23which, rather than being a problem, Peter positively embraces.
51:28However, out in the front of the house there is a gravel garden,
51:31reminiscent of the dry garden made by Beth Chateau in her own garden in Essex,
51:36where Peter worked for a few years.
51:40Her influence can also be seen in the woodland area out at the back.
51:46In the front of the garden, you have the dry part, the well-drained.
51:51Seven metres, pure sand.
51:53Seven metres. Yes.
51:55And here where we sit, we do have all these clay bits,
52:00so it's much more moist.
52:03As well as these areas where the planting is dictated by the soil,
52:07Peter also has specific groups of plants that he loves,
52:11but feels are currently undervalued.
52:14I'm looking at heathers.
52:16Yes.
52:17Which is probably the least fashionable plant you could possibly grow.
52:22It is evergreen.
52:24It is flowering from early spring until autumn.
52:28Two years ago we had a big flooding here,
52:31and a lot of all these drought-tolerant plants simply died,
52:37not the heathers.
52:38So I love heathers.
52:40Is this something that is going to appeal to a Germanic audience,
52:44or is it going to sweep the gardening world?
52:47I would say I can start kind of a new fashion with heathers.
52:52I will watch this space.
52:53Yes.
52:56Well, whether heathers become the new must-have plant or not,
53:01Peter's garden is a treasure trove for plant lovers,
53:05because there is such diversity,
53:07not just of individual plants but of styles and habitats,
53:11making the most of his very different areas of Rhineland soil,
53:16and all skilfully entwined to make an integrated garden.
53:21I find it fascinating to see the influence of Beth Chateau here.
53:25Her woodland garden near Colchester was something I remember seeing some years ago,
53:29and loving.
53:31Loving the way that she created a garden in amongst the trees,
53:35and that's exactly what you have here.
53:37It's superb.
53:44What is the mist that we're seeing?
53:47It's an art installation, and the fog is coming out of the old woods to show the loss of water,
53:55which all these missing trees in the city centres had been producing,
54:02and now it's gone and it's getting hotter and hotter.
54:06And why have you got it here, very much not in the city centre?
54:09It's not in the city centre, but the hottest is a city garden, one can hear that.
54:14Yeah.
54:23This is heaven. I love this garden.
54:26If you think back to Sweetsingen, where the changes made in the Rhine and climate change were causing real problems.
54:35Here, the changes from the Rhine, admittedly there were thousands of years ago,
54:41has created the soil and the conditions that Peter has embraced and used to form the garden,
54:48and done with real skill and knowledge.
54:53Now, I have one more location to visit on this trip, and it couldn't be more different.
55:03I'm heading for Germany's largest inland port, where the Rhine and the Ruhr join.
55:13Once dominated by steel and coal, its industrial base has changed dramatically in recent years.
55:22This is the Landschaftpark in Duisburg.
55:25And for most of the 20th century, this was a steelworks.
55:28But it was decommissioned in the middle of the 1980s.
55:31And in the 1990s, in a very inspired move, instead of clearing the whole site,
55:37they decide to landscape it and make it what is essentially an amusement park.
55:48From the moment you enter the park, you're immediately surrounded by the remnants of its industrial past.
55:54However, these skeletons of heavy industry now incorporate borders, trees and climbers scaling and sprawling over the vast concrete and
56:04metal remains.
56:07Individual gardens are now made within bunkers that once held ore for smelting.
56:12And the basic infrastructure has been kept as giant monuments to the industrial past.
56:21A raised walkway gives a view down onto the gardens and out onto giant installations.
56:32Apparently, the initial local reaction to the park and the proposed plans was less than enthusiastic.
56:39But it now has a million visitors a year.
56:43The young treat it as an enormous adventure playground.
56:46And for an older generation, it remains part of the heritage of Germany's heavy industrial past.
56:57And out of these layers of history is growing a new and incredibly dynamic landscape.
57:05And all from soil that was once considered irretrievably polluted.
57:14I don't think anyone could describe this as a garden.
57:18Gardens are part of it.
57:20It's much bigger than that.
57:21And its size is what it's all about.
57:24We tend to try and relate everything to our own lives and our own domesticity and back gardens.
57:29But occasionally, when you come across something on a truly magnificent scale like this is,
57:36it enlarges your life.
57:38You are made bigger as a result.
57:40And it seems to me really fitting to come here with its gardens
57:45at the conclusion of this journey up the Rhine.
57:48Because it's taken me through glorious romantic landscapes,
57:52but also into the heartland of German industry.
57:56And along with the destruction that happened and the war and the rebuilding,
58:01this place seems to be a good symbol of that.
58:05The Rhine now leaves Germany and as it does so, it starts to break up as it approaches the sea.
58:14And that takes me on my next journey into the Netherlands.
58:19On that trip, I witness 21st century tulip mania.
58:26I visit a wildlife garden built on the roof of a car park.
58:31And I take a personal tour of the private garden of the world's most famous garden designer.
58:38I was here yesterday and it looks so good.
58:42And I'm here again and it still looks good.
59:12There is one of the coolest neighbors in hopefully the worst desires of Rome and the world used in the
59:14middle of the road.
59:14The
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