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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've found great community spirit, and people with real passion.
00:53We have nothing.
00:56I've seen how it has attracted power and money as well as shattered dreams, and a warning
01:04about man-made changes, and how at every point this river continues to shape Europe's history,
01:13history, its culture, even its geography.
01:17It is, of course, the mighty Rhine.
01:29In this program, I've crossed the Rhine from Germany into the Netherlands.
01:34And behind me, the Rhine changes completely, because at this point, precisely here, it splits.
01:44On the one hand, it becomes a river Waal, and on the other, a canal takes it out into the
01:51Dutch landscape, where it dissipates.
01:54It becomes scores of different small rivers and canals, all of them taking the waters of
02:01the Rhine to its final destination of the North Sea.
02:07As the river fans out in its various forms across the Netherlands, the landscape famously
02:13flattens.
02:16I'll see what modern-day tulip mania looks like.
02:21And in the long tradition of Dutch international trade, I'll see the world's largest flower
02:26market in action.
02:31And end up with the crunch of seashells underfoot.
02:35Hello, dogs!
02:37Hello!
02:38In a garden next to where the old Rhine finally goes out into the North Sea.
02:44This is the third journey in this series.
02:47I started close to the source of the Rhine, high up in the Swiss Alps.
02:52In the second program, I followed the river as it went through Germany.
02:55And this time, I'll be tracing the Rhine's complicated progress through the Netherlands.
03:01This is the vantage point on the top of Fort Panadon, built in the 19th century, defending
03:07this point from attacks coming up through Germany.
03:10And it was in action right up until and during the Second World War.
03:17The river here is connected to a network of canals and waterways stretching all the way
03:22to Amsterdam.
03:24This system has been engineered so that it can make a defensive flood covering an area
03:30five kilometres wide and over 80 kilometres long that's too deep to wade through, yet
03:35too shallow to take boats across.
03:38And apparently, that system can still be triggered to this day, using the waters of the river to
03:44create a barrier.
03:50This region of the country is Helderland, which, like so much of the Netherlands, originally lay
03:56under water or was regularly flooded.
03:58It's an agricultural landscape of fields divided by drainage ditches and pockets of woodland.
04:04I'm making my first stop here in the small village of Humulung, where the most influential garden
04:10designer of the last 50 years has his home.
04:13Pete Aldolf is the designer of many celebrated gardens all across the world.
04:19But today, I'm visiting him at his own garden, which he closed to the public seven years ago.
04:35Pete and his family have lived here since 1982, and when he first came, he set up a nursery
04:40and show garden to display his plants.
04:44This was at the beginning of a completely new way of gardening that he championed.
04:51My love for plants pushed me into the world.
04:54I wanted to put things together that you would feel like an environment or a place where you
04:59felt happy.
05:02Pete moved away from the traditional design of borders filled with herbaceous plants and annuals,
05:08designed predominantly for a dramatic summer display, replacing them with sweeping swathes
05:15of grasses and perennials that held their interest across the seasons.
05:21As Pete showed me round his garden, he explained how each different area was managed.
05:26We are gardening here, so we have to take out plants and put some plants in.
05:31But it's interesting, you say you're gardening here as though that's slightly the exception.
05:35You see this beautiful aquinox, seats around like hell, so we have to pull things out, so
05:42we have to, still we have to work on a sort of equilibrium.
05:50It was autumn when I made my visit to Pete.
05:54I'm interested to talk about colour, because people want colour.
06:00You don't put extra colour in it, you don't need it.
06:03I think brown is also a colour.
06:05I agree, but that's quite a hard sell.
06:08It's a mindset.
06:09This time of the year, you don't expect flowers.
06:12No.
06:13This is what you expect.
06:15Yeah.
06:15In your mind, if you see flowers, you think there's something happening which is not right.
06:20So when you're designing a garden, you're thinking through every single phase of the plant.
06:24Every plant, I see the flower, I see the seed head, I see the skeleton.
06:32You clearly have a very, very close relationship with plants.
06:35Yeah.
06:36It's emotional almost.
06:37No, not even almost.
06:39It's absolutely emotional.
06:40Yes.
06:41After you.
06:44As we walk around, it's fascinating for me to see how Pete uses the combination of careful management in places,
06:52but with other parts of the garden growing almost untouched.
06:56The other side of the house is where he originally made his show garden, featuring his nursery plants,
07:03along with a series of dramatic and much photographed sculptural hedges.
07:07Although some of these had to be taken out after this part of the garden was badly flooded.
07:13This is the deepest part of all the areas around us.
07:18The garden was underwater for a month.
07:20Yeah.
07:21We couldn't pump it out.
07:22So we lost 50% of our plants.
07:26And this is what is left.
07:27So this is a rain garden.
07:29This is what survived.
07:31What survived.
07:31Because it looks completely harmonious, isn't it?
07:35Yeah.
07:38Pete did stress that that harmony has taken years to establish.
07:45What you see here is impossible to do in a new garden.
07:50I was here yesterday.
07:52Yeah.
07:53And it looked so good.
07:54And I'm here again, and it still looks good, you know.
07:57And it still has to sort of excise me in the same way.
08:09I first met Pete about 25 years ago and have hugely admired and respected him.
08:14He's become this gigantic figure in the gardening world.
08:18But I've never been to Humolo here before.
08:21And the great surprise, and I have to say great delight, is that it's not like his other gardens.
08:28It's much more personal.
08:29And walking around the garden with him, you can't help but see that he has this intimate relationship with every
08:38single plant in his garden.
08:40And he greets them like friends, and that friendship is renewed every time he steps out into the garden.
08:46And that has created what I do think is exquisitely beautiful, a magical garden.
09:00I'm heading back towards the Rhine to Herba, a small village near the river.
09:08I've come here to this garden because I've been told that it shows another side of this style of gardening,
09:15which is aimed at a very particular, another different audience.
09:27This is the garden of Jelle Hrinches, a garden designer and social media influencer, who has created his garden in
09:34a very different way from a designer like Pete Aldoff.
09:37Jelle has turned an agricultural field to an almost finished garden in less than five years by filling it from
09:45the outset with mature plants.
09:47It was a huge undertaking.
09:52We took more than 10,000 perennials from the previous garden, really rare perennials, and didn't want to lose them.
10:00Sharing his garden and its development on social media has been an essential part of it for Jelle.
10:08And he's chronicled its creation and evolution at every stage with his 90,000 plus followers.
10:16I like to share pink and orange together on social media. I like to use more colour. Just 5%
10:24of yellow can make a difference. Just one or two orange spots in the garden can change the effect.
10:30Is there, would you say, a particular Dutch style of gardening? And if so, is this it?
10:36Five, six, seven, eight years ago we had the box moths.
10:40Yeah.
10:41Yay. Perfect.
10:43They have eaten all the straight lines, the straight hedges in the Netherlands. All the front gardens in the Netherlands
10:49were copying of copies of copies of copies.
10:52Yeah.
10:52Everyone had straight lines.
10:54Right.
10:55Since the moth, everyone had to change the garden and they thought, okay, let's go to a more natural style.
11:01That's one of the most perfect moments in the history of gardens, I think.
11:11Is this a style of gardening that you see spreading and becoming more relevant?
11:16Yeah, it is spreading. But the younger designers, they are trying to copy it and to improve it.
11:21If social media didn't exist, would you have done this?
11:25Never.
11:26Really?
11:27Really, never. Never.
11:29Never.
11:39It's really fascinating to see how this has developed, because this is an Instagram garden.
11:46Made very recently with mature plants, almost the opposite of what Pete and that generation have been doing, which is
11:55with small plants, letting gardens develop and evolve.
11:59And whilst I confess, it's not the way that I've been brought into gardening, but to see how gardening may
12:07develop and how people react to it, and also how to reach a generation, then that's really interesting.
12:16In this last journey, I'm making my way from east to west, following the Rhine as its many tendrils stretch
12:23across the middle of the Netherlands.
12:26From Herva, I'm crisscrossing the river and its tributaries, including a visit to the famous display of tulips in Kirkenhof,
12:34and a magical quiet park just outside Amsterdam.
12:38Finally, I will visit a seaside garden where the old Rhine reaches the North Sea.
12:50One of the features of my journey along the Rhine, right from the source, have been the places made famous
12:56by events in history.
12:57Perhaps one of the most familiar of these is Arnhem and its bridge across the river.
13:10I think for many people, Arnhem is best known for being the location of a huge battle towards the end
13:18of the Second World War.
13:20Of course, the battle was in the whole area, and this garden, which was a walled garden attached to a
13:25large house, was certainly in the epicentre of that battle.
13:29The wall behind me is pit-marked with bullet holes.
13:35The house was hit by a bomb and burnt down.
13:39And after the war, it was abandoned and completely overgrown.
13:45In its 1920s heyday, Oosterbeek had been an immaculately maintained estate and garden.
13:53But for the 60 years after 1945, everything became buried under the rubble of war.
14:03So the perfectly clipped hedges and managed borders that I see now are all new and have been created from
14:10unimaginable chaos.
14:12It was all ruined, damaged, was overgrown.
14:17It was not recognizable as a garden.
14:20All the ammunition, grenades, you know, from the war.
14:24The woman behind this transformation is Mariella Kemper.
14:29She discovered the garden's history by chance after she'd moved to the gardener's cottage next door.
14:36So actually you had to dig out bullets?
14:39Two meters deep, everything was turned around.
14:45We wanted to make this place a place where people get inspired by plants, by beauty, by art.
14:52The aim straight from the beginning is that we have this garden at least for 100 years.
14:58So we started out with little rooms with different types of gardening to inspire.
15:04And I have only one complaint about this garden.
15:07It's too small.
15:09We could have gone on and gone on.
15:12Right.
15:14Mariela received funding from the local government and wanted it to be enjoyed by as many people as possible, including
15:21being part of its care.
15:23And how many gardeners do you have here?
15:26We have 40. Three days a week.
15:2840 volunteers.
15:29And everyone is from very different backgrounds.
15:33If you enter a garden, something happens with people.
15:38They relax.
15:40You have this slogan, make love, no war.
15:43I think it should be make gardens, no war.
15:46It makes the point that this garden was a battlefield and now it's a beautiful place to be.
15:53Yes, so this turning around is very important for me, that you can start all over and you can build
15:59something beautiful.
16:09Hello.
16:10Hello.
16:11Hello.
16:11Are you enjoying our garden?
16:13I love your garden.
16:14Yes.
16:14It's fantastic your work.
16:22At the bottom of the garden here is a green amphitheatre carved out of the hillside.
16:30It's all of a piece with the way that Mariela apparently from day one has conceived of this garden is
16:34that it is for other people.
16:37You know, they have weddings here, they have concerts, they have plays, and that's really unusual.
16:43And she said to me that perhaps we're all intended to do one big thing in our lives.
16:48Well, this certainly is her big thing.
16:54There's a kind of steely focus needed to transform a garden like that and Mariela certainly has that in spades.
17:01But maybe it's a Dutch thing because it's evident again in the next garden I visit in the town of
17:06Thiel, which sits just next to one of the branches of the Rhine.
17:10It began when the local government decided to build an underground car park.
17:15Then an enterprising local artist decided that the space above it should be turned into an insect friendly garden.
17:23And six years later, this is the result.
17:32We had nothing. We didn't have money, we didn't have people.
17:36Well, you've got lots of people now.
17:38Yeah.
17:39We put on banners around.
17:42Please help us.
17:44And we organised a lecture over there and we put a small article in the paper.
17:48And that's how we attracted all these volunteers.
17:54Gera van der Lone's plea had an immediate response.
17:58And now over 20 volunteers work here every Saturday.
18:0384-year-old Annie de Graaf has helped since the very beginning.
18:08I was passing by on my bicycle and I asked Gera, what are you going to do here?
18:13She said, I'm going to make a butterfly garden.
18:16I said, I don't believe you.
18:18She says, really, you're going to do it?
18:20And when did you start?
18:21She said, oh, on Saturday.
18:23So, I came on Saturday and I never left.
18:28Gera was also lucky that among the locals who offered to help was a professional garden designer, Edwin Baron-Brett.
18:36I have some witches from Gera.
18:39It has to be a garden, four seasons attractive.
18:43It must be interesting for butterflies, for insects.
18:46And we have to work with volunteers.
18:49Is it what you saw in your mind five years ago?
18:53Yeah, a bit better, I think.
18:55Really?
18:55Yeah.
18:56Not only the garden, it's important and it's nice, but that we make with volunteers such a beautiful place.
19:04A lot of local governments are coming to this place and ask, how do you do this?
19:11We want it also in other cities in the Netherlands.
19:16Why is that happening here?
19:17Because it's not happening in other countries so much.
19:20I think volunteering work is important in the Netherlands, to do that, not for yourself, but to have a good
19:27feeling of what you do.
19:35Edwin also told me that one of the unexpected and ironic reasons for the garden's success is because of the
19:41heat generated by the car park below.
19:45But the garden was just the beginning of Gera's vision, and her ideas are now spreading right across the town.
19:52It's a lovely idea.
19:55Are these the little beds that you've made?
19:57Yeah, these are the little beds of the people who live here, so here the people take care of themselves.
20:04As well as persuading the council to green the streets, Gera personally rang 2,000 doorbells to convince local residents
20:13to have small gardens in front of their houses.
20:17So you have to get individual people to agree to each one in front of every house?
20:22Yes, yes.
20:26So these long borders, what were they before?
20:30Parking lots.
20:32Really?
20:32These people who live over here, they started thinking, if we park our cars in the parking garage underneath the
20:40butterfly garden, we can have also these gardens.
20:42It's always difficult for a city to say, these parking lots won't be here anymore.
20:49Yeah, yeah.
20:49So if the people themselves come and say, we want gardens instead of parking lots, that's perfect.
20:56And Gera has plans to take this out beyond the town.
21:02In our region, there are rivers flowing from east to west, and there it's possible for populations of insects to
21:11migrate.
21:11And the rivers have the vegetation they need.
21:14Yeah, exactly.
21:15There's wild vegetation, but in this direction, north to south, it's really difficult because there's bare grassland, and we have
21:23to take care of that.
21:25It's important for their chances of survival.
21:37I do think this scheme is really remarkable, and if you think about it, it takes so many different elements
21:42to make it work.
21:42You don't just have the enthusiasm to knock on people's doors, grow the plants and plant them, whether they be
21:49in planters in the streets or around churches or around buildings.
21:52You also need the householders to buy into it.
21:55You need people to give up their parking places.
21:57You need the council to provide alternative parking places or public transport.
22:01And you need everybody, everybody in the community, to buy into this as a way of improving the quality of
22:09life.
22:18I think it's a very beautiful idea that butterflies making their way across the country from vegetation point to vegetation
22:24point, following the rivers and the canals and the waterways.
22:28It just re-emphasizes that water is everything, even to agriculture and the way the land looks.
22:36Because, of course, as the Rhine spread out and became its estuary, this was swampy, boggy ground.
22:42It wasn't until medieval times that they started to reclaim it.
22:46They did so using polders.
22:52A polder is an area of land that has been reclaimed from either the sea or a river and kept
22:58dry by the use of dikes and ditches.
23:03These were then subdivided into regular units or fields, each about 1,200 metres long and about 150 metres wide,
23:12which could then be let out to families and that was enough for them to live off.
23:17So, gradually, over time, you had thousands and tens of thousands of these strips of land, each one with its
23:25own dike, and quite a few still remain.
23:39My next stop is Utrecht, whose position as a crossing point on the Rhine was central to the city's early
23:47growth,
23:47originally as a Roman military outpost, later as a thriving centre for trade, when the old river ran through the
23:55city's centre, and then subsequently when it was transformed into a system of canals.
24:02Here in Utrecht is a good example of how they evolved, because the Rhine, breaking into its many tributaries, has
24:08worked its way through the city, bringing goods in, so it was an inland port.
24:12And over the centuries, it got straightened and altered and turned into a canal, and so it remained for many
24:20centuries.
24:22But there was another development to one of these canals that came through the city, just down the end of
24:28the street, which was much more radical and much more recent.
24:40Utrecht's old town has these lovely, narrow, cobbled streets that have barely changed over the centuries.
24:48Where these streets end, right at the edge of the old town, is another major canal that used to run
24:54outside the city boundary.
25:00I'm standing on where the city walls once stood. In the 19th century, they were taken down and the canal
25:06outside it remained.
25:08But in the 1970s, this section of the canal was drained and filled to create a 12-lane motorway, transforming
25:17the area and the lives of local people.
25:20However, in the early 21st century, things changed again.
25:26The people of Utrecht more or less rose up against this and said, we just don't want this as part
25:31of our lives.
25:32And rather wonderfully, as a result, the motorway was dug up, the canal was reinstated, the park runs now down
25:41to the water's edge,
25:42and there is a green lung, rather than a busy road, running right through the town.
25:55This one-kilometre stretch of the restored canal was opened in 2020.
26:05To understand a bit more about this city's relationship with the Rhine, I'm meeting the Dutch historian René de Caen.
26:141500 years ago, the Rhine came through Utrecht, you know, a huge river.
26:19But then we decided here in Utrecht to reclaim more land and to have grain on it, but then they
26:27needed to close, really close, the river Rhine.
26:30So they dammed the river Rhine.
26:31They dammed, yeah.
26:32And this is where the canals came in.
26:33It was one of the trading center of the northern Netherlands.
26:37How could they have trade when the river disappeared?
26:41And that's why they had to make a complete new infrastructure for the shipping.
26:47Then you make this canal exactly eight kilometres long.
26:51You dig it with little wooden spades.
26:54It's amazing work, and they did it in a few years.
26:59And they changed the land completely.
27:02We have two things, and that is fighting against the water and reclaiming land from the water.
27:09This constant struggle.
27:10Yes, it is.
27:12Still it is, but even when the climate change is coming, we have the struggle again.
27:16When you look at sea level, especially in the west part of the Netherlands, Holland and part of Utrecht, is
27:24below sea level.
27:25So if the sea level is rising and rising, it's very, very difficult to get the water out.
27:31And then we're not even speaking about problems with huge rainfall and coming down to the Netherlands from Switzerland, Germany,
27:39all the way you've travelled.
27:41The combination of water surging down the Rhine, as well as rising sea levels, it's a double whammy.
27:48Yes.
27:49And there are a lot of programmes at the moment to get more places for the river to get out
27:56of it.
27:56But if we go on like this, then we have a real, real, real problem in the Netherlands, I think,
28:01yes.
28:02You would be the first country in Europe to disappear.
28:04Yes.
28:05Under the water.
28:06Yes.
28:07Half of the country is gone.
28:12As Rennie made clear, that need to control water in order to reclaim the land made the Dutch very good
28:21at growing things.
28:22And for the modern gardener, they are the prime supplier of bulbs and plants.
28:29And if you want to see the biggest display in the world of spring flowering bulbs at their very best,
28:35then you have to come here to Holland and visit the display at Kirkenhof.
28:40That's what I did last April.
28:48It's thanks to the Rhine that every spring this part of the Netherlands is lit up into a technicolour display
28:55of millions of tulips.
28:59The old river Rhine used to flow here on its way to the sea, and as it did, it left
29:04behind free-draining rich sandy soil, perfect for growing tulips.
29:12These fields are in fact planted for next year's bulbs, and the flowers will be discarded, but it doesn't stop
29:19the tourists enjoying them for now.
29:22And the real show is yet to come.
29:33Spread over 79 acres and planted with 7 million new bulbs every year, the gardens of Kirkenhof are open to
29:41the public for just two months in spring.
29:43I was allowed in early to take a look around before the crowds arrived.
29:48And the displays are put together by growers intended to entice and inform prospective buyers.
29:54And for gardeners such as myself, it's an incredible resource to see so many varieties in flower at the same
30:01time.
30:05But in the last few years, this has become something entirely different.
30:13As the doors opened, I began to understand what I'm actually witnessing is a huge event.
30:22Today, the gardens attract over a million visitors from all over the world, many of whom fly in just for
30:29this experience.
30:39And rather than coming here to choose bulbs for their gardens, these tourists are having a unique day out, and
30:48above all, looking for the perfect photo opportunity, with tulips as the spectacular backdrop.
30:55In response to this, growers are showing off their flowers and increasingly eye-catching and dramatic displays.
31:07I met one of the creators of this year's show gardens, Karien van Boxtel.
31:12I was inspired by the Dutch still lifes, so the 17th century paintings.
31:18I used all the colours I saw in that painting. I even used the varieties I saw in the painting.
31:24There are 64 varieties of bulbs used here.
31:29The growers want to showcase the varieties you can pick from the catalogue, but this is not a catalogue.
31:36And it is a show garden.
31:39It started as a park for the growers, but it is mainly a tourist attraction now.
31:46Is this the biggest display of bulbs anywhere in the world?
31:50Yes, definitely.
31:52And when it's over, what happens to the bulbs?
31:56I think most of them are being on the compost bin.
32:00And the park will be maintained for the rest of the year, but will be closed.
32:05So when it's gone, it's gone.
32:08Yes, it's sad.
32:18I was last here at Karkanoff about eight years ago.
32:21And since then, one thing has changed dramatically.
32:25And that is the development of the smartphone in this camera.
32:29And so on a spring day, this is the ideal place for people to come from all over the world
32:35and take pictures of themselves with a backing of these brilliant flowers.
32:43They're not looking at the plants as gardeners.
32:45They're looking at them through the screens of their phone.
32:49And whilst it's a strange development,
32:52and none of them, I guess, are going to buy any bulbs or grow them in their gardens,
32:56one thing is for certain.
32:58They are all loving it.
33:01From Karkanoff, I'm visiting some gardens in and around the Dutch capital, Amsterdam,
33:08before heading towards the coast,
33:10where I will end my Rhine journey on the shores of the North Sea.
33:17Just outside Amsterdam, near the airport, is the suburb of Amstelveen,
33:23where there is an intriguing and unusual park.
33:28It's very different from Karkanoff, which is an event that's put on from the middle of March to May,
33:35and then it's over and you can't get back in there, and that's it.
33:39Whereas this is a public park, open to everybody and anybody all the time.
33:48Tucked away through an unassuming entrance off the road is Jak van Tiese Park.
33:53It's called a haem park, or nature park, and is full of native species that thrive here,
33:59and was specifically made to provide locals intimate contact with the natural world.
34:06The five-hectare site has paths that lead through woodland and round lakes,
34:12and despite being right under the city's main flight path,
34:16it does feel incredibly natural and unspoiled.
34:28The park is maintained under the watchful eye of the foreman, Walter Busser.
34:33Wow, lots of wonderful things to see.
34:36Yeah, plenty.
34:39Walter has worked here for the last 15 years.
34:43You've got to try to maintain the atmosphere, that's the main thing.
34:46The atmosphere, eh?
34:48And people really, they want to sit here.
34:50I want to sit here. It's beautiful.
34:52Yeah, you want to sit here as well? Yeah, it's beautiful.
34:54But you can't realise that three kilometres further is the airport, eh?
35:01It obviously associates people sitting here with feeding us.
35:04Yeah, yeah, they like us.
35:08Is this a park where people come expecting to see a garden or a woodland?
35:13I think most people come here for the rest.
35:16No dogs allowed, no shouting at people.
35:20Just, they walk around and they just amaze themselves.
35:25It looks very natural.
35:27How much actual gardening takes place?
35:30Every day we're working, two months a year pruning, eh?
35:34Because we need light on the forest floor, eh?
35:38Because otherwise we lose a lot of vegetation.
35:41So we prune two months, very carefully, the high trees.
35:46We have to weed nine months a year.
35:49Really?
35:49Only weeding, weeding, weeding, weeding.
35:52And we do it.
35:53Wow, you're going weeding, weeding, weeding.
35:55Yeah.
35:56Use a hoe, or...?
35:57Yeah, but then it doesn't look natural anymore.
36:00If I kind of walk through it like an elephant,
36:03you see all my steps and you see all my holes
36:05and you see everywhere open spaces.
36:07But we try to keep the ground green.
36:11So you weed by hand?
36:12By hand.
36:13We are using a very small knife.
36:15Only a knife, a hand knife, and then we weed very carefully.
36:20Each little seed.
36:20Each little plant we have to weed.
36:23And just moving like an ape through the vegetation.
36:26Right.
36:26Very slowly.
36:27And that's what you do all day.
36:31Yeah, you need to have a lot of patience, but it also have to be,
36:35yeah, not only a job, but more a profession, but more,
36:38you have to be a little bit idiot, I think.
36:40Okay, how many idiots do you have working with you?
36:42Yeah.
36:43I've got eight more than me.
36:44That's how we are working with nine.
36:46We work here 12 months a year.
36:48Who finances that?
36:50The government...
36:51Right.
36:51The government of Amstelveen is financing it.
36:53Right.
36:54100%.
36:55So that's quite an expensive park.
36:57Yeah, and is that a problem?
37:00No, I don't think so, no.
37:02Most Amstelveen people, they can say,
37:05oh, you can take money everywhere, but not off the park,
37:10and people get joyed by it.
37:12So that's, that's, I think that for me, that's very, very important.
37:22It's easy to see why people love this park.
37:25It's very beautiful.
37:27And, and the feeling, the atmosphere in here is magical.
37:33Although Kirchenhoff seemed to be the epitome
37:37of sort of artificial gardening, entirely man-made,
37:41this is just as meticulously gardened,
37:46with every seedling just flicked out with a small knife.
37:50It couldn't be more carefully gardened,
37:53and yet it feels natural and at ease with itself.
37:56It's just two very different ways of creating gardens.
38:02And that's, but I want you to enjoy the ocean.
38:09Modern Amsterdam is a small, but cosmopolitan capital city.
38:18Bicycles and boats are a way of life here.
38:20And it has a long and rich culture and history.
38:30i'm now in the center of amsterdam which of course is famous for its canals and the water
38:36from these canals is fed amongst other sources from the rhine not directly a canal is dug
38:41to here but it is this water that is feeding through the system it's now a really busy
38:48vibrant city that we all know but when it was founded in the 13th century it was actually
38:52quite a small provincial town until they built a dam over the river amstel giving it its name
38:58amsterdam and then in the 16th and particularly the 17th century this became the hub of what
39:06was then the greatest trading nation on earth as the city grew the best way to transport people
39:17and goods was by water so the network of canals expanded and merchants bankers and artisans
39:25built their houses along the water's edge but at that time there were hefty taxes based on
39:33a house's width versus its height so the houses that were built were tall and narrow like these
39:40ones on the kaiser craft and behind these canal buildings there is a secret
39:49at the back of this house is a narrow carefully planted and maintained garden which has been here
39:54since the house was built in the 1600s although the current design dates from the early 1990s
40:01including a modern take on a parterre and a summer house
40:10now all this creates a secluded and peaceful inner city garden which is lovely but relatively normal
40:19however there's a fascinating story about these gardens because behind the tall slim facades of the
40:2617th century houses that you just see lining the canals are a whole mass of gardens like this
40:34in this part of amsterdam there are a series of districts called curves over 25 of them in all
40:40which since 1615 have been designated by law as gardens of course what that means is that gardens
40:50like this tucked away secret to all except for the owners and visitors of the houses have remained
40:57pretty much unchanged for the last 400 years
41:05the best way to see and travel around amsterdam is still by water hi yeah great
41:15so i took a boat trip to my next destination
41:24amsterdam has many more canals and bridges than venice forming a network around the city that
41:30stretches over a hundred kilometers connecting amsterdam to the north sea and the rest of the country
41:36including the canals of the rhine
41:44it's very nice just drifting through the center of amsterdam and i feel like i could quite happily
41:49do this all day but actually this journey does have a purpose because i'm heading to a communal garden
41:58that was designed in the 1930s as part of an experiment in social living
42:06in the early 20th century amsterdam was expanding fast the new neighborhoods and suburbs were being
42:13built on reclaimed marshland around the city
42:19thank you thank you
42:23one such development is herzenhof on the western edge of the city center
42:30it's a set of 600 apartments spread across two blocks built by hybert van sana he was a businessman who
42:39was determined to improve the living conditions of amsterdam's working poor this was revolutionary at the time
42:47and included at its center a communal garden created by the highly influential dutch designer
42:53mean ross who was then at the start of her career
42:59and the gardens were huge covering an area of about two football pitches
43:07at first i thought it odd that there were no apartments down on the ground floor opening onto the garden
43:12but i was later told that this was deliberate so everybody could have a view looking down onto the gardens
43:21well the gardens were designed as a stage right with the intention that everybody could have a direct
43:28access through the stairwell and fire the balcony people living on the first floor they could have a
43:35more beautiful view of the greenery helinda schule is a resident who has dedicated herself to documenting the history of
43:43herzenhof and its gardens
43:48it was really made for children we had this large playgrounds in the south
43:55and we had the nursery school over there and the nursery school was free of charge
44:00it had modern facilities and it had a lot of communal facilities as well
44:06they had a communal clubhouse with a theater stage music performances for children the residents would
44:14dress up nicely with ties and hats and would sit around the flower beds and on their balconies and watch
44:22people performing harbert von sana kept the rents very low so it was a social housing project
44:30von sana also paid for the upkeep of the buildings and gardens and remained in charge of the project
44:37until he retired in the 1970s when he sold off the whole development and everything changed
44:45from sana's vision to provide affordable good housing hasn't been continued what is left now
44:52is a conventional setup of private apartments and the gardens are looked after and paid for by the
44:58residents looking at the garden now i'm guessing there are fewer children here or at least they're less
45:05central to the garden well the playgrounds were removed in the 1970s because there are no children
45:11why are there no children because for most of the people it's too small people are now expecting a
45:17larger space to live in however halinda says there are positive developments in the garden
45:25we have a garden work group someone can announce i'm fancy to go into the garden working and then
45:31there are always people who say okay i'm coming with you it's important to have a bottle after the
45:37garden work sorry what is that borrow is uh defines a small get together in dutch with snacks and drinks
45:45so no walking in the garden without a bottle afterwards i like the sound of that very much i must
45:50institute
45:59that at home goodbye there's no question that when you walk in here it's immediately a really lovely
46:12space to be in it's green it's it's got real design and you can see why people are paying quite
46:18a lot of
46:18money for these flats and are prepared to pay to have the gardens restored but they are looked after
46:24by a very small minority of the residents and that original dream of social housing people paying a
46:31peppercorn rent of children having opportunity to grow up in a green space and have good education and
46:38gardens and playgrounds is gone so there's actually something if not sad slightly wistful about it
47:00in every country i go to i try and look for a national characteristic through the gardens sometimes it's
47:06obvious sometimes not so much but i think here in holland there are two strains that are peculiarly dutch
47:12there are evidence partly in in the very natural wildlife gardens prairie planting lots of grasses
47:19and the dutch have have dominated that across the world but it's combined with this love of of
47:25solutions and order and practicality which you see at kirkendorf with these lines of of incredibly
47:33grown bulbs but in a very ordered fashion and i think the two show both sides of a dutch character
47:42definitely through the planting in the gardens
47:54it's a new day and i've made an early start to come and see the biggest flower market in the
47:59world in
48:04i'm surrounded by hydrangeas by half past six in the morning a hundred thousand hydrangeas have been sold
48:12and are now making their way onto lorries which will then be distributed all over the world
48:24this is royal flora holland just outside amsterdam it's huge twice as big as the vatican city
48:31and by nine o'clock on a typical morning nearly 10 million euros worth of flowers will have changed hands
48:38here
48:46this rather nondescript office is actually the hub of the entire operation because this is the auctioneers room
48:55now this is a dutch auction here the prices drop and the first person to bid gets the goods
49:03now that used to happen in person you had a clock on the wall
49:11and just for an hour and a half there's this intense process of stopping the clock in that
49:22time making thousands of sales and bids
49:29the head auctioneer eric bassana is showing me around
49:34on a normal day between the 50 million
49:38flowers we trade by clock 15 million 15 on a normal day transaction yeah how many is that a year
49:45approximately 11 billion products it's happening down below yeah it's amazing they come from the cold
49:51store come in this area they go to the buyers and they are taking them to everywhere that they have
49:59clients
50:00it's mind-boggling eric has been here for 42 years and in recent times he's seen things evolve
50:08mainly due to climate change the growers will use a less energy that they that they did years here before
50:16they select roses or select flowers who adapt more to less energy so you see the the variety change
50:35it's fascinating to see how that even in this highly commercialized area of the horticultural trade
50:42the impact of climate change has to be addressed the chances are that every one of us at some
50:50stage in our lives will buy some cut flowers that have passed through this market but i don't think
50:57any of us can really appreciate and certainly i didn't until i'd seen it just the scale of the operation
51:03this is a truly enormous business and it does make me realize that our own gardens are doubly precious
51:13for their domesticity and their non-conformity because compared to this gigantic machine that is
51:22delivering cut flowers across the world that quirkiness is precious
51:33i've almost reached the end of this trip it's taking me through another area of polders
51:43and the use case canal which diverts some of the flood waters to join the rhine on its way to
51:49the
51:49north sea on the last stretch of its and my journey next to the canal in the town of us
52:03guest just
52:04inland from the coast is a large 19th century farmhouse which had to be rebuilt when the canal was made
52:11and three years ago the garden was modernized a natural swimming pool now sits behind the house
52:17and a free-flowing garden fringe with pollarded willows lines the canal
52:27the garden was designed by a local architect and landscape designer
52:31makiel flieland who grew up and still lives in the area the owners asked me to to use local materials
52:38like gravel and also make a connection between the canal and the old farmhouse but they really would
52:45like to have a modern garden how did you do that we created big borders with grasses combined with
52:51perennials the only wish from the owners was to make lane between the entrance of the garden and the
52:59canal a track a route a route yeah yeah for the annual triathlon they just walk in and they can
53:07jump in the canal they call it a polder cross they cross the polders you go into the muddy muddy
53:14lakes
53:14once a year how extraordinary so it must be the only garden in the world that has to accommodate
53:20yeah a race where people run through the middle of the garden and leap into i think so yeah it
53:26was a
53:27funny thing to add in the design yeah
53:35as the rhine in its straightened form gets ever closer to the sea it's lined by houses and this
53:42connection to water is central to dutch life whether it be on the water in boats by the water in
53:48gardens
53:49parks and fields and even from the water with its constant connection to the natural world
54:02the canal ends just eight kilometers away by the sea at cat fake and say where makil arranged for me
54:10to visit another garden that he had designed the gardens here are right on the coast with salt laden
54:18sea breezes to cope with so makil who grew up amongst these dunes has drawn on his local knowledge to
54:25create
54:25a sustainable contemporary garden with paths made from thousands of seashells
54:33and plants chosen to thrive in these coastal conditions and the garden sits harmoniously
54:39and healthily in this very specific horticultural setting
54:47there's another bit out the back now michael was very keen to point out to me that he didn't design
54:54it
54:54nevertheless i do want to look at it because i've heard it's a dog garden and i'm partial to dog
55:02okay what have we got here wow it's nice nice garden and dogs hello hello dogs hello come on show
55:15me your garden
55:18large blocks and drifts of grasses are robust enough to withstand the dogs that love to rummage through
55:26them following enticing scents they're not meant to be sitting on the grasses although no scent is more
55:34enticing than a biscuit give me your paw thank you that's good do you want to go good boy good
55:42boy
55:49and that's good to see you that's good to see you that's good to see you that's good to see
55:49you
55:49but now my journey is drawing to its close and i shall rejoin the great river for one last time
55:59this is the point that the rhine finally meets the sea i say the right but of course it's broken
56:05up
56:05as it's gone through the netherlands including to great ports like rotterdam but mostly small outlets
56:12like this i like this one because it's the old rhine and even though the waters have been
56:18sort of distilled and changed with canals and drainage what i know for certain is that some of
56:24this water began high up in the alps 800 miles further south 1200 kilometers and has made its way
56:33right through europe until it reaches here at the north sea and it's the end of my journey too which
56:40has been long and momentous and completely fascinating it's been wonderful to see the different ways that
56:48this vast river has influenced and shaped people's lives the cities built up along its banks to the
56:54gardens that have benefited from its waters i've seen former industrial sites transformed into gardens
57:01in switzerland with the mfo park and in germany the landschaft park i'll never forget the sight of
57:09people in basel swimming to work with their clothes in a bag whilst right alongside them enormous barges
57:16made their way northwards to the sea but in the end it's people and their gardens that will always
57:23remain most strongly in my mind there was karim creating a deeply personal garden out of agricultural land
57:30peter jenker's garden hortus which was made on the silt of the rhine that had built up over thousands of
57:37years and the local artist who persuaded an entire town to park their cars underground freeing up their
57:45streets to be filled with greenery and of course last but not least the deep connection that pete aldor
57:54one of the world's greatest gardeners has for each and every one of the plants in his garden
58:02along the length of its 800 miles the rhine is both frontier and also the center of life whether
58:09that's agricultural industrial or just the rich life that people have lived there along its banks
58:15for centuries as it wends its way from the mountains to the sea
58:24so
58:35so
58:36so
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