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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 travelling almost the entire length of its 800 miles, I've seen its huge influence
00:26on people and places.
00:33And to understand more about that rich and complex story that lies along its banks, I've
00:38visited as many gardens as I can.
00:44Along the way I've found great community spirit.
00:48Are you enjoying our gardens?
00:49I love your gardens.
00:52And people with real passion.
00:54We have nothing.
00:57I've seen how it has attracted power and money, as well as shattered dreams, and a warning
01:05about man-made changes, and how at every point this river continues to shape Europe's history,
01:14its culture, even its geography.
01:17And it is, of course, the mighty Rhine.
01:29In this programme, 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.
01:45On the one hand, it becomes a river Val, and on the other, a canal takes it out into the
01:51Dutch landscape, where it dissipates.
01:55It becomes scores of different small rivers and canals, all of them taking the waters of the 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 flattens.
02:14I'll see what modern-day tulip mania looks like.
02:22And in the long tradition of Dutch international trade, I'll see the world's largest flower market in action.
02:32And end up with the crunch of seashells underfoot.
02:35Hello, dogs! Hello!
02:37In a garden next to where the old Rhine finally goes out into the North Sea.
02:45This is the third journey in this series.
02:48I started close to the source of the Rhine, high up in the Swiss Alps.
02:52In the second programme, 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 this 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 to Amsterdam.
03:23This system has been engineered so that it can make a defensive flood covering an area five kilometres wide,
03:31and over 80 kilometres long, that's too deep to wade through, yet too shallow to take boats across.
03:37And apparently that system can still be triggered to this day, using the waters of the river to create a barrier.
03:45This region of the country is Helderland, which, like so much of the Netherlands, originally lay under water or was regularly flooded.
03:57It's an agricultural landscape of fields divided by drainage ditches and pockets of woodland.
04:03I'm making my first stop here in the small village of Humulung, where the most influential garden designer of the last 50 years has his home.
04:11Pete Aldoff is the designer of many celebrated gardens all across the world.
04:17But today I'm visiting him at his own garden, which he closed to the public seven years ago.
04:23Pete and his family have lived here since 1982.
04:37And when he first came, he set up a nursery and show garden to display his plants.
04:43This was at the beginning of a completely new way of gardening that he championed.
04:49My love for plants pushed me into the world.
04:53I wanted to put things together that you would feel like an environment or place where you felt happy.
05:01Pete moved away from the traditional design of borders filled with herbaceous plants and annuals, designed predominantly for a dramatic summer display.
05:11Replacing them with sweeping swathes of grasses and perennials that held their interest across the seasons.
05:19As Pete showed me round his garden, he explained how each different area was managed.
05:25We are gardening here, so we have to take out plants and put some plants in.
05:30But it's interesting, you say you're gardening here as though that's slightly the exception.
05:34You see this beautiful echinops? Yeah.
05:37Seats around like hell.
05:39So we have to pull things out, so we have to...
05:42Still we have to work on a sort of equilibrium.
05:49It was autumn when I made my visit to Pete.
05:54I'm interested to talk about colour, because people want colour.
05:59You don't put extra colour in it, you don't need it.
06:02I think brown is also a colour.
06:04I agree, but that's quite a hard sell.
06:07It's a mindset.
06:08This time of the year, you don't expect flowers.
06:11No.
06:12This is what you expect.
06:13Yeah.
06:14In your mind, if you see flowers, you think there's something happening which is not right.
06:19So when you're designing a garden, you're thinking through every single phase of the plant.
06:23Yeah, every plant.
06:24I see the flower, I see the seed head, I see the skeleton.
06:29You clearly have a very, very close relationship with plants.
06:34Yeah.
06:35It's emotional almost.
06:36Yeah, no, not even almost.
06:38It's absolutely emotional.
06:39Yes.
06:40After you.
06:43As we walk around, it's fascinating for me to see how Pete uses the combination of careful management in places,
06:51but with other parts of the garden growing almost untouched.
06:55The other side of the house is where he originally made his show garden featuring his nursery plants,
07:02along with a series of dramatic and much photographed sculptural hedges.
07:06Although some of these had to be taken out after this part of the garden was badly flooded.
07:12This is the deepest part of all the areas around.
07:17The garden was under water for a month.
07:19Yeah.
07:20We couldn't pump it out.
07:22So we lost 50% of our plants.
07:25And this is what is left.
07:27So this is a rain garden.
07:28This is what survived.
07:30What survived.
07:31Because it looks completely harmonious, isn't it?
07:34Yeah.
07:37Pete did stress that that harmony has taken years to establish.
07:44What you see here is impossible to do in a new garden.
07:50I was here yesterday.
07:51Yeah.
07:52And it looked so good.
07:54And I'm here again.
07:55And it still looks good, you know?
07:56Yeah.
07:57And it still has to sort of excise me in the same way.
07:59Yeah.
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.
08:17But I've never been to Humelo here before.
08:20And the great surprise, and I have to say great delight, is that it's not like his other gardens.
08:27It'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 single plant in his garden.
08:39And he greets them like friends.
08:41And that friendship is renewed every time he steps out into the garden.
08:45And that has created what I do think is exquisitely beautiful.
08:51A magical garden.
08:59I'm heading back towards the Rhine to Herva, 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.
09:14Which is aimed at a very particular, another different audience.
09:26This is the garden of Jelle Hrinches.
09:29A garden designer and social media influencer, who has created his garden in a very different way from a designer like Pete Aldoff.
09:35Jelle has turned an agricultural field to an almost finished garden in less than five years by filling it from the outset with mature plants.
09:45It was a huge undertaking.
09:48We took more than 10,000 perennials from the previous garden, really rare perennials, and didn't want to lose them.
09:59Sharing his garden and its development on social media has been an essential part of it for Jelle.
10:05And he's chronicled its creation and evolution at every stage with his 90,000-plus followers.
10:15I like to share pink and orange together on social media.
10:21I like to use more colour.
10:22Just five percent of yellow can make a difference.
10:25Just one or two orange spots in the garden can change the effect.
10:29Is 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-mots.
10:39Yeah.
10:41Yay. Perfect.
10:43They have eaten all the straight lines, the straight hedges in the Netherlands.
10:47All the front gardens in the Netherlands were copying of copies of copies of copies.
10:52Everyone had straight lines.
10:53Right.
10:54Since 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.
11:10Is this a style of gardening that you see spreading and becoming more relevant?
11:15Yeah, it is spreading.
11:17But the younger designers, they are trying to copy it and to improve it.
11:20If social media didn't exist, would you have done this?
11:25Never.
11:26Really?
11:27Really never, never.
11:38It's really fascinating to see how this has developed, because this is an Instagram garden.
11:44Made very recently with mature plants, almost the opposite of what Pete and that generation have been doing,
11:54which is with small plants, letting gardens develop and evolve.
11:59And whilst I confess, it's not the way that I've been brought into gardening,
12:04but to see how gardening may develop and how people react to it, and also how to reach a generation, then that's really interesting.
12:15In this last journey, I'm making my way from east to west, following the Rhine as its many tendrils stretch across the middle of the Netherlands.
12:23From Herva, I'm crisscrossing the river and its tributaries, including a visit to the famous display of tulips in Kirkenhof,
12:32and a magical, quiet park just outside Amsterdam.
12:37Finally, I will visit a seaside garden, where the old Rhine reaches the North Sea.
12:42One of the features of my journey along the Rhine, right from the source, have been the places made famous by events in history.
12:57And perhaps one of the most familiar of these is Arnhem and its bridge across the river.
13:02I think for many people, Arnhem is best known for being the location of a huge battle towards the end of the Second World War.
13:19Of course, the battle was in the whole area, and this garden, which was a wall garden attached to a large house,
13:25was certainly in the epicentre of that battle.
13:28The wall behind me is pit-marked with bullet holes.
13:34The house was hit by a bomb and burnt down.
13:39And after the war, it was abandoned and completely overgrown.
13:44In its 1920s heyday, Oosterbeek had been an immaculately maintained estate and garden.
13:52But for the 60 years after 1945, everything became buried under the rubble,
13:57of war.
14:02So the perfectly clipped hedges and managed borders that I see now are all new and have been created from unimaginable chaos.
14:11It was all ruined, damaged, it was overgrown.
14:15It was not recognizable as a garden.
14:19All 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.
14:34So actually you had to dig out bullets?
14:38Two meters deep, everything was turned around.
14:44We wanted to make this place a place where people get inspired.
14:47Yeah.
14:48By 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.
15:03And I have only one complaint about this garden.
15:07It's too small.
15:09We could have gone on and gone on.
15:11Right.
15:13Mariella received funding from the local government and wanted it to be enjoyed by as many people as possible,
15:20including being part of its care.
15:22And how many gardeners do you have here?
15:25We have 40.
15:26Three days away.
15:2740 volunteers.
15:29And everyone is from very different backgrounds.
15:32If you enter a garden, something happens with people.
15:37They relax.
15:39You 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.
15:49And now it's a beautiful place to be.
15:52Yes, so this turning around is very important for me.
15:55That you can start all over and you can build something beautiful.
16:09Hello.
16:10Hello.
16:11Are you enjoying our garden?
16:12I love your garden.
16:13Yes.
16:14It's fantastic your work.
16:19At the bottom of the garden here is a green amphitheatre carved out of the hillside.
16:29It's all of a piece with the way that Mariella apparently from day one has conceived of this garden is that it is for other people.
16:35You know, they have weddings here, they have concerts, they have plays, and that's really unusual.
16:42And she said to me that perhaps we're all intended to do one big thing in our lives.
16:47Well, this certainly is her big thing.
16:50There's a kind of steely focus needed to transform a garden like that and Mariella certainly has that in spades.
17:00But maybe it's a Dutch thing because it's evident again in the next garden I visit in the town of Thiel, which sits just next to one of the branches of the Rhine.
17:08It 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.
17:22And six years later, this is the result.
17:25We had nothing. We didn't have money. We didn't have people.
17:35Well, you've got lots of people now.
17:37Yeah. We put on banners around.
17:41Please help us. And we organized a lecture over there and we put a small article in the paper.
17:47And that's how we attracted all these volunteers.
17:50Gera van der Lone's plea had an immediate response.
17:57And now over 20 volunteers work here every Saturday.
18:0284-year-old Annie de Graaf has helped since the very beginning.
18:07I was passing by on one bicycle and I asked Gera, what are you going to do here?
18:13She said, I'm going to make a butterfly garden. I said, I don't believe you.
18:17She said, really? You're going to do it? And when did you start? She said, oh, on Saturday.
18:22So, I came on Saturday and I never left.
18:27Gera was also lucky that among the locals who offered to help was a professional garden designer, Edwin Baron-Drecht.
18:36I have some witches from Gera. It has to be a garden, four seasons attractive.
18:42It must be interesting for butterflies, for insects. And we have to work with volunteers.
18:49Is it what you saw in your mind five years ago?
18:52Yeah, a bit better, I think. Really? Yeah, yeah.
18:55Not 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.
19:15Why is that happening here? Because it's not happening in other countries so much.
19:20I think volunteering work is important in the Netherlands to do that.
19:24Not for yourself, but to have a good feeling of what you do.
19:28Edwin also told me that one of the unexpected and ironic reasons for the garden's success is because of the heat generated by the car park below.
19:45But the garden was just the beginning of Heere's vision, and her ideas are now spreading right across the town.
19:51It's a lovely idea. Are these the little beds that you've made?
19:56Yeah, these are the little beds of the people who live here.
20:00So here the people take care of themselves.
20:04As well as persuading the council to green the streets, Heere personally rang 2,000 doorbells to convince local residents to have small gardens in front of their houses.
20:15So you have to get individual people to agree to each one in front of every house?
20:21Yes, yes.
20:25So these long borders, what were they before?
20:29Parking lots.
20:30Really?
20:31These people who live over here, they started thinking if we park our cars in the parking garage underneath the butterfly garden, we can have also these gardens.
20:41It's always difficult for a city to say these parking lots won't be here anymore.
20:48So if the people themselves come and say we want gardens instead of parking lots, that's perfect.
20:55And Heere has plans to take this out beyond the town.
21:00In our region, there are rivers flowing from east to west, and there it's possible for populations of insects to migrate.
21:11And the rivers have the vegetation they need.
21:13Yeah, exactly.
21:14There's wild vegetation, but in this direction, north to south, it's really difficult because there's bare grassland, and we have to take care of that.
21:23It's important for their chances of survival.
21:36I do think this scheme is really remarkable.
21:38And if you think about it, it takes so many different elements to make it work.
21:41You don't just have the enthusiasm to knock on people's doors, grow the plants and plant them, whether they be in planters in the streets or around churches or around buildings.
21:51You also need the householders to buy into it.
21:54You need people to give up their parking places.
21:56You 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 life.
22:11I think it's a very beautiful idea that butterflies making their way across the country from vegetation point to vegetation point, following the rivers and the canals and the waterways.
22:27And it 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.
22:45They did so using polders.
22:47A polder is an area of land that has been reclaimed from either the sea or a river and kept dry by the use of dikes and ditches.
23:00These 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 own dike, and quite a few still remain.
23:28My next stop is Utrecht, whose position as a crossing point on the Rhine was central to the city's early growth,
23:47originally as a Roman military outpost, later as a thriving centre for trade, when the old river ran through the city's centre,
23:55and then subsequently when it was transformed into a system of canals.
24:00Here in Utrecht is a good example of how they evolved, because the Rhine, breaking into its many tributaries,
24:06has worked its way through the city, bringing goods in, so it was an inland port.
24:11And over the centuries, it got straightened and altered and turned into a canal.
24:17And so it remained for many centuries.
24:21But there was another development to one of these canals that came through the city,
24:26just down the end of the street, which was much more radical and much more recent.
24:31.
24:41Utrecht's old town has these lovely, narrow, cobbled streets that have barely changed over the centuries.
24:47Where these streets end, right at the edge of the old town,
24:51is another major canal that used to run outside the city boundary.
24:59I'm standing on where the city walls once stood.
25:02In the 19th century, they were taken down and the canal outside it remained.
25:07But in the 1970s, this section of the canal was drained
25:12and filled to create a 12-lane motorway, transforming the area and the lives of local people.
25:18However, in the early 21st century, things changed again.
25:24The people of Utrecht more or less rose up against this
25:28and said, we just don't want this as part of our lives.
25:31And rather wonderfully, as a result, the motorway was dug up,
25:36the canal was reinstated, the park runs now down to the water's edge
25:41and there is a green lung, rather than a busy road, running right through the town.
25:46This 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,
26:08I'm meeting the Dutch historian René de Cam.
26:131500 years ago, the Rhine came through Utrecht.
26:16You know, a huge river.
26:18But then we decided here in Utrecht to reclaim more land and to have grain on it.
26:25But then they needed to close, really close, the river Rhine.
26:29So they dammed the river Rhine.
26:30They dammed, yeah. And this is where the canals came in.
26:32It was one of the trading centres of the Northern Netherlands.
26:36How could they have trade when the river disappeared?
26:40And that's why they had to make a complete new infrastructure for the shipping.
26:45Then you make this canal exactly eight kilometres long.
26:49You dig it with little wooden spades.
26:53It's amazing work, and they did it in a few years.
26:58And they changed the land completely.
27:02We have two things, and that is fighting against the water.
27:05Yeah.
27:06And reclaiming land from the water.
27:08It's a constant struggle.
27:09Yes, it is.
27:10Still it is.
27:11But 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 below sea level.
27:24So if the sea level is rising and rising, it's very, very difficult to get the water out.
27:30And then we're not even speaking about problems with huge rainfall and coming down to the Netherlands from Switzerland, Germany, all the way you've travelled.
27:40The 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 of it.
27:56But if we go on like this, then we have a real, real, real problem in the Netherlands, I think, yes.
28:01You would be the first country in Europe to disappear.
28:04Yes.
28:05Under the water.
28:06Yes.
28:07Half of the country is gone.
28:10As Rennie made clear, that need to control water in order to reclaim the land made the Dutch very good at growing things.
28:21And for the modern gardener, they are the prime supplier of bulbs and plants.
28:27And if you want to see the biggest display in the world of spring flowering bulbs at their very best, then you have to come here to Holland and visit the display at Kirkenhof.
28:40That's what I did last April.
28:41It's thanks to the Rhine that every spring, this part of the Netherlands is lit up into a technicolour display of millions of tulips.
28:57The old river Rhine used to flow here on its way to the sea, and as it did, it left behind free-draining, rich, sandy soil, perfect for growing tulips.
29:10These fields are in fact planted for next year's bulbs, and the flowers will be discarded.
29:17But it doesn't stop the tourists enjoying them for now.
29:21And 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 the public for just two months in spring.
29:42I was allowed in early to take a look around before the crowds arrived.
29:47And 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 time.
30:05But in the last few years, this has become something entirely different.
30:12As 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 this experience.
30:29And rather than coming here to choose bulbs for their gardens, these tourists are having a unique day out.
30:47And above all, looking for the perfect photo opportunity, with tulips as the spectacular backdrop.
30:54In response to this, growers are showing off their flowers in increasingly eye-catching and dramatic displays.
31:00I 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.
31:17I 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.
31:28The growers want to showcase the varieties you can pick from the catalogue.
31:33But this is not a catalogue. And it is a show garden.
31:37It started as a park for the growers, but it is mainly a tourist attraction now.
31:45Is this the biggest display of bulbs anywhere in the world?
31:49Yes, 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.
32:04So when it's gone, it's gone.
32:07Yes. It's sad.
32:17I was last here at Karkanoff about eight years ago.
32:21And since then, one thing has changed dramatically.
32:24And that is the development of the smartphone in this camera.
32:28And so on a spring day, this is the ideal place for people
32:32to come from all over the world and take pictures of themselves
32:37with 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.
32:48And 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,
32:55one thing is for certain, they are all loving it.
33:00From Karkanoff, I'm visiting some gardens in and around the Dutch capital, Amsterdam,
33:06before heading towards the coast, where I will end my Rhine journey on the shores of the North Sea.
33:12Just outside Amsterdam, near the airport, is the suburb of Amstelveen, where there is an intriguing and unusual park.
33:25It'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.
33:44Tucked 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,
33:58and 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.
34:20Walter.
34:21Yeah.
34:22Hello.
34:23Hello.
34:24Nice to see you.
34:25Lovely to be here.
34:26Yeah, it's nice.
34:28The park is maintained under the watchful eye of the foreman, Walter Busser.
34:33Wow.
34:34Lots of wonderful things to see.
34:35Yeah.
34:36Plenty.
34:38Walter has worked here for the last 15 years.
34:42You've got to try to maintain the atmosphere.
34:44That's the main thing.
34:45The atmosphere, yeah.
34:47And people really, they want to sit here.
34:49I want to sit here.
34:50It's beautiful.
34:51Yeah, you want to sit here as well?
34:52Yeah, it's beautiful.
34:53But you can't realize that three kilometers further is the airport, yeah?
35:00It obviously associates people sitting here with feedings.
35:03Yeah, yeah.
35:04They like us.
35:06Is this a park where people come expecting to see a garden or a woodland?
35:13I think most people come here for the rest.
35:16Yeah.
35:17No dogs allowed.
35:18No shouting with people.
35:19Just, they walk around and they just amaze themselves.
35:22It looks very natural.
35:23How much actual gardening takes place?
35:25Every day we're working, two months a year pruning, because we need light on the forest floor,
35:37because otherwise we lose a lot of vegetation.
35:40So we prune two months, very carefully.
35:42Yeah.
35:43The high trees.
35:46We have to weed nine months a year.
35:48Really?
35:49Only weeding.
35:50Weeding, weeding, weeding.
35:51And we do it.
35:52Wow, you're going weeding, weeding, weeding.
35:55Use a hoe or...?
35:56Yeah, but then it doesn't look natural anymore.
35:59If I kind of walk through it like an elephant, you see all my steps and you see all my holes
36:04and you see everywhere open spaces, but we try to keep the ground green.
36:10So you weed by hand?
36:11By hand.
36:12We are using a very small knife, only a knife, a hand knife, and then we weed very carefully.
36:18Each little seedling?
36:19Each little plant we have to weed.
36:21And just moving like an ape through the vegetation, very slowly, and that's what you do all day.
36:27Yeah, you need to have a lot of patience, but it also have to be not only a job, but more a profession,
36:37but more you have to be a little bit idiot, I think.
36:40Okay, how many idiots do you have working with you?
36:42I've got eight more than me, that's how we are working with nine.
36:45We work here 12 months a year.
36:47Who finances that?
36:49The government...
36:50Right.
36:51The government of Amstelveen is financing.
36:52Right.
36:53100%.
36:54So that's quite an expensive part.
36:56Yeah, and is that a problem?
36:59No, I don't think so.
37:01No, most Amstelveen people, they can say, oh, you can take money everywhere, but not off the park,
37:09and people get joyed by it.
37:12So that's, I think that for me, that's very, very important.
37:21It's easy to see why people love this park.
37:24It's very beautiful.
37:25And the feeling, the atmosphere in here is magical.
37:33Although Kirchenhof seemed to be the epitome of sort of artificial gardening, entirely man-made,
37:41it's very beautiful.
37:42This is just as meticulously garden, with every seedling just flicked out with a small knife.
37:50It couldn't be more carefully garden, and yet it feels natural and at ease with itself.
37:56It's just two very different ways of creating gardens.
38:00Modern Amsterdam is a small but cosmopolitan capital city.
38:17Bicycles and boats are a way of life here, and it has a long and rich culture and history.
38:23I'm now in the centre of Amsterdam, which of course is famous for its canals.
38:34And the water from these canals is fed, amongst other sources, from the Rhine.
38:39Not directly, a canal is dug too here, but it is this water that is feeding through the system.
38:45It's now a really busy, vibrant city that we all know, but when it was founded in the 13th century,
38:51it was actually quite a small provincial town, until they built a dam over the river Amstel,
38:56giving it its name, Amsterdam.
38:59And then in the 16th, and particularly the 17th century, this became the hub of what was then
39:05the greatest trading nation on earth.
39:13As the city grew, the best way to transport people and goods was by water.
39:19So the network of canals expanded, and merchants, bankers and artisans
39:24built their houses along the water's edge.
39:28But at that time, there were hefty taxes, based on a house's width versus its height.
39:34So the houses that were built were tall and narrow, like these ones on the Kaisergracht.
39:42And behind these canal buildings, there is a secret.
39:48At the back of this house is a narrow, carefully planted and maintained garden,
39:53which has been here since the house was built in the 1600s,
39:56although 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,
40:14which is lovely, but relatively normal.
40:17However...
40:18There's a fascinating story about these gardens,
40:21because behind the tall, slim facades of the 17th century houses
40:26that you just see lining the canals are a whole mass of gardens like this.
40:33In this part of Amsterdam, there are a series of districts called Kurs,
40:38over 25 of them in all, which since 1615 have been designated by law as gardens.
40:47Of course, what that means is that gardens like this, tucked away,
40:51secret to all except for the owners and visitors of the houses,
40:55have remained pretty much unchanged the last 400 years.
41:00The best way to see and travel around Amsterdam is still by water.
41:09Hi.
41:12Yeah, great.
41:14So, I took a boat trip to my next destination.
41:17Amsterdam has many more canals and bridges than Venice,
41:28forming a network around the city that stretches over 100 kilometres,
41:32connecting Amsterdam to the North Sea and the rest of the country,
41:36including the canals of the Rhine.
41:38It's very nice just drifting through the centre of Amsterdam,
41:47and I feel I could quite happily do this all day,
41:49but actually this journey does have a purpose,
41:52because I'm heading to a communal garden
41:57that was designed in the 1930s as part of an experiment in social living.
42:04In the early 20th century, Amsterdam was expanding fast,
42:09and new neighbourhoods and suburbs were being built
42:12on reclaimed marshland around the city.
42:19Thank you. Thank you. Nice to meet you.
42:23One such development is Herzenhof,
42:25on the western edge of the city centre.
42:29It's a set of 600 apartments,
42:32spread across two blocks,
42:34built by Heubert van Zahner.
42:37He was a businessman who was determined
42:39to improve the living conditions of Amsterdam's working poor.
42:44This was revolutionary at the time,
42:46and included at its centre a communal garden
42:49created by the highly influential Dutch designer,
42:53Meen Rous,
42:54who was then at the start of her career.
42:56And the gardens were huge,
43:00covering an area of about two football pitches.
43:06At first I thought it odd that there were no apartments
43:09down on the ground floor, opening onto the garden.
43:11But I was later told that this was deliberate,
43:13so everybody could have a view looking down onto the gardens.
43:17Well, the gardens were designed as a stage,
43:23with the intention that everybody could have a direct access
43:27through the stairwell and via the balcony.
43:30People living on the first floor,
43:33they could have a more beautiful view of the greenery.
43:36Gelinde Schuler is a resident who has dedicated herself
43:41to documenting the history of Herzenhof and its gardens.
43:47It was really made for children.
43:49Right.
43:50We had this large playground in the south,
43:54and we had the nursery school over there,
43:57and the nursery school was free of charge.
43:59It had modern facilities,
44:01and it had a lot of communal facilities as well.
44:04They had a communal clubhouse with theatre, stage,
44:09music performances for children.
44:11The residents would dress up nicely with ties and hats,
44:16and would sit around the flower beds,
44:18and on their balconies, and watch people performing.
44:23Herbert von Sanne kept the rents very low,
44:26so it was a social housing project.
44:29Von Sanne also paid for the upkeep of the buildings and gardens.
44:33And remained in charge of the project until he retired in the 1970s,
44:38when he sold off the whole development,
44:42and everything changed.
44:44Von Sanne's vision to provide affordable, good housing
44:48hasn't been continued.
44:50What is left now is a conventional set-up of private apartments,
44:54and the gardens are looked after and paid for by the residents.
45:00Looking at the garden now, I'm guessing there are fewer children here,
45:03or at least they're less central to the garden.
45:05Well, the playgrounds were removed in the 1970s,
45:08because there are no children.
45:10Why are there no children?
45:11Because for most of the people, it's too small.
45:13People are now expecting a larger space to live in.
45:18However, Holinda says there are positive developments in the garden.
45:23We have a garden work group.
45:25Someone can announce, I'm fancy to go into the garden working,
45:29and then there are always people who say,
45:31OK, I'm coming with you.
45:32It's important to have a borel after the garden work.
45:37Sorry, what is that?
45:38A borel defines a small get-together in Dutch with snacks and drinks.
45:44So no working in the garden without a borel afterwards.
45:47I like the sound of that very much.
45:49I must institute that.
45:59Goodbye.
46:02There's no question that when you walk in here,
46:07it's immediately a really lovely space to be in.
46:12It's green, it's got real design,
46:14and you can see why people are paying quite a lot of money for these flats
46:19and are prepared to pay to have the gardens restored,
46:22but they are looked after by a very small minority of the residents.
46:26And that original dream of social housing,
46:29people paying a peppercorn rent of children,
46:32having opportunity to grow up in a green space
46:35and have good education and playgrounds is gone.
46:39So there's actually something, if not sad, slightly wistful about it.
46:45In every country I go to, I try and look for a national characteristic through the gardens.
47:04Sometimes it's obvious, sometimes not so much.
47:06But I think here in Holland there are two strains that are peculiarly Dutch.
47:11They're evidence partly in the very natural wildlife gardens,
47:16prairie planting, lots of grasses.
47:18And the Dutch have dominated that across the world.
47:22But it's combined with this love of solutions and order and practicality,
47:27which you see at Kirkenhoff,
47:29with these lines of incredibly growing bulbs,
47:33but in a very ordered fashion.
47:36And I think the two show both sides of a Dutch character,
47:40definitely through the planting in the gardens.
47:43It's a new day, and I've made an early start
47:55to come and see the biggest flower market in the world in action.
48:03I'm surrounded by hydrangeas.
48:06By half past six in the morning,
48:08a hundred thousand hydrangeas have been sold
48:12and are now making their way onto lorries,
48:15which will then be distributed all over the world.
48:23This is Royal Flora Holland, just outside Amsterdam.
48:27It's huge, twice as big as the Vatican City.
48:30And by nine o'clock on a typical morning,
48:33nearly 10 million euros worth of flowers will have changed hands here.
48:38This rather nondescript office is actually the hub of the entire operation,
48:51because this is the auctioneers' room.
48:53Now, this is a Dutch auction.
48:56Here, the prices drop,
48:57and the first person to bid gets the goods.
49:01Now, that used to happen in person.
49:04You had a clock on the wall.
49:06Now, it's all done over the internet.
49:08And just for an hour and a half,
49:16there's this intense process of stopping the clock,
49:20in that time making thousands of sales and bids.
49:29The head auctioneer, Eric Wassenaar,
49:31is showing me around.
49:33On a normal day, between the 50 million flowers,
49:38we trade by clock.
49:4015 million on a normal day transaction.
49:43How many is that a year?
49:44Approximately 11 billion products.
49:47What's happening down below is amazing.
49:50They come from the cold store,
49:51come in this area,
49:52they go to the buyers,
49:54and they are taking them to everywhere that they have clients.
49:59It's mind-boggling.
50:02Eric has been here for 42 years,
50:05and in recent times he's seen things evolve,
50:08mainly due to climate change.
50:10The growers will use less energy than they did years before.
50:15They select roses or select flowers
50:20who adapt more to less energy.
50:23So you see the variety change.
50:26It's fascinating to see how that even in this highly commercialised area
50:39of the horticultural trade,
50:41the impact of climate change has to be addressed.
50:45The chances are that every one of us at some stage in our lives
50:50will buy some cut flowers that have passed through this market.
50:55But I don't think any of us can really appreciate,
50:58and certainly I didn't until I'd seen it,
51:00just the scale of the operation.
51:02This is a truly enormous business.
51:05And it does make me realise
51:08that our own gardens are doubly precious
51:12for their domesticity and their non-conformity,
51:16because compared to this gigantic machine
51:21that is delivering cut flowers across the world,
51:24that quirkiness is precious.
51:32I've almost reached the end of this trip.
51:34And it's taking me through another area of polders...
51:42..and the Ustgest Canal,
51:44which diverts some of the floodwaters
51:46to join the Rhine on its way to the North Sea,
51:49on the last stretch of its and my journey.
52:00Next to the canal, in the town of Ustgest,
52:03just inland from the coast,
52:05is a large 19th-century farmhouse
52:07which had to be rebuilt when the canal was made,
52:10and three years ago the garden was modernised.
52:13A natural swimming pool now sits behind the house,
52:17and a free-flowing garden, fringed with pollarded willows,
52:21lines the canal.
52:23The garden was designed by a local architect and landscape designer,
52:29Mackiel Flieland, who grew up and still lives in the area.
52:33The owners asked me to use local materials like gravel
52:38and also make a connection between the canal and the old farmhouse,
52:42but they really would like to have a modern garden.
52:45How did you do that?
52:47We created big borders with grasses combined with perennials.
52:51The only wish from the owners was to make a lane
52:55between the entrance of the garden and the canal.
52:58A track, a route?
53:00A route, yeah.
53:01For the annual triathlon.
53:04They just walk in and they can jump in the canal.
53:07They call it a polder cross.
53:10They cross the polders and go into the muddy, muddy lakes once a year.
53:15How extraordinary.
53:16So it must be the only garden in the world
53:18that has to accommodate a race
53:21where people run through the middle of the garden
53:23and leap into it.
53:24I think so, yeah.
53:25It was a funny thing to add in the design, yeah.
53:34As the Rhine in its straightened form
53:36gets ever closer to the sea,
53:38it's lined by houses.
53:40And this connection to water is central to Dutch life,
53:44whether it be on the water in boats,
53:46by the water in gardens, parks and fields,
53:49and even from the water,
53:51with its constant connection to the natural world.
54:01The canal ends just eight kilometres away, by the sea,
54:05at Katveig Anze,
54:07where Makil arranged for me
54:09to visit another garden that he had designed.
54:15The gardens here are right on the coast,
54:17with salt-laden sea breezes to cope with.
54:20So Makil, who grew up amongst these dunes,
54:22has drawn on his local knowledge
54:24to create a sustainable contemporary garden.
54:29With paths made from thousands of seashells
54:32and plants chosen to thrive in these coastal conditions.
54:36And the garden sits harmoniously and healthily
54:40in this very specific horticultural setting.
54:47There's another bit out the back.
54:49Now, Michal was very keen to point out to me
54:52that he didn't design it.
54:53Nevertheless, I do want to look at it,
54:55because I've heard it's a dog garden.
54:57And I'm partial to dog garden.
55:01OK, what have we got here?
55:03Wow, it's nice.
55:06Nice garden.
55:09And dogs, hello!
55:10Hello, dogs!
55:11Hello!
55:12Come on, show me your garden.
55:18Large blocks and drifts of grasses
55:20are robust enough to withstand the dogs
55:23that love to rummage through them,
55:25following enticing scents.
55:27They're not meant to be sitting on the grasses.
55:31Although no scent is more enticing than a biscuit.
55:34Give me your pour.
55:36That's good.
55:37Do you want to go?
55:39Good boy.
55:40Good boy.
55:48But now my journey is drawing to its close,
55:51and I shall rejoin the great river for one last time.
55:58This is the point that the Rhine finally meets the sea.
56:02I say the Rhine, but of course it's broken up
56:05as it's gone through the Netherlands,
56:06including to great ports like Rotterdam,
56:09but mostly small outlets like this.
56:13I like this one because it's the old Rhine.
56:16And even though the waters have been sort of distilled
56:19and changed with canals and drainage,
56:21what I know for certain is that some of this water
56:24began high up in the Alps, 800 miles further south,
56:281,200 kilometers,
56:30and has made its way right through Europe
56:33until it reaches here at the North Sea.
56:36And it's the end of my journey too,
56:38which has been long and momentous
56:41and completely fascinating.
56:44It's been wonderful to see the different ways
56:46that this vast river has influenced and shaped people's lives,
56:51from the cities built up along its banks
56:53to the gardens that have benefited from its waters.
56:56I've seen former industrial sites transformed into gardens
57:00in Switzerland with the MFO Park
57:02and in Germany the Landschaftpark.
57:05I'll never forget the sight of people in Basel swimming to work
57:10with their clothes in a bag,
57:12whilst right alongside them enormous barges
57:15made their way northwards to the sea.
57:18But in the end, it's people and their gardens
57:21that will always remain most strongly in my mind.
57:24There was Karim creating a deeply personal garden
57:27out of agricultural land.
57:29Peter Yenker's garden, Hortus,
57:32which was made on the silt of the Rhine
57:35that had built up over thousands of years.
57:37And the local artist,
57:39who persuaded an entire town
57:41to park their cars underground,
57:43freeing up their streets to be filled with greenery.
57:47And of course, last but not least,
57:50the deep connection that Pete Aldorf,
57:53one of the world's greatest gardeners,
57:55has for each and every one of the plants in his garden.
57:59along the length of its 800 miles,
58:03the Rhine is both frontier and also the centre of life,
58:07whether that's agricultural, industrial,
58:10or just the rich life that people have lived there
58:13along its banks for centuries,
58:16as it wends its way from the mountains to the sea.
58:20The
58:34The
58:37¶¶
59:07¶¶
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