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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.
00:56I've seen how it has attracted power and money, as well as shattered dreams.
01:04And a warning about man-made changes.
01:07And how at every point this river continues to shape Europe's history, its culture, even
01:15its geography, it is, of course, the mighty Rhine.
01:26This seems like a good place to start this first journey, because you have the Hinta Rhine
01:32coming down there.
01:35The Hinta Rhine meeting it.
01:38And as they come together in this turbulent, icy cold, curiously greeny slate-gray colour,
01:46they kick off at right angles and create the Rhine, as we know it.
01:52Which starts here, in the mountains, in Switzerland.
01:58It's becoming bigger and bigger, cutting through Europe until it reaches the North Sea.
02:04That's the direction that I'm going.
02:13This is the first of three journeys that I'm making along the length of the Rhine.
02:18This trip takes me through Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Austria, and Germany.
02:28Having seen where the Rhine starts, I'm now travelling up further into the Swiss Alps,
02:34and to a well-known landmark.
02:39Davos is down below in the valley, and of course it's famous for being the place where
02:43the World Economic Forum is held.
02:46But actually, I've left that behind and come up the mountainside, because I'm much more
02:50interested in a garden that is also world-famous and attached to the hotel here.
03:04Set high up on the hillside is the Art Nouveau Hotel Schatz Alp.
03:10It was built in 1900 as a sanatorium for tuberculosis patients.
03:15Gentle walks in the clear mountain air were an important part of the treatment,
03:19so they made a garden around the building and filled it with alpine flowers.
03:26These are now all part of a bigger botanical garden that has been extended on up above the hotel.
03:33I came up here and made a bit of a diversion, because I wanted to absorb that alpine feel,
03:47with the river running down far below.
03:50And I hadn't at all expected to find plants from all over the world thriving and looking fantastic in this spot.
04:01Complete surprise.
04:02This part of the botanical garden was formed after an avalanche ran through the valley in 1968
04:14and left in its wake a mosaic of slopes and ledges in which are planted a wide collection of plants
04:21from high altitudes around the world.
04:22They're organised in distinct geographical areas, from the Himalayas to the Americas.
04:29But the south-facing slope, the various localised microclimates and the altitude,
04:34mean that whatever their provenance, they are all entirely at home here.
04:38There on the left is Himalaya and grasslands.
04:44The garden is tended by a team of gardeners led by the head gardener, Fabian Rappel.
04:50So what's it like gardening here? I mean, for example, it must be covered in snow in the winter.
04:54Yeah, we usually have growth from four to six months.
04:58Last year, we only had two months without snow. That was July and August.
05:02And when we say snow, I mean, how deep is it? When there's a snow in June or September,
05:07this is a couple of centimetres and passes in a couple of days.
05:11But winter, thick blanket, you don't see anything. There's no gardener here.
05:16And presumably that snow, I mean, I can hear the water moving now when it's dry,
05:21or in spring when it melts, just pours down.
05:24It sinks in and so we have a lot of water actually underneath us running down.
05:28And from here you join the Rhine eventually. Yeah, we're not too far away from it.
05:31The garden is situated at an altitude just below 2,000 metres, and that is critical,
05:40because go much higher, and the air is too thin for the plants. Go too low,
05:44and the air becomes too humid and thick. At this altitude, the UV levels are noticeably higher,
05:52which makes the colours of the flowers incredibly vivid.
05:54Now, anyone of my generation was probably introduced to the Alps via the film The Sound of Music,
06:01and that means there is one white flower in particular that I must see.
06:07Now, I've never seen Edelweiss.
06:09Yeah, well, it's just right around the corner.
06:10I need to see it.
06:11Yeah, so you take it away.
06:15And here we have our first one.
06:17So that is an Edelweiss.
06:19That is an Edelweiss. It's not the exact one from the region here, it's a subspecies,
06:26but it's the first one in flower of them.
06:28I didn't know there were lots of Edelweiss.
06:29There is 36 to 50 different species of Edelweiss,
06:33and most of them are coming from the Himalayan region.
06:37Gosh, you see, I didn't know that.
06:38OK, you've impressed me.
06:41Well, there we are.
06:42There we are.
06:42My first Edelweiss.
06:49I've visited quite a few botanical gardens all over the world,
06:54but this one is exceptional in that it doesn't have any of that slightly heavy-handed educational quality to it,
07:02as though you have to stand up straight and pay attention as you're walking around it.
07:06It does feel like a garden and the way it mingles in with the alpine meadows,
07:11and on top of that, of course, it has this incredible setting.
07:19I've come down off the mountain to the river to visit a garden that's over 500 years old,
07:40but its position and the way that it was made and laid out was influenced directly by its proximity to the Rhine.
07:49Alongside the Rhine, as it flows down the valley away from the mountains, is Kür,
07:57the oldest city in Switzerland, and it's dominated by the Haudenstein castle.
08:07Originally a military fort, the castle was rebuilt in the Renaissance,
08:11and perhaps the most striking thing about it are the monumental ten-metre-high walls.
08:19The castle was originally built here, high above the river, looking out across the plain,
08:23as a strong defensive position.
08:25By the middle of the 16th century, it was transformed,
08:27because there was no longer any need to defend it physically.
08:31In fact, it was the river that became the problem.
08:34So this enormous wall was built to protect it from the floodwaters of the Rhine.
08:41And until the 19th century, the waters did flood the whole area,
08:46and then a channel was dug, and then the Rhine could be kept within its banks.
08:50Now the castle was safe from the water, the Renaissance owners could create a garden
08:57on the large terraces that had been created between the new walls and the castle itself.
09:02The garden has fallen in and out of various states of repair over the years,
09:09but it is now filled with roses, covering pergolas and growing up the walls,
09:15and in beds bounded by manicured hedges.
09:22This latest incarnation was created 25 years ago by the local Rose Society,
09:27who now meet weekly to maintain the gardens and care for it.
09:35Including this, the Haldenstein rose.
09:40And the crenellations which are here actually exist only to frame the view.
09:51The garden now depends upon the collaborative effort of the volunteers,
09:55giving it a new lease of life in this historic setting,
09:58and becoming a focus for the local community.
10:03I'm now going to follow the river, takes me north,
10:06across the border into Liechtenstein, and I've never been there before.
10:15The transition from Switzerland to Liechtenstein is wonderfully low-key.
10:19Here we are, crossing over the Rhine again, and we're crossing into another country too.
10:28That's it. We're in Liechtenstein.
10:32The most dramatic indication as we pass over the border is Faduts Castle,
10:37the official home of the Prince of Liechtenstein.
10:39From Liechtenstein, I'll stop off on the Austrian side of Lake Constance.
10:48I'll then travel between Germany and Switzerland, ending this part of the journey in Basel.
10:56It's a complicated trip, and to get my head around what lies ahead,
11:00I'm meeting the only person who has written a book following the entire length of the Rhine,
11:05from sea to source.
11:08That's what I said. I think it's probably in that V up there.
11:10That one, up there.
11:13Ben Coates is a British journalist who began his journey from his home in the Netherlands,
11:18which is where mine will end.
11:19I'm really interested in how the Rhine has shaped the cultures of the people.
11:26I mean, we say it goes through all these different countries,
11:29but it almost has its own culture that flows with it.
11:32I think all rivers, they have this dual function where, across their width,
11:36they can divide and they often form the boundary.
11:39But along their length, rivers like the Rhine can also unite people together,
11:42and you see that repeatedly.
11:43A lot of these towns have grown rich from prating with one another along the length of them,
11:47and the cultures have sort of merged together along them.
11:49And I think in some ways you could say that somewhere like Basel and Strasbourg and Cologne
11:54have more in common with each other than they would with
11:56cities in their own country that are further from the river.
11:58But I think the river has also helped connect places to the outside world.
12:02And you see a lot of the towns on the river, like Strasbourg, for example,
12:05or Cologne, or Bonn, or Dusseldorf, they're much more sort of worldly than you might expect
12:10for a relatively small town in the middle of the continent.
12:13Looking at it the other way, river is boundary.
12:15Mm-hmm.
12:16Tell me more about that.
12:17Well, where we're sitting now, we're actually only, I don't know,
12:1940, 50 miles from the border with Italy today.
12:22Yeah.
12:22So as the Roman Empire started to grow and spread northwards,
12:26the Rhine effectively formed the outer boundary of the Roman Empire.
12:29But I think, to some extent, the Rhine still does form a kind of cleft through Europe.
12:34If you look to the west and the south of the river, you still have the sort of French-speaking,
12:38Latin-influenced Europe of red wine and olive oil and pasta.
12:42And then if you go north and east of the Rhine, you have the more Germanic Europe of the potatoes,
12:48the beer, the butter.
12:49While you're talking, I can see behind you these mountains.
12:52But if we were having this conversation in February, it would be, I guess, completely white.
12:57The volume of water that must go in to create this barrier, this enormous river.
13:04Is it all from snowmelt?
13:06Yes, although I think one of the reasons why the Rhine has played such a big role in Europe's history
13:11is because at certain times of year, it's filled up by the snow melting.
13:14But at other times of year, you have heavy rainfall in Germany and the Netherlands.
13:18Not far from where we're sitting now is Lake Constance, which acts as a sort of overflow
13:22bathtub that can top the river up as needed. And it's been able to be open for shipping pretty
13:26much year-round in a way that not every river is. I always find it quite extraordinary to think that
13:31if you threw a leaf or a paper boat or something into the river up here in the Alps, in a couple of
13:36weeks' time, it could be floating close by my house in the Dutch countryside, far, far away.
13:41As we head further down off the mountains, the landscape and indeed the whole atmosphere changes.
13:50From the quiet villages up in the Alps, we arrive at a town busy with participants and supporters
13:58in a local marathon.
14:05This is the town of Bregenz, which has meant crossing yet another border, this time from
14:10Liechtenstein to Austria. My third country in Adelie, and the atmosphere is completely different,
14:17it's party time. Looking out over Lake Constance, this enormous lake, with three countries tacking
14:23onto it. And the sun is shining, it's a summer's evening, and everybody is hell-bent on having a very good time.
14:40The next morning, I take one of the ferries that criss-cross the waters of Lake Constance.
14:55The lake, which is largely formed and fed by the Rhine, is huge, covering an area around three
15:02times the size of Liechtenstein and has borders with Austria, Germany and Switzerland.
15:10The reason I got on the ferry is to visit a garden on an island on the German side of the lake.
15:15It's Mainau Island. And in fact, the whole thing is one large garden and is one of the most popular
15:23gardens in the whole of Germany, with over a million visitors every year.
15:38Mainau is known as the Island of Flowers and is 45 hectares of extensive formal and informal gardens.
15:47Mainau is one of the most popular gardens. Dramatic Italian water steps lead up from the lake,
15:53towards the baroque castle and a simply enormous glass house, below which stretches out a large rose garden.
16:02Mainau is one of the most popular gardens in the river, in the river, in the river, in the river.
16:16I was here from early, before the gates opened, but people are now arriving by the thousands,
16:23and it's interesting to see what people are looking at, because here in the rose garden,
16:27which is very different from a British rose garden, it's much more dramatic, much stronger colors,
16:32this is the sort of thing they're loving. Above all, people are coming here to have a really good day
16:39out and be entertained. And if that's by flowers, then it's got to be a big performance.
16:53These are the floral animals. I have mixed feelings about them. They're clever and they're fun,
17:05but it's not the sort of thing I would naturally include in my own garden. However, here, I can tell you,
17:12everybody seems to love them and their faces light up as they walk past.
17:26Mainau has an extraordinary range and diversity of plants that make up the gardens.
17:32And that is possible because the lake stores heat in the summer and then releases it slowly in the autumn,
17:40creating a very mild microclimate. And on a summer's day, there is a distinct
17:45Mediterranean field to the terraces that overlook the water.
17:52And this is what we see on Mainau as well. Count Bjorn Bernadotte runs the Lennart Bernadotte Foundation,
17:59which owns the island. Did you grow up here?
18:02Yes, I grew up here. I think I fall down from every tree here on the island. I know every bush from
18:08inside and outside. It was great. Now, in creating the garden here, I mean, it's really big scale,
18:14huge grass house. When did that begin? Friedrich I, he bought the island about 1854.
18:22And then he started with really making this island we see now. So he planted a lot of the trees.
18:28And his wife, Luise, she was very interested as well. So she created the rose garden we have here.
18:34And then in the 20th century, how did the gardens develop?
18:37When my father came down here, this was in 1933. He was 23 years old. So he was born in 1909.
18:46And then he started with farming here on the island. So he had a few cows and a few
18:50pigs and chicken and stuff like this. And then he started with tourism and really opened the garden
18:56to the public again and get people in to see our garden. When people come here, what is it they're
19:03looking for? What we are selling is emotions. But I think the Germans and the British, they have a
19:09different view on their gardens. So when I see British, I think there's more a piece of an art,
19:15what they design, what they really live for, what they really, it's a different culture.
19:20And of course, the Germans, they love their gardens as well. But it's more like a place to be.
19:28Grand Duke Friedrich's 19th century planting campaign is now, 150 years later, really impressive.
19:36With over 500 species of trees, many now in magnificent maturity.
19:42We do a lot to keep them in health here in Minot. The problem is that we have just one and a half,
19:54two meters of soil on the island. So all the trees, they usually grow deep, have to grow flat.
20:01Is that rock underneath?
20:03Yes, solid rock. And the good thing is with the water, as soon as the water is through those two meters
20:09of soil, it goes through the rock and back to the lake. So therefore, we can use it again to water
20:14our plants and the trees. We have a big thing with climate change. So when we plan new parts in the
20:22garden, we already think about what can happen in the next few years. And this is going to be a real,
20:29real task for all of us.
20:43There's no doubt about it that climate change is affecting the way they're planting and gardening.
20:49And this is a good example. This is the latest area. It's based upon the combination of ferns and fuchsias.
20:56They were forced to install quite an elaborate misting system, partly to increase the humility,
21:02but mainly to cool it down. And climate change just means that the temperatures have risen sufficiently
21:08to make it slightly awkward for plants that would have grown without any trouble at all, relatively recently.
21:15I've come to a nearby island of Reichenau. Give me a chance to think about Mino, because you can easily
21:43be blinded by their size and the scale and the variety of all the different things they're doing.
21:48But at its heart is a really fantastic arboretum. Those trees are magnificent. And I think well worth
21:57traveling just to see those alone. Anyway, the reason I've come here, apart from having a very nice cup
22:02of coffee and a pie, is to visit a much smaller garden with a nugget of really good history.
22:13Reichenau is also on the German side of Lake Constance, but it's much larger than Mino,
22:19and in the 8th century was an important place of learning and culture centred around its abbey.
22:24After the 12th century, the island's influence waned, but its historic buildings still remain. And nestling amongst
22:35these pretty village houses and gardens is the place that I've come to see. This is Reichenau Abbey,
22:42founded in 724.
22:56The reason I've stopped here is because in the 9th century, the abbot, a certain Wallafried Strabo,
23:04wrote one of the very first gardening books. And it referred to the plants that he considered to be
23:10essential for himself and his monks, both for medicinal and culinary purposes.
23:19The recent restoration of the gardens are a celebration of Strabo's ideas.
23:26Immediately outside the building, there's a central flower meadow,
23:29surrounded by a cloister made from pleached limes.
23:32But the highlight for me is the herb garden.
23:41These rather modest beds contain the 24 plants that Strabo wrote about, and they're really significant,
23:50because although they're a funny mixture to the modern eye, because you have flowers like iris and
23:54roses, and then herbs like sage and lovage, and then others like rue, which we don't use so much,
24:00along with vegetables, they were the basis for what became the conventional monastic garden.
24:08And that lasted for nearly 900 years right across Europe, and was the repository of horticultural wisdom
24:16for all that period, all stemming from here.
24:35One of the odd things for me is, as we've visited gardens around Lake Constance,
24:40we've crisscrossed borders, and it's a hub around which these countries have evolved.
24:45But I just have to remind myself that actually it's not an independent lake.
24:50This is fed by the Rhine. The Rhine runs right through it and under it,
24:54and comes out the other end with even more force.
24:57From Lake Constance, I'm border hopping again, back into the lowland patchwork of fields that
25:10bound the Rhine in the Swiss region of Turgau. And it's the proximity of the river that makes
25:16the land here especially fertile. I've come just about a kilometre away from the river,
25:23to visit the farm, but not for the farm itself. Because I've been told that there is a garden here
25:30I should see. Although, at the moment, it's looking pretty agricultural.
25:38Hello, Monty.
25:39Lovely to meet you.
25:40Nice to meet you and a warm welcome to my garden.
25:43A lovely day, a beautiful road.
25:46Yeah.
25:46And we've got it on the perfect day.
25:48This is the home of Karin Kung Minder, who moved here with her husband in 1997,
25:55and has spent the last 25 years transforming the land around the house into a garden.
26:05Was there a garden here when you came?
26:06Over there was a vegetable garden.
26:09Uh-huh. Well, it's not vegetables now, is it? Look at that.
26:12So when you came here, there was this vegetable garden and nothing else?
26:18Yeah.
26:19Is this something you and your husband do together?
26:21No, my husband is not a gardener.
26:23They always have had to discuss about getting more land for the garden,
26:29and my husband was sometimes not so happy about that.
26:33Right.
26:34But now he always says, you have to do it by yourself.
26:38So you're taking over the farm slowly?
26:40Yeah. Okay.
26:42Okay.
26:45Karin's garden wraps around the house and is divided into different areas,
26:50each with a different theme.
26:52Next to the vegetable garden is a gravel garden,
26:55with plants self-seeding in the path that runs between the flower beds.
27:00Your plants look so healthy and happy.
27:02Yeah. I think they are very happy,
27:04and I also can say that plants, they are not healthy.
27:09They won't stay for a long time in my garden,
27:12because I have no time to care for one plant.
27:16And I also notice you have lots of bees and insects.
27:20Yeah.
27:20The shadow garden around the corner is very different,
27:27intermingling flowers and ferns beneath rose-covered archways.
27:33Now, is this to encourage wildlife and insects?
27:35Yeah. For me, it's very important to promote the biodiversity,
27:40because our agricultural land is without any structures to keep biodiversity and wildlife.
27:51This is very nice. I like the house very much.
27:52In every window, I can look out to the garden.
27:57We don't have paintings because we have windows.
28:03Ah, now this is completely different.
28:05This is the nature garden.
28:09Oh, I can hear a frog.
28:12Ah, this is lovely.
28:14I go for a swim when the water is warm enough.
28:21Do the wildlife use it and enjoy it? We've heard the frogs.
28:25Yeah, there are a lot of frogs, dragonflies.
28:28Sometimes there are snakes coming to catch a frog to eat.
28:33And you're swimming?
28:35Yeah, it's happened, yeah.
28:40What do your friends and neighbours think about this?
28:43Yes. At the beginning, perhaps they thought,
28:46I'm a lazy gardener because I have so many weeds in the garden,
28:51but it's not weed for me, it's native plants.
28:56That's a great passion for me to tell them,
29:00you can have a beautiful garden that way.
29:04It certainly is beautiful. It is.
29:09A gate that is clearly intended to keep something out.
29:13Perhaps something in leads to the newest part of Carine's garden.
29:17This is the dog's garden.
29:18The dog's garden. I love a dog garden.
29:22Here they come.
29:22Yeah.
29:23Look at you. Hello, hello, hello, whoops.
29:36You have these great big beds. Do they not jump around inside them?
29:40They are not allowed to be in here when they are alone,
29:43so I can tell them to keep out of the beds.
29:48And they obey?
29:48Yeah. Most, it works.
29:56Well, not only does it work for dogs, this garden works for people too.
30:00In Britain, we have a gardening culture.
30:05Yeah.
30:05Where to some extent everybody gardens.
30:07Does that exist in Switzerland?
30:09I think a lot of people have space around the house.
30:13Yes.
30:14And it's quite common in Switzerland to keep everything clean,
30:18and clean up is not good for nature.
30:22No.
30:23They want easy.
30:24So the kind of gardening that you're doing,
30:27that must be quite challenging for quite a lot of people.
30:29Yeah, I think so.
30:31People are always asking me if I can enjoy my garden,
30:36and I always say I enjoy it while I'm working in the garden.
30:40Yes.
30:40That's my passion, and it's also good for my heart.
30:44Yeah.
30:45And good for my health.
30:46Come on then.
30:47Come.
30:48There's a good garden.
30:49Good garden.
30:58On my way here, driving through the Swiss farmland, which is pretty austere in a way,
31:04I wasn't expecting to see a garden in that landscape on a farm that looks anything like this,
31:10and I was very wrong.
31:13Because this is not just a lovely garden, but also it's really doing something that is
31:19clearly influential.
31:21It goes against the Swiss' instinctive nature to make things tidy and neat and clean.
31:28There's a certain amount of mess involved, but it's a very beautiful mess.
31:31I'm now heading back to the point where the Alpine Rhine becomes the High Rhine, at the truly dramatic
31:48Rheinefalls.
31:49There are many waterfalls that have a longer drop, but the sheer volume and force driving
32:01these falls is breathtaking. Tourists flock here to be awed by the sight of the river,
32:07unleashed into Wagnerian splendor as it roars down over the rocks.
32:12The Rhinefalls and all their glorious tumbling power are by far the biggest natural waterfalls
32:38along the whole length of the Rhine, and thankfully they have remained unconverted into
32:44industrial use. And back at the end of the 18th century, the early 19th century,
32:49they became a really important symbol for the Romantic movement, this idea that nature
32:53was not terrifying, as it had been up till then, but something to relish. Its wildness was in itself
32:59beautiful. And poets, and particularly painters, came here to capture that wild, free essence.
33:07Not far away from the falls is a small village of Osterfingen.
33:26It's a charming rural scene with timber-framed houses flanking the pretty main street.
33:32It also has another much less common feature. Hello. Hello. It's a beautiful garden.
33:41Thank you. Because nearly every house in the village has a glorious front garden.
33:49The story of the gardens of Osterfingen will have resonance right across streets and villages
34:02throughout the whole of Europe, because a local historian was looking at gardens of the region
34:07and discovered an awful lot had gone, particularly front gardens. They'd been paved over and used as
34:11car parks. But when he came to the village here, he found they were still here. This street had gardens
34:16all the way along it. So, when informed about this, the locals formed a garden group and they preserved
34:21the gardens. And what we have is a delightful reminder of what actually every street and every
34:29village used to look like.
34:33The result transforms the village, setting the houses free from the tyranny of the car,
34:39and all open to be enjoyed by locals and passers-by alike. Barbara Lindsay is one of the people who
34:47ensures that the village keeps up this tradition.
34:52Hi. Is this your garden? Hello, Monty. Yeah, this is my garden. It's lovely. Do people come and visit?
34:59Yes, because we have gardens in a style that you can copy or take an idea with you and put it in your garden as well.
35:07And I'm interested, are you attracting young people? Mostly older people, but young people
35:13are coming more and more. Okay. Because they like the nature and to being outside.
35:18Well, it looks fantastic. Thank you very much. Thank you, too. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.
35:30The gardens are not the only feature of the village that harks back to a fast vanishing world.
35:37At five o'clock every afternoon, the church bells signal the end of the working day.
35:48What I'm finding extraordinary about this village is the way that it's really an old-fashioned working
35:54village. There are farms next to houses, there are people working, a blacksmith, a shoemaker,
36:01or whatever it may be. And the gardens are happily fitting in and amongst them. There's no separation
36:08between work and home life. And it hasn't succumbed to that disease that really has affected
36:13everywhere in Europe, which is villages becoming dormitories. This is a place that's living.
36:18However, from the living village, I'm now heading for the city. Zurich is Switzerland's largest city
36:32and is the center of industry, finance and education. It lies on the northern tip of Lake Zurich,
36:41whose crystal-clear waters eventually feed into the river Rhine.
36:49Looking down over the city of Zurich, I'm at the top of a formal Baroque garden
36:57that was made for a mansion built in the 1760s of a Zurich silk trader.
37:04And that silk raw came up the Rhine to Basel, across the land here to Zurich, where it was processed,
37:11and then once processed, back across to the Rhine, and then spread out across Europe,
37:15and obviously made him a fortune because it's a large imposing house, and hence the formal garden that goes with it.
37:22The layout of the Rhine Bow garden has altered over the years as it has changed from a private home,
37:36and then to a university building in the 20th century. In 1985, it was taken over by the local
37:42government and opened to the public. The design we see today is a culmination of 30 years' work to
37:50restore the garden to how it probably looked when it was originally made.
37:56By the 1760s, when this garden was initially laid out, we're coming to the end of the Baroque
38:02period, but it's got all the elements you might expect to see of a traditional garden. So,
38:07you have the symmetrical beds, the fountain, the steps going up, the terraces, and the feature
38:13of numerous small pieces of topiary. Larger pieces came later in the 19th century. So,
38:21this is a garden, a formal layout that you absolutely would expect to find here,
38:27in the centre of the heart of Switzerland, of a successful trader in the 18th century.
38:33I've come to the suburbs near the railway station to visit a garden that wants to be a building,
38:46or maybe it's a building that wants to be a garden. You'll see.
38:53This is the MFO park in the north of Zurich.
38:56The site used to be part of a huge engineering factory. But in 1998, after the factory was
39:04decommissioned, there was a competition to see what to do with the resulting space.
39:10Now, at the time, Zurich was very keen to promote a forward-thinking use of architecture
39:15and landscape. So, the winning firm came up with this. A dramatic, plant-clad steel parkhouse.
39:26The result is a structure 100 metres long by 35 metres wide. The steel grid walls,
39:34clad with climbers, create a dramatic combination of raw urban architecture and what amounts to a vast
39:42bower. Taking their inspiration from an opera house or a theatre, the designers created a series
39:51of stacked balconies and platforms from which you can look down on this enclosed internal piazza.
40:03It's really interesting to me as a gardener of how it works, because the combination of all these
40:09different climbers and the gantries, the metalwork around the outside is really lovely, especially
40:14when you're inside it and you get glimpses of it and you have this enclosed space like a walkway,
40:20like a like an arbour. I love the way that this crosses and merges all the boundaries and definitions
40:29of what a building or a garden is or could be.
40:32It should look like a building, there should be similarities with the buildings around,
40:39but then there is birds flying, it's raining inside, the wind is going through,
40:44so it's a building, but it's a garden too. The landscape architect Roland Redeschal was part of
40:52the winning design team. You couldn't visit the site at the time. We have seen models of what the
40:58site would look like and there were long buildings that all had the same height. Then we came up with
41:05the idea of inserting a construction inside that would be similar to the buildings, same height,
41:12same volumes, but then totally different.
41:17I've seen a lot of green walls in my travels, but they are invariably attached to a very solid
41:22existing building. This takes the idea of a green wall, but adds delicacy. And despite the scale of
41:30the structure, the light filters through the walls, pillars of plants, to create something quite exceptional.
41:38Why did you go for climbers? I mean, there are lots of ways of doing a green wall, aren't there?
41:44Well, planting, climbing plants into the soil is the most effective way to let them really grow
41:51and become what they can be. Most of the plants work well. No plant, if it dies, is replaced more than two
41:59times. All the water that falls down on the gravel and runs on the surface is being collected. And that
42:06water is being used to irrigate the plants. The roof should have been covered with plants, but I mean,
42:14I'm quite happy with the ceiling being open. And if they don't want to grow horizontally, let them.
42:20How does this look in winter? Well, in winter, it's the bare steel construction, and the architecture is more
42:29impressive. And then in spring, you suddenly have all the blossom of the Visteria, the roses, the smells, and then in
42:38autumn, the Russian wines turn orange, red, and it goes up in flames. Fantastic. How are people using this?
42:46It is quite crowded over lunchtime, and you've got the shade. And it's also quite popular by teenagers.
42:54A young lad said that whenever he's got a new girlfriend, he brings her here.
42:59Oh, there is no greater tribute than that. Yes, yes.
43:11Quite a lot of people are going to be asking whether this was a garden at all.
43:16But I don't think it matters. This is a combination of a building or the ghost of a building and plants.
43:23And these green walls clothing the structure and changing as the seasons change, create a space
43:30in which people here in the middle of a busy city with lots of offices all around can use and enjoy.
43:37It works. And as long as it works, it doesn't matter what you call it.
43:46I'm leaving Zurich to go north to join the Rhine at Basel.
43:51Basel grew up because of the proximity to the river, which critically brought much easier
43:58transportation for people and trade than going across country. This access to the river has been
44:04the determining factor for the development of communities throughout the region's history.
44:08And not far from Basel, near the river's edge, is one of the oldest and most important Roman settlements in Switzerland.
44:16This is Augusta Rorica, the much restored ruins of the very first known Roman fort on the Rhine,
44:31which was round about 40 BC. Now, at that point, the Rhine was the border of the Roman Empire in the north.
44:37Everything north of it were hostile tribes. So this was very much a defensive military position.
44:42These are the ruins of the amphitheatre, which was just part of what was a huge settlement,
44:50containing up to 20,000 people at its peak between the first and third centuries.
44:56Now, almost all of this has vanished. And what does remain is now part of local people's homes and day-to-day lives.
45:05After 100 years, the empire had spread north of the Rhine, so this no longer needed to be a defensive position,
45:11and it became a trading centre with a really quite substantial town building up around it,
45:17goods coming down the Rhine and being sent along it. So it shows that historically, the Rhine has been an absolute
45:25key element of military history, mercantile history and also social history, with communities building up
45:33and remaining, obviously, to this day.
45:48Basel, or Bal, as it's called by the French, is the final city that I'm visiting in Switzerland.
45:54It's right on the borders with France and Germany, so it's a really important strategic position
46:02on the Rhine. And in the 20th century, became the centre for the pharmaceutical and chemical industries.
46:10But above all, it's its position by the Rhine that has really shaped its history.
46:15And the river is still very much part of the city's everyday life, with people even commuting to work,
46:29not on, but in the river, carrying their clothes in a special waterproof bag known as a vehicle fish.
46:38And of course, there are people enjoying riverside cafes and bars.
46:42And I've come to see this particular cafe, to look at its roof garden.
46:48Now, this isn't unusual here, because new flat roofs in Basel are legally acquired to be green.
46:55This transformation of the city's buildings is the brainchild of Dr. Stefan Brenneisen,
47:00a pioneer in urban biodiversity.
47:03It looks really vibrant and verdant. It's beautiful.
47:07Quite a big thing, though, to make that kind of roof garden.
47:10That's the brilliant thing. He's creating fruit, tea, herbs, what he uses in his bar.
47:16Oh, I didn't realise that. So it is a working herb garden?
47:20Yeah, it's a working herb garden. When you see all these flowering plants, bees, butterflies,
47:24this is like the perfect roof garden for insects.
47:29Stefan's passion for green roofs began when he built an experimental one in 1995.
47:34We found rare red-listed species in our traps on the roof. And that proved that newly created
47:42habitats can be a new world for species that live along the Rhine. And now they got almost extinct.
47:49They just live near 30, 50 miles out of the city.
47:52What kind of thing are we talking about?
47:54Usually you choose one bio-indicator and we choose beetles.
47:59OK.
48:00But later on we also, we study spiders, now bees, butterflies, birds, grasshoppers.
48:08All the ones that are mobile that are able to reach these habitats we are studying.
48:11So did you set about trying to persuade as many people as possible to have a green roof?
48:17The government, you know, and they are making the regulations. So we could tell them you can make
48:24a building code. It's exceptional that in Basel we're defining how it should be executed. You have to use
48:32only native plants as a seed base, for example. So really creating habitat as you would do if on the
48:38ground, just put it on the roof. And we had to make it on a level that everybody can afford it.
48:45The important thing that I can see is that it can actually be done relatively easily.
48:50Exactly.
48:51Are people going up on the roof? Do they use them as gardens?
48:55It's not the typical roof we are usually dealing with. For security reasons, other reasons, nobody goes
49:01out. What we like just to show the people, there are butterflies, there are grasshoppers going up on
49:0770 meters. We can save nature in cities, but on roofs.
49:15Then Stefan took me to see a much more ambitious project that he's monitoring.
49:22This is the university bio center, at the top of which is a green roof 73 meters up. And from here,
49:31you can see some of the 6,000 green roofs across the city. But this one is Stefan's aerial research lab.
49:42That's our pitfall trap and we have like 10 of them on the roof.
49:46You want to have a look? There's a lot of, oh my gosh, lots. Beetles, spiders. Yeah.
49:58Many people say, ah, what kind up here? A bee? No. A bird? No. Grasshoppers? No,
50:03because they're big. No, they can fly. So, to prove the architects and the planners,
50:08how we can do a little oasis for nature. Stefan became involved with this green roof for rather
50:15a curious reason. Crows were picking up pieces of gravel from the original roof and then dropping
50:20them and smashing windows below. They asked me, we need to get rid of the crows. And I told them,
50:26okay, we just cover all the gravel with a turf roll. Right. How many years has this been?
50:32This is three years old now. Okay. And how do you think it will look in three years time?
50:39More or less the same. Like a prairie look that will stay. Well, okay, it's burnt out, but you know
50:45that next spring it will be green. Yes. One year you have this dominant species and another year is
50:50another one, depending on how much rain you got in this year. But in principle, a roof with this kind
50:55of biomass that will stay more or less over the next 20 years in the same shape. If a gardener sees
51:01that, he comes and say, ah, let's mow it because it's dry grass. We take it off and say, no, relax.
51:06You drink a coffee and leave it. And the implication of that is that we could substantially improve the
51:13wildlife of our cities. If only we made more roof gardens, even if they don't look like we want them to
51:19look like, of course. The key thing about this kind of roof garden is that it's self-sustaining. There
51:29is no gardening that goes on here at all. But it does mean that by June, it looks completely burnt out,
51:38particularly as our weather is getting hotter. The trust is, is that come next April and May,
51:43it'll be green again. This is a fantastic way of encouraging wildlife, but not necessarily the
51:49most beautiful way of gardening. It is in fact true rewilding.
52:03For my final garden visit on this leg of the journey, I'm crossing the river yet again,
52:08over to the German side of the border to visit the Vitra campus, just to the north of the city centre.
52:19This is the site of a well-known German furniture manufacturer.
52:23And after a disastrous fire at the beginning of the 1980s, they rebuilt it, hiring very well-known
52:30architects for individual buildings. And as well as buildings, they decided to create a garden.
52:37And in doing so, commissioned one of Europe's best known garden designers.
52:48This garden is the creation of Piet Aldorf, the Dutch designer, who in the late 1980s began to
52:55introduce a free-flowing naturalistic style, characterised by the abundant use of grasses and
53:02perennials in large open beds, planted in carefully orchestrated swathes.
53:13Rolf Fellbahn, whose family founded the furniture company, commissioned the garden.
53:18When I was a kid, my mother was from this area, and in the garden of her aunt, the first factory was constructed.
53:30And I had played in that garden. And then over the years, many, many cherry trees were gone,
53:36because of the expansion. So in a way, because we destroyed so much now, it's a reconciliation with nature.
53:43And when I thought about a garden, there was only one person I could think of, that was Pete.
53:49Was this the kind of thing you wanted, therefore you chose him? Or did you just want his eye, his artistry?
53:56His eye, his point of view. What really attracted me, that idea of this wilderness and this change
54:03and this composition and the dynamics over the year.
54:06The planting in Pete's garden is deliberately intended to run its seasonal cycle and designed
54:16to celebrate every stage of annual growth and decay.
54:23What you have here on campus is these effectively artworks by architects and artists. Do you see this
54:30as another piece of art as another piece of art?
54:34Well, I never thought about it as a piece of art as a garden. And I think it's a very important element.
54:41It's a fantastic experience. Call it art or call it whatever.
54:46Would you consider putting in more gardens and camp?
54:48Well, we are actually, in view of climate change, doing a lot on the campus.
54:52More seeing the whole place as a biosphere. Because before, buildings were sort of the protection
54:58against nature. And now we think more of cooperating with nature and seeing as interconnected.
55:14There are a couple of circular grassy doing points and I come to one of them. And what that does is
55:20enable you to see the way this garden is constructed and these clouds of planting. It's a very European style,
55:27of which Pete Aldolph is undoubtedly the star. And what you get in this open space is effectively
55:35a show garden. This is a garden to be admired. And of course, that's its role on this campus.
55:40People come in, they walk around, they visit it, and then they go away again. There's no intimacy
55:46intended or found here. But drama and beauty you have in spades.
55:57This seems like a good place to end this stage of the journey as the Rhine comes to the borders with
56:15France and Germany. And it's covered a lot of ground from those beginnings when the water was
56:21slaty grey and icy cold with the fantastic alpine plants above Davos, with the colours so bright in
56:30that thin air. And then following the river down, this sort of tumbling water coming down through
56:36Liechtenstein and touching into Austria at the base of Lake Constance.
56:40Manau Island with its incredible trees. And Carine's garden in Switzerland, carved out of farmland.
56:49And then coming through into Basel with the roof gardens. And above all, this sense of the river
56:57changing its character. Because as well as enormous craft, using it as a highway, heading to the sea.
57:05Also, I've been really surprised by the way that people use it as a place where they live their outdoor life.
57:11Swimming in the river, sunbathing, meeting friends, taking the dogs for a walk. In other cities, that might
57:18happen in streets and parks, but it seems the river is the focus of that public, social, outdoor life.
57:25And obviously, ending up on Pete Aldorf's garden is something that really connects to this part of the world.
57:33And I definitely will see more of that kind of gardening as I head up through Germany towards the coast.
57:40That will take me through romantic landscape that were the starting point of modern mass tourism.
57:50The more modest, but highly individual private worlds, realised in community gardens.
57:57Oh, I see. Yes, there's the branch line.
58:02And to gardens created to display power and sophistication,
58:07that are now in danger of survival from our changing climate.
58:11There are 80% of the trees in Schwetzingen, which are not healthy.
58:1680%? 80%
58:3690%? you think you're welcome.
58:3790%?
58:38I think there is no doubt.
58:39ouv'an
58:3990% of each other emit shoes were ahead and
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