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00:00I have made a garden journey following one of the world's great rivers.
00:06This has taken me criss-crossing through frontiers along six different countries, right through
00:12the heart of Europe, from the mountains to the sea.
00:20By traveling almost the entire length of its 800 miles, I've seen its huge influence on
00:26people and places.
00:33And 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 found great community spirit.
00:47Are you enjoying our gardens?
00:49I love your gardens.
00:52And people with real passion.
00:53We have nothing.
00:55I'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.
01:17It is, of course, the mighty Rye.
01:25In this part of my journey, I'm following the Rhine due north, remaining in Germany throughout.
01:37This is the second of three programs that I'm making along the entire length of the Rhine.
01:45And I'm starting it near Schwetzingen, in the southwest of the country.
01:53This is the old Rhine.
01:55Because until the 19th century, the Rhine moved around, it meandered, it created islands and
01:59sandbanks, it flooded in winter.
02:04This bridge crosses a small remnant of that original river.
02:08But the superhighway that we now associate with the Rhine was created in the 19th century.
02:14And great stretches were straightened, which enabled the big boats to go down, and enabled factories
02:21to grow up, and seemed to be a great sort of marvellous improvement.
02:26And in some ways, it was, but in other ways, it had unintended consequences.
02:37A few kilometres to the east of this part of the old Rhine is the Palace of Schwetzingen.
02:43I've come here because this represents, really, the seat of power in this area.
02:54And it expresses both in the building and in the gardens real grandeur.
03:00It went from being a medieval motive castle to the summer palace of the Elector Palatine
03:07princes.
03:08Now, these were the most important people, the most influential people in the area.
03:14And as well as the building, they made not one, but two magnificent gardens.
03:26The first is formal and rigidly symmetrical, with the central axis flanked by parterres and
03:33water features leading in the far distance to a lake.
03:38These gardens were created in the second half of the 18th century.
03:44And everything is on a grand scale, and intended, above all, to impress with its magnificence.
03:58Side gardens lead off from the central axis, all beautifully restored to their formal 18th
04:05century splendor.
04:08I'm struck immediately by these wonderful arcades.
04:13These are shaped and clipped out of lime in the foreground, and the really tall ones are hornbeam.
04:20And you see them in pictures in Baroque gardens in England, but almost all of them were swept
04:26away by the landscape movement. But here they are, very European, and still exactly as they were made and intended in the 18th century.
04:33An impressively large orangery runs along one whole side of this area.
04:49I am fascinated by orangeries, which is this enormous building at the back.
04:53In the 18th century, they were the precursors of greenhouses, really. The citrus, the oranges,
05:01would be protected in winter, with stoves heating them, and then placed out in boxes in the garden in
05:09front, creating a summer garden. And you can see it today, not just citrus, but palm trees,
05:15all of which, like the citrus in the 18th century, will be brought into protection to overwinter them.
05:27The path leads on to a more enclosed space, with other paths and cul-de-sacs leading from it.
05:34This is an outdoor theatre, with a sunken orchestra pit below a grass stage, flanked by the hedges of
05:49hornbeam that act as the stage wings. A cascade rises behind the stage, and above it presiding over the
05:58the whole scene is a temple built to Apollo, the god of music. The rock splendor, it is all suitably dramatic and incredibly impressive.
06:12What I find most extraordinary about this is, for all the magnificence of this temple and the fountain,
06:19is that the theatre, with all its resonances of the liberal arts and music and dance and painting,
06:25fundamentally, is created by assembling a group of plants. It's as simple as that.
06:34Turn and face the other way, and the picture is very different, with the temple looking out onto a
06:40landscaped, informal part of this huge garden, dominated by mature trees with paths leading to a
06:50a series of follies, temples and assorted buildings, all created solely to adorn the landscape.
07:00There is a temple to Mercury, carefully constructed to look like a classical ruin.
07:06An enormous faux-Turkish mosque, never meant for worship, but intended as a titillating taste of the Orient.
07:13Today, the garden is a major attraction in Germany, with over 800,000 visitors a year.
07:23But whilst both garden and park are expertly cared for, it does have major challenges ahead,
07:30that are directly connected to the management of the Rhine.
07:33Karin Seiber is the garden conservationist at Schwetzingen.
07:42They were straightening out the river Rhine in the 19th century, so the water level sank very low,
07:51like 10 to 12 meters. The trees can't cope with that. The roots, they can't get it. And we had some very dry
07:58summers and dry springs. They are dependent on rainfall. There are 80% of the trees in Schwetzingen,
08:08which are not healthy. Eighty percent? Eighty percent. Do you think you're going to lose any species?
08:13Um, yes, I'm pretty sure about that. And which ones? Beaches. Beaches you'll lose? Yes.
08:20It's genuinely shocking. Yes. That to me. Yes.
08:28We try to keep the old historic species. The trees that seem to cope with climate change,
08:36we took seeds from and grow them in the nursery. And then we plant it out in the garden at a very,
08:42very young age. They might have the genetic material to cope. It will be a much younger garden,
08:51but also we will have different species. So perhaps it's also an opportunity that we're going to have
08:58an original garden.
09:05Although Carine is upbeat about the future, that combination of climate change and the 19th
09:11century engineering that created a more efficient waterway on the Rhine is clearly posing long-term
09:18harm to this historic garden. But for the moment, it remains magnificent in its splendor.
09:28It is special. It's big. So you need time here to fully enjoy it. Well, my time has run out now,
09:34and I need to move on. And I'm off to Heidelberg.
09:37Heidelberg is famous for having Germany's oldest university founded in the 14th century. But that's
09:48not why I'm here. Because sitting on a promontory above the city is the real reason I've come. As the road
09:56rises through the wooded hills, the ruins of Heidelberg Castle come into view.
10:14Whereas the garden at Sweetsingen has been carefully looked after and maintained down the centuries,
10:20here at Heidelberg Castle is a very different story. Because back in the early 17th century,
10:26a really grand Renaissance garden was planned and started to be installed. But then disaster struck.
10:34The story is a good one. It begins in 1613 with the marriage of Friedrich, the Elector Palantine,
10:51with Elizabeth, the daughter of the King of England, James I. The idea being to unite the Rhine and the
10:59Thames, although it has to be said that the river below the castle is not the Rhine, it's the Necker,
11:04it runs into the Rhine. And to celebrate, they created this marvellous garden.
11:11The garden stretched out across five enormous terraces filled with ornamental flower beds,
11:17elaborate fountains and statues,
11:22and was intended to match in scale and glory the great Italian Renaissance gardens of the period.
11:29It was nearly completed, but then the Thirty Years' War began, and the Thirty Years' War was appalling.
11:41It devastated the whole of Germany and much of Europe.
11:45War was to follow, because at the end of the 17th century, there was a war of French succession,
11:52and the French came and blew up the castle.
12:02It was abandoned. Gradually, it became overgrown.
12:05In the 19th century, a landscape garden was made across the whole site, and it was buried.
12:15It is a sad and tantalising story.
12:18This vast project, if it had been allowed to be completed, if it had been looked after and restored,
12:28would have been one of the great wonders of the world.
12:38From the horticultural ghosts of Heidelberg, I've come back to the Rhine,
12:42as it continues its progress on up through Germany.
12:48When I first started thinking about the Rhine, I had this idea of this superhighway,
12:53like a liquid railway line or motorway.
12:56But actually, it's more complicated than that. There's so much more to it.
12:59Because although you have this vast river cutting behind me across the horizon,
13:03carrying these enormous barges, it's also fed by big rivers. This is the mine, which also has
13:11big traffic running down to it, feeding into the Rhine, all gathering together and then pushing up
13:17through Germany, taking all these goods. And around this complex has built a whole culture.
13:24It's how people live their lives, dictated by the Rhine, the food, the transport, obviously the industry.
13:31It's all centred around this river.
13:38From the point where it joins up with the Rhine, I've decided to follow the mine
13:42to the biggest and most famous city along its banks.
13:50Frankfurt is a major financial centre, with a cityscape to match,
13:54and more skyscrapers than anywhere else in Germany.
13:57But in the heart of the city, there is a famous palm house.
14:07Which is the historical centrepiece of one of the country's biggest botanical gardens.
14:12The Palmen Garden was the creation of the landscape gardener Heinrich Seesmeyer,
14:23who supplied the initial planting from his own personal collections.
14:27Then additional plants were purchased via shares by local citizens,
14:32who were eager to invest in a spectacular garden created for all the people of Frankfurt.
14:38I love the way that the grasses are used in this border on such scale.
14:55And we take grasses as very much part of every gardener, but I do remember back at the end of the 1980s,
15:01early 1990s, a journalist friend of mine saying he was going to Germany to see borders made out entirely of grasses.
15:08And I'd never heard of that, so this was this strange thing, I thought we'll never catch on.
15:13And of course now every garden uses grasses in their borders, but it all began here in Germany.
15:19It's the back end of summer, but the roses are still looking good.
15:30And it's becoming apparent that roses of all kinds, formal and informal, are a key component of German gardens.
15:40But at that moment the heavens opened and I dashed the shelter of the palm house.
15:45When it was built, this was the largest palm house in Europe.
15:53It's 100 meters long and 30 meters high and required what was then the cutting edge
15:58iron framework and glass construction.
16:02This meant that it could house from the outset a mini jungle of tropical plants.
16:07This meant that it could have been in the middle of tropical plants.
16:12What you have to remember is that in 1871 when this opened, almost nobody would have seen any of these plants before.
16:22That no one had the opportunity to travel in the way that we so freely do.
16:28And so it was truly exotic.
16:30It also suited the slightly gloomy, heavy, Victorian frame of mind.
16:41The way they dressed the houses, the way that they laid out their gardens, the way that they clothed themselves.
16:46It was all of a piece of this very full, slightly dark, green, exotic world.
16:53The 19th century palm house is not the only glass house at the Palm and Garden.
17:09Modern glass houses were built in the 1980s, specifically to house plants from different climatic regions.
17:17This is dry desert.
17:19And immediately you walk in, unlike the slightly heavy Victorian feel of the palm house, this feels bright and light and open.
17:34Dr. Katja Heubach is the director of the Palm and Garden.
17:39Do you think that Germans, in the broadest sense of the term, have particular horticultural interests?
17:44Dr. Katja Heubach, No flat in Frankfurt will give you that space to put in those big plants.
17:49Dr. Katja Heubach, So this is the best windowsill in Frankfurt.
17:53Dr. Katja Heubach, Absolutely.
17:53Dr. Katja Heubach, Yeah.
17:53Dr. Katja Heubach, What I would say is very German, is the Schrebergarten.
17:58It's a garden for a family to produce their vegetables.
18:03It's really lovely.
18:03You've got your neighbors and of course, Frankfurt is very international.
18:07So we've got more than 180 different ethnic groups and nationalities.
18:11And it's sometimes difficult to talk to each other, at least by words, but with the vegetables,
18:17really bringing people together.
18:25Following Katja's enthusiasm about the community Schrebergarten, I want to see them for myself.
18:30And I don't have far to go because there are as many as a hundred of them in Frankfurt alone.
18:36Dr. Katja Heubach, So I've traveled to the south of the city, to the SiegelhĂ¼ter.
18:43The weather is closing in, but that hasn't deterred some of the Schrebergarteners from showing me their plots.
18:51And the resident cat, Findus, is keeping a watchful eye on my walkabout.
18:56Lucia Sada is acting as my guide. She originally came to Frankfurt from the Czech Republic.
19:05It's now head of the association committee, which looks after 125 plots.
19:12We have over 25 nationalities here, many levels of education, everybody.
19:20Carlos, the Portuguese guy, he has the best and biggest zucchinis always.
19:25There's the envy of everybody.
19:27Lucia takes me next to the plot of Sandra Buchner.
19:32I'm Monty. Do you speak any English?
19:34A little bit.
19:36Okay. I can see rhubarb.
19:37Zucchini. Broccoli.
19:39Yeah, lots.
19:41My husband makes together the garden and we are family with my boys.
19:47Do your boys enjoy it?
19:48My little son, he loves it. You can play, you can run, you can help.
19:54So he's a gardener?
19:55Yeah.
19:55Good for him. That's fantastic.
19:58Schrebergarteners were the brainchild of Daniel Schreberg, who was a 19th century doctor.
20:04Traditionally, they are divided into three. A third for production, a third for leisure, and a third for some sort of building.
20:11Can you build anything you want?
20:14No, definitely not.
20:17Very old huts with bricks, but it's not allowed anymore.
20:21Now you can use only natural materials, wood mostly.
20:26Can people sleep, spend the night in them?
20:30Only when they got so drunk, they cannot go home.
20:37For most people, the gardens are a respite away from work.
20:41But Thomas May is employed by the German railways and brings his work with him into his garden.
20:49Will it go all over his garden?
20:51Oh, I see. Yes, there's the branch line.
20:54Get out!
20:54And the branch line serves an extra function.
20:59Also, der kommt, die ThĂ¼ringer Bratwurst fährt zum Nachbarn und das Bier kommt zu mir.
21:05Wir machen dann den Austausch.
21:06Yeah.
21:06Fantastic.
21:09Thomas' daughter takes part by adding the passengers on the platform.
21:14And he says he keeps her away from the phone.
21:17Aber es ist halt auch ein Hobby fĂ¼r das Kind.
21:19Und das ist das Schöne.
21:20Die Kinder stehen halt hier, wie Sie jetzt auch, und kriegen solche leuchtenden Augen.
21:27Me too.
21:27I can tell you.
21:28Yeah.
21:29It will be fantastic.
21:30Yeah.
21:31The next plot I was taken to belonged to Rosie Lack, who's gardened here longer than anyone else.
21:39This is your garden, all this?
21:41This is all this, yes.
21:43And do you look after it yourself?
21:46My man had said, that if I want a garden, I have to go alone.
21:52Always on your own.
21:53No husband.
21:5450 years.
21:5550 years here.
21:58You don't look old enough.
22:0181.
22:03And your husband didn't help.
22:08Thank you for letting me see your garden.
22:10I am full of admiration and good luck for the next 50 years.
22:14Oh, thank you.
22:15Hello.
22:19As I leave, Findus, the resident cat, who's been following and watching from a distance throughout,
22:26deigns to acknowledge me.
22:31Schreber gardens are a really important part of a German society.
22:36There are over a million of them spread out across the country.
22:40And what is extraordinary about them is they do combine that sense of community,
22:45of people sharing a space and all that goes with it,
22:48and yet maintaining the individuality and uniqueness of each of the plots.
22:54Early next morning, I leave Frankfurt to get back to the Rhine.
23:11I'm taking a train north to visit gardens in and near the former capital, Bonn.
23:24The train passes along the Rhine Gorge, with many of its famous vantage points steeped in folklore.
23:33Like Lorelei, the cliff where a legendary siren is said to lure sailors with her irresistible song
23:41to shipwreck uncertain death on the rocks below.
23:49This is the middle line, the most romantic part of the whole river,
23:54which has attracted poets and painters to Lorelei and the Seatman since the early 19th century.
23:59So you have woodland on one side and the other, these vineyards, impossibly steep,
24:04and then castles perched on the rocks.
24:07And funnily enough, from the train, you get a really good view of it.
24:11It's like being a spectator of the show that's going on.
24:14Just south of Bonn is the station of Rolandsegg.
24:25I've come here because this station is extraordinary.
24:28It was built in the 1850s, and it's hard for us to imagine now, but this opened up the Rhine.
24:33It meant that people had quick and easy access.
24:37Of course, without cars or anything like that, they could come here, get on the river,
24:42on a steamboat, and the romantic rhyme that this incredible scenery was theirs.
24:46They could stay here, too, and dine in five-star splendor.
24:57And very soon, it attracted kings and queens. Queen Victoria came here with her husband.
25:03Poets, painters, artists, and it became a center of this idea of the Rhine as an incredibly romantic river.
25:11This was the beginning of modern Rhine tourism.
25:18Boats and trains were now affordable and fast, and this station, which is now a well-known art center,
25:25was a convenient stop on the line from Bonn.
25:30As I've worked my way up the river, there have been castles on the skyline in various states of romantic disrepair.
25:38And I want to go and see one, and I've been told that there's one on the hillside here,
25:45Schloss Drakenberg, which is in a good state.
25:49So I'm going to get the ferry, cross the river, and have a look.
25:59As I climbed up a steep hill from the riverside, I caught glimpses of Schloss Drakenberg through the trees.
26:05The castle is the stuff of fairy tales, all towers and turrets.
26:14Yet, in fact, it's a multi-millionaire's fantasy, and barely 150 years old.
26:20It was founded above all on the desire to display newfound wealth to this stream of Rhine tourists
26:27that were hungry for romantic castles of any kind.
26:35The castle was built in the 1880s by Baron Stéphane von Sater.
26:41He grew up the son of an innkeeper, went to Paris, made himself a fortune,
26:46and built this enormous building in just two years.
26:50Apparently, never lived in it, but it was a statement.
26:54And not only did it have this extraordinary view, but it could be seen and admired from the river itself.
27:00There were castles built all the way along the length, but one way or another,
27:05they were attacked and damaged and destroyed by the wars.
27:09But this one has come through relatively unscathed.
27:17The fantasy continues in the gardens, which were the height of fashion at the time.
27:22The Victorian formality of the terrace was dedicated to Venus as a place of pleasure and beauty.
27:30While the woodland represented a romanticized view of the natural world.
27:37The garden behind me was planted in the same spirit as a house,
27:43as a display of wealth and also finesse, because these were all trees
27:49imported from the west coast of America.
27:52They were new, they were expensive, they were quite tricky to get hold of.
27:57Of course, the one ironic thing was that when they were planted, they were small.
28:02And it's only now, 150 years after that, that we can admire them in their full glory.
28:10For Baron von Sater, the position of his castle brought him power and prestige.
28:15But just upriver is a garden whose owner also saw huge significance in the Rhine,
28:22but for very different reasons.
28:29This is the village of Rondorf, which from 1937 was the home of Konrad Adenhaar,
28:35the anti-Nazi politician who became the first chancellor of West Germany after the Second World War.
28:41The garden is set in a series of terraces on a steeply sloping site and extends to about an acre.
28:53Like the Parmengarten in Frankfurt, there are lots of roses, especially standards,
28:58which I see less and less nowadays in British gardens.
29:02Adenhaar also collected ornaments and statues from his foreign travels,
29:07which he then placed strategically around the garden.
29:12The reason that I decided to visit this garden was because Adenhaar was one of the most important
29:17politicians of the 20th century and he was a truly keen gardener.
29:24He designed this garden, he laid it out, he planted it and then he tended it for the last 30 years of his
29:31life, which coincided with arguably the most important political period of his life.
29:37So the politics and the garden and the man were inseparable.
29:44Bettina Adenhaar Bieberstein, pictured here on Konrad's knee, is the fifth oldest of his 24 grand
29:51children.
29:51He invited the whole family around Christmas to be here in summer at the cherry season.
29:59So that was the so-called cherry eating meeting.
30:04The cherry tree behind you, did you eat cherries from there?
30:06Right.
30:07They were taken from here, but in the end when there were so many children, they had to be bought.
30:14Vanessa, there are a lot of roses.
30:15He loved roses, yes, and he said they were the most beautiful, reliable.
30:22He liked the fragrance, the scent of the roses and a good colour.
30:28Do you think there was a relationship between your grandfather's love and clear
30:33skill as a gardener and his politics?
30:36He said that gardens and politics have something in common, which is have a lot of patience to
30:42reach your goals in the garden and in politics as well. And I think that was what made him strong
30:49to know he could wait.
30:53How important do you think the river is in shaping this area, maybe even shaping his life?
31:00It's a symbol for the unification of Europe. He said that in one of his speeches,
31:05that after this terrible war, the people living along the Rhine, not far from it and influenced by it.
31:12He warns them to see to it that peace is made between these former enemies.
31:19It has an enormous, yeah, enormous symbolic importance in his life, yeah.
31:25You have to remember just what an important figure that Conrad Adenauer was in the 20th century.
31:42He was mayor of Cologne from 1917 to 1933. He then fell foul of the Nazis and was on their hit list. I mean, it's amazing that he survived.
31:51He was on the run for a year. He hid in the monastery and then became an effective exile in his own country here in this house.
32:01And then at the age of 70, when most politicians have long given up and retired,
32:06he became the first chancellor of West Germany and was instrumental in rebuilding a completely shattered country.
32:14He was also really important as part of the unification of Europe.
32:19So one of the great political figures of the 20th century, and all that time, he was gardening.
32:26There are vineyards all along this central section of the Rhine.
32:37As the well-drained and sunny south-facing slopes and the microclimate created by the river,
32:45make for perfect growing conditions for the famous Riesling wine.
32:51Consequently, many of the villages here are inextricably linked to the local wine industry.
32:59This is Erpel, where the medieval streets are adorned with floral displays as well as vines.
33:05If I had come here in about a week's time, I would have been able to watch the annual wine festival,
33:13where you have dozens of floats with tens of thousands of flowers decorating them.
33:17Now, whilst not all of them are produced locally, a surprising number are all from this garden,
33:24and especially dahlias.
33:26And dahlias have been a key part of this village's identity for a while now,
33:35thanks to Bernd of Wahlbruck with the help of his husband, Holger.
33:39Hello. Hello. Hello. Wonderful to see you.
33:46Hello, Bernd.
33:47Hello, Bernd.
33:48This way.
33:48Oh, these are beautiful.
33:52He's a gardener and does most of the work, and I'm just supporting, organizing.
33:58How did it all begin?
33:59Forty years ago, when he was a young man, he decided the village needed some flowers at the
34:04shore of the Rhine. And then he cultivated a small bed, decorated with dahlias. He loves
34:11the colors and the variation of blooms. He decided that the village needed your flowers.
34:16Yes.
34:19And then he decided to change the traditional parade for the wine queen in the flower parade.
34:25So for the last 40 years, the flamboyant displays dominate the vine parade, thanks in large part
34:37to Bernd's dahlias.
34:41How many flowers?
34:42We're about eight or 10,000.
34:44Eight or 10,000 flowers from here?
34:47Yes.
34:47That's pretty amazing.
34:55But this stretch of river alongside Erpel is also known for this.
35:08All that remain today are two monolithic stumps at either side of the river of what was
35:17the Ludenorff Bridge, a huge steel railway bridge built in the First World War to ferry troops to the
35:23front. Now, in spring 1944, the Allied troops had fought their way from Normandy across towards
35:30Berlin. And they came to the Rhine and couldn't cross it because the Germans had blown all the
35:37bridges except for one, the Ludenorff Bridge, this one here. The Americans stumbled across it and tried
35:44to secure the bridge. There was a furious battle for 10 days with the Germans doing everything they
35:49could to destroy it. And eventually, after 10 days, the bridge suddenly collapsed into the water.
36:00By that time, over 100,000 American troops had crossed over to the east side and were making their way to
36:08Berlin. And undoubtedly, the presence of the bridge here shortened the war.
36:14I'm now travelling a short distance north to the city of Bonn. This is noticeably smaller and less
36:27hectic than Germany's other major cities. But its streets are full of historic buildings. It's the
36:34birthplace of Beethoven and it spans the Rhine. And for just over 30 years, it was arguably the single most
36:43important place in the whole of the country.
36:51It's strange to think that Bonn was the capital of West Germany from 1949 to 1990 and the seat of
36:59government for another nine years after that. Because sitting here in the market square,
37:03I could be in a provincial town anywhere. It doesn't feel like a capital city.
37:08And yet the reasons for it seem to have been complicated, but they came together. To start with,
37:14you had the towering figure of Konrad Adenauer. And he was a Rheinlander. He lived nearby. Bonn had no
37:24great claims to being a capital, either regional or national. So therefore, if and when they could reunite
37:31Germany and move back to Berlin, it would be easier to give up.
37:39So it has the infrastructure of a capital city, but is much lower key.
37:45And right near the centre is a remarkable garden.
37:49This is the Arboretum Herle, which is a large, ambitious garden. It's private and,
37:58unusually for Germany, is open to the public.
38:04This was the home of two sisters, Maria and Regina Herle, who inherited the house and gardens in 1950,
38:11and for the next 50 years, devoted themselves to developing and caring for it.
38:18Above all, they were determined that after their deaths, despite its central location,
38:24the garden shouldn't be swallowed up by housing.
38:30The head gardener, Michael Dreisvott, explained to me how they prepared for this.
38:35They had no children. There was no real future for the garden. And they had the idea to build a
38:40foundation to save it. That the public can come and see.
38:44Mrs. Herle said it's open for interested people. That's a very unique thing.
38:48Lead on.
38:52So gardening on these slopes, I mean, I suppose you have no choice, but just to go with it.
38:58I love it. I love it. The views. I'm a slopey guy.
39:00Yes. Yes, definitely.
39:02Which is just as well, because the garden below the house is certainly on a very steep slope.
39:09And the paths lead down through magnificent mature trees, under-planted with large borders.
39:15It was an English landscape garden. No planting around the trees. Grassland, walks and trees.
39:22And then later, the sisters, as plants, people added all the layers we have now.
39:28It feels a bit cooler in here. Is there a different microclimate?
39:33Yes, we really have several microclimates. The hot terrace up there, sunny, hot.
39:38And here it's cool, moist. The future of the cities is trees and shade. And that's what you can realise here very easily.
39:45Maria Harlow was also a painter.
39:50And she brought her artistic streak to bear in another large part of the 11-acre garden.
39:56This is our so-called yellow border. She created this border with trees, shrubs and perennials to use the structures. And so she really combined the whole qualities of the plant, not only flower colours.
40:10And seemingly predominantly yellow or yellowy green. And is this something that is very typically German?
40:17No, definitely not. Definitely not. At least half of the people think, oh, that needs fertilized. They're ill. But no, we want that. And together with dark green plants, it's really a nice picture.
40:31So I'm getting the impression that by doing this, she was doing something at the time pretty new, pretty revolutionary.
40:37Yes, definitely.
40:40These lawns, are they here as part of the overall design? Because it doesn't seem quite in tune with the sort of fullness of the planting elsewhere.
40:49Maria Harlow knew that you have to have these silent areas. You come into this garden and you have 500 different trees.
40:56It's too much. And then you can calm down, you can sit on one of the benches and relax just one tone of green.
41:05But there's no time for me to relax. Because there was another significant section of the garden still to see.
41:14It was a woodland pond, but then we had this big storm. It was a total disaster. When I come up here this in the morning,
41:21I was really nearly crying because all the trees were damaged. And yeah, at the end, it was really a new beginning.
41:28Yeah. And we were able to change from this boring spruce into autumn coloring things.
41:34It's a very beautiful scene. Incredibly fortunate to have an area that is so natural and such sort of unspoiled countryside,
41:44so near the city. It is, it is a big luck.
41:47But without the Harlow sisters, I am certain that this precious jewel in the crown of the historic city of Bonn
41:58would have been swallowed up by modern housing.
42:02I'm following the river on its unrelenting northward flow to see a garden built as a haven from trauma,
42:11pioneering private garden and a modern park.
42:15These are all in the industrial heartland of Germany near the Ruhr, which is another major tributary of the Rhine.
42:24And along the banks of the Ruhr is all the heavy industry, the ironworks, the coal, the steelworks.
42:33And it makes sense out of those huge barges laden with industrial material,
42:39as they made their way through the romantic countryside south of Bonn, because this is where they are coming.
42:46And this is what is powering the industry of Germany today and has done for the last 200 years.
42:54First, I'm heading to a public park, just south-west of Essen's city centre.
43:05The reason why I've come to this Grugel Park in Essen is because it's so unlikely.
43:10This is where there were the most ironworks and steelworks and coal.
43:14And it needed hundreds of thousands of workers.
43:18And the park was specifically created for those workers to have a green space
43:24with wonderful trees, where they could come maybe just for one afternoon a week,
43:31to relax and enjoy the natural world.
43:38The Grugel Park stretches over 60 hectares of landscape parkland,
43:43all designed for the perfect day out, with waterfalls and rock gardens to explore,
43:49open spaces for picnics and play, and flower gardens for people to wander through and admire the blooms.
44:02I've timed this visit really well, because not only is it a beautiful park on a lovely sunny day,
44:08but also they have a big plant fair, and this happens to be one of the days.
44:13And I know that it attracts plant lovers from miles around.
44:19I know that it's a beautiful place.
44:25Growers and nurseries like cyclamen specialist Renate Brinkers come here every year to sell their plants.
44:32Do you think German people love plants and gardening?
44:35Oh, yes.
44:35What are they asking for?
44:36In the last three years, especially for plants which prefer a dry place.
44:43Very interesting, because of climate change.
44:45Yes.
44:45And it's very popular.
44:49Around 15,000 people come to the fair across the weekend,
44:53many, like Wolfgang Lehmann, hunting down unusual plants.
44:58Tell me what you're buying.
44:59Oh, we are collecting hardy exotics.
45:01Is your garden near here?
45:02No, about 100 kilometres from here.
45:05Okay.
45:05So you come here all this, that way, just to buy plants today?
45:08Yes, twice a year.
45:12Bettina Hartnack is also a regular here.
45:15Most of my garden, like 90% is from here.
45:18Is gardening popular in Germany?
45:20Yes.
45:21Yes, very much so.
45:22And what sort of style do you think that people like best?
45:25It's sort of about feeling at home, to have a tree and to be able to sit under the tree.
45:31But most people go for a very neat garden, I think, yes.
45:38It's been a treat to spend an afternoon among keen German gardeners
45:43and observe the small but significant differences in the choice of plants and styles
45:51that perhaps we take for granted at home.
45:57Across from the market, there is an area of lush woodland,
46:01and amongst the trees is a rather strange-looking building,
46:05which I was told I should definitely try and visit whilst I was here.
46:13And I have to say, this is absolutely not what I expected in this setting.
46:19But the story of it is really interesting,
46:23because this house actually relates beautifully to what's happening just outside the park.
46:29There's a large hospital specialising in caring for very sick children.
46:34And the inspiration for this house, which is called the Hundertwasserhaus,
46:38is to provide a space for sick children and their families to stay in.
46:43And once you know that, it makes sense.
46:47And in a funny way, fits in perfect.
46:53The building was the last architectural design of Friedensreich Hundertwasser,
47:00an Austrian painter, architect and environmentalist known for his vivid organic designs.
47:06The building curls around an enclosed courtyard.
47:13And with its bright colours and irregular shapes,
47:15couldn't feel more different from the clinical atmosphere of a hospital.
47:21The current manager is Sabina Holtkamp, who's worked here for 20 years.
47:25Is this just for children, or do parents stay here too?
47:31Mainly for the parents. Usually the children are in intensive care,
47:35and the parents come from all over Germany, from all over Europe.
47:39And of course, we want to keep families close.
47:42Does it appeal to parents? Sure.
47:45And it's actually the parents often tell me that it's like coming to a parallel universe somehow.
47:52It's an escape from that. Yeah, it is.
47:54At Hundertwasser's stipulation, the planting here extends from ground to roof,
48:07and everything in between.
48:10So I like the trees growing out of the windows.
48:13Yeah. You know what Hundertwasser called them?
48:15No. He called them tree tenants.
48:18Tree tenants.
48:19They rent one square meter of the room, and pay their rent by producing oxygen.
48:25That's fair enough.
48:27Now, looking down, of course, you can see how many trees there are.
48:32Yeah.
48:33Hundertwasser had the opinion that the vertical belongs to mankind,
48:37and the horizontal belongs to nature.
48:40So you should give that horizontal space back to nature in planting stuff on the roof.
48:49And what's the significance of the planting with the patients and the children?
48:55For the children, it's like a big, big playground.
49:00All that green and nature is making the people so calm.
49:09Hundertwasser saw the need to have trees interwoven into the building completely.
49:15The way that they move, like the building itself, different heights, different shapes,
49:20but the overall feeling is absolutely one with the building.
49:26And what it does is create an environment that deals with the incredible sort of sensitivity
49:32and seriousness of a sick child, and yet at the same time celebrates,
49:37with joy and lightness of touch, the life of children.
49:46A few kilometres south, back on the Rhine, is the small town of Hilden.
49:50And off the busy main road is a garden that I'd heard much about.
49:59This is Hortus.
50:02It belongs to Peter Janka, a German designer who was brought up in the area,
50:07and made his garden here with an intimate local knowledge.
50:17His garden is divided into separate zones,
50:21connected by paths, alleys and carefully manipulated sight lines.
50:25And each of these areas has a distinctive horticultural aspect or feature.
50:32The garden has an unusually wide range of plants.
50:35And Peter explained to me that this was down to his deep familiarity
50:40with the specific details of the soil here.
50:44The River Rhine was flowing here, I would say, eight to ten thousand years ago.
50:50And everywhere where you have places where a river was, you have parts of the soil
50:58which are very sandy or gravelly or even peaty, or you have these clay bits in the ground.
51:07Perfect for a gardener.
51:08And the underground water is the big secret here in this garden,
51:14why it looks so lush and green.
51:21Parts of the garden also regularly flood, which, rather than being a problem,
51:25Peter positively embraces.
51:28However, out in the front of the house, there is a gravel garden,
51:32reminiscent of the dry garden made by Beth Chateau in her own garden in Essex,
51:36where Peter worked for a few years.
51:40Her influence can also be seen in the woodland area out at the back.
51:43In the front of the garden, you have the dry part, the well-drained.
51:50The seven metres pure sand.
51:53Seven metres.
51:54Yes.
51:55And here, where we sit, we do have all these clay bits, so it's much more moist.
52:02As well as these areas where the planting is dictated by the soil,
52:06Peter also has specific groups of plants that he loves, but feels are currently undervalued.
52:15I'm looking at heathers.
52:16Yes.
52:16Which is probably the least fashionable plant you could possibly grow.
52:21It is evergreen. It is flowering from early spring until autumn.
52:28Two years ago, we had a big flooding here, and a lot of all these drought-tolerant plants
52:36simply died, not the heathers. So I love heathers.
52:39Is this something that is going to appeal to a Germanic audience, or is it going to sweep the gardening world?
52:46I would say I can start kind of a new fashion with heather.
52:52I will watch this space.
52:53Yeah.
52:57Well, whether heathers become the new must-have plant or not,
53:01Peter's garden is a treasure trove for plant lovers,
53:05because there is such diversity, not just of individual plants, but of styles and habitats,
53:11making the most of his very different areas of Rhineland soil,
53:16and all skillfully entwined to make an integrated garden.
53:22I find it fascinating to see the influence of Beth Chateau here.
53:25Her woodland garden near Colchester was something I remember seeing some years ago and loved.
53:31Loving the way that she created a garden in amongst the trees,
53:35and that's exactly what you have here. It's superb.
53:37What is the mist that we're seeing?
53:47It's an art installation, and the fog is coming out of the old woods to show the loss of water,
53:55water, which all these missing trees in the city centers had been producing,
54:03and now it's gone and it's getting hotter and hotter.
54:06And why have you got it here very much not in the city center?
54:09It's not in the city center, but the hottest is a city garden. One can hear that.
54:14Yeah.
54:15This is heaven. I love this garden. If you think back to Sweetsingen,
54:29where the changes made in the Rhine and climate change were causing real problems.
54:35Here, the changes from the Rhine, admittedly there were thousands of years ago, has created the soil
54:43and the conditions that Peter has embraced and used to form the garden, and done with real skill
54:52and knowledge. Now, I have one more location to visit on this trip, and it couldn't be more different.
55:01I'm heading for Germany's largest inland port, where the Rhine and the Ruhr join.
55:13Once dominated by steel and coal, its industrial base has changed dramatically in recent years.
55:22This is the Landschaftpark in Duisburg, and for most of the 20th century, this was a steelworks,
55:28but it was decommissioned in the middle of the 1980s. And in the 1990s, in a very inspired move,
55:35instead of clearing the whole site, they decided to landscape it and make it what is essentially
55:40an amusement park.
55:48From the moment you enter the park, you're immediately surrounded by the remnants of its industrial past.
55:54However, these skeletons of heavy industry now incorporate borders, trees and climbers scaling
56:02and sprawling over the vast concrete and metal remains. Individual gardens are now made within
56:09bunkers that once held ore for smelting. And the basic infrastructure has been kept as giant monuments to
56:19the industrial past. A raised walkway gives a view down onto the gardens and out onto giant installations.
56:32Apparently, the initial local reaction to the park and the proposed plans was less than enthusiastic.
56:39But it now has a million visitors a year.
56:41The young treat it as an enormous adventure playground. And for an older generation,
56:48it remains part of the heritage of Germany's heavy industrial past.
56:57And out of these layers of history is growing a new and incredibly dynamic landscape.
57:03And all from soil that was once considered irretrievably polluted.
57:15I don't think anyone could describe this as a garden.
57:18Gardens are part of it. It's much bigger than that. And its size is what it's all about.
57:24We tend to try and relate everything to our own lives and our own domesticity and back gardens.
57:29But occasionally, when you come across something on a truly magnificent scale like this is,
57:36it enlarges your life. You are made bigger as a result.
57:41And it seems to me really fitting to come here with its gardens at the conclusion of this journey
57:47up the Rhine, because it's taken me through glorious romantic landscapes, but also into the heartland
57:54of German industry. And along with the destruction that happened and the war and the rebuilding,
58:01this place seems to be a good symbol of that.
58:05The Rhine now leaves Germany and as it does so, it starts to break up as it approaches the sea.
58:14And that takes me on my next journey into the Netherlands.
58:18On that trip, I witnessed 21st century tulip mania.
58:26I visit a wildlife garden built on the roof of a car park.
58:31And I take a personal tour of the private garden of the world's most famous garden designer.
58:39I was here yesterday and it looks so good. And I'm here again and it still looks good.
58:49But there he goes, I am here again and I see.
58:53Many times we're about to die for one hour.
58:55And they can do things like this.
58:58They are catching up and things like it was not enough for you.
58:59And sometimes we're about to die for from a very good sign.
59:01But I hope to die.
59:02Because some of them have grown up and be a good view,
59:04but you are definitely not strong for you.
59:08They are also not too high for you.
59:11And sometimes we're about to die.
59:12But there are most of them that you could do.
59:14Even when I have to die for you.
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