8 Gardens South Africa
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00I believe that a really good way to understand a culture is through its gardens.
00:07This is an extraordinary journey to visit 80 inspiring gardens from all over the world.
00:12Some are very well known, like the Taj Mahal or the Alhambra.
00:17And I'm also challenging my idea of what a garden actually is.
00:22So I'm visiting gardens that float on the Amazon, a strange fantasy in the jungle,
00:27as well as the private homes of great designers, and the desert flowering in a garden.
00:33And wherever I go, I shall be meeting people that share my own passion for gardens
00:38and my epic quest to see the world through 80 of its most fascinating and beautiful gardens.
00:57This week I have come to South Africa.
01:00It is the home of some of our best-loved garden plants,
01:04which grow in some of the most dramatic scenery in the world.
01:09Yet I have avoided coming here until now.
01:12I grew up with a hatred of the racial segregation under the apartheid regime
01:16and felt that to be an impassable ideological barrier to the enjoyment of the beauties of South Africa.
01:22And that view, I confess, fossilised and blocked all floral temptations to visit.
01:28But that's history now.
01:30And although I would be dishonest if I said I didn't bring a little bit of that baggage with me,
01:35I really want to see this extraordinarily beautiful country,
01:39to meet the people and, of course, to see as many gardens as I can.
01:45I'm starting in Cape Town to see how gardens reflect the emergence of South Africa as a nation,
01:51and I shall visit the famous Kirstenbosch Botanic Gardens, amongst others.
01:55I'm then going on to the Drakensberg Mountains
01:58to see some of our familiar garden plants growing in their exhilarating natural environment.
02:05Finally, I go to Johannesburg to see how one of South Africa's grandest gardens is changing,
02:10as well as a township garden that has desperately limited resources but is rich in hope and inspiration.
02:21MUSIC
02:36Cape Town sits beneath the famous silhouette of Table Mountain,
02:40and this provides the backdrop for my first garden.
02:51I've decided to start my journey here at Kirstenbosch Botanical Garden at the base of Table Mountain,
02:57because it's one of the very few botanic gardens that just has native plants.
03:02So if you want to see all the plants of South Africa in one place, well, this is where you have to come.
03:16The gardens themselves extend to almost 100 carefully tended acres,
03:20but this is only a small proportion of the 1,300-acre estate that runs right to the very top of Table Mountain,
03:27with a mixture of woodland and the indigenous scrub known as feynbosch.
03:35The land was bought by Cecil Rhodes in 1895, and bequeathed to the South African people at his death in 1902.
03:43In 1913, the National Botanic Garden of South Africa, devoted entirely to indigenous plants, was set up on the site.
03:50I met one of the senior horticulturists, Charise Villejeune, who offered to show me round.
03:55How many South African plants are there here?
03:57In the garden? Yeah, in the garden. There are over 7,000 species.
04:007,000 species! That's unbelievable. And there's still more to go around.
04:04Right. We're still adding to the collections every day and to the garden.
04:09Amongst this huge diversity of plants, the garden specialises in local Cape flora,
04:15and the showiest of these are the proteas, of which there are over 350 different types.
04:28So these are the pincushion forms now.
04:30What's interesting is to see a mass of them.
04:33They do make a fantastic display and really bring it home to you.
04:37And they've got quite a sweet common name.
04:39It's phyllocuson africans, and it means matches or matchsticks.
04:44Can I pick it up? Yeah.
04:47It's perfect, isn't it? You just need a flint.
04:49See, that's charming.
04:51And the thing that you always find is the birds are always on them, sipping nectar or digging for a seed.
04:57Then Cherise took me to see the king protea, the national flower,
05:02expecting, I'm sure, delight and rapture.
05:06But I fear my reaction proves something of a disappointment.
05:09I've got something really special to show you here.
05:11I think you'd like to step in.
05:13But it says don't step in the beds.
05:15Yes, but you're with me. You may step in.
05:17And here it is. What do you think of this?
05:21It's an ugly flower, isn't it?
05:24It's an ugly flower, isn't it?
05:27Now, you see, this...
05:29I've seen pictures of this sort of thing.
05:31It's not doing anything for me, I have to say.
05:34Well, it reminds you of an artichoke.
05:36Artie is right. It's artificial rather than artichoke.
05:40But there we go. OK.
05:45Well, you can't like them all.
05:47But the wild pelargoniums, growing as sprawling shrubs,
05:51as Cherie showed me, were a delight.
05:54These are the ancestors of our familiar cultivated regal pelargoniums.
05:58It was strange to see something so powerfully connected
06:01to my childhood growing here.
06:09You just never see those.
06:11This is a great drift on a big plant.
06:13This is a very natural planting as well.
06:15This is how you would come across it growing wild on the mountainside.
06:22Something is smelling wonderful.
06:25It'll be the salvia.
06:27Is this a salvia? It's a salvia.
06:29It doesn't look like a salvia.
06:31It's our wild African salvia.
06:33Oh, it's lovely.
06:35It does smell wonderful.
06:37It's all lemony and musky and warm.
06:39It definitely contributes to that faint little scent
06:42that you get off the felt when you're going through it.
06:45You see, if I'm honest, I think of words like the felt,
06:48it's a very butch sort of word.
06:50It doesn't say musky, lemony fragrance.
06:53No, it doesn't. Wild feels don't work for us.
06:57Felt is just felt.
06:59It's an Afrikaans word,
07:01but it's traditionally used to describe the wild areas in the Cape.
07:07South Africa is home to 24,000 different species of flowering plants.
07:13That's one tenth of all those that grow on Earth.
07:16There is also a small group of plants
07:19that were here long before flowers even evolved.
07:22The cycads.
07:24Cycads look like palm trees,
07:26but they date back 200 million years
07:29and haven't changed at all
07:31since they finished evolving 50 million years ago.
07:38If you had to go back 150 million years,
07:41it would pretty much look exactly like that,
07:43except there would be a great big dinosaur behind it.
07:46So they haven't evolved at all?
07:48Very, very little.
07:50And then, amongst this Jurassic foliage,
07:53I spotted something that I found as thrilling to me as any dinosaur.
07:57Here we are with cycads and also an owl.
08:01Spotted eagle owl.
08:03A spotted eagle. It's beautiful.
08:05Mind you, have you spotted her?
08:07I didn't see her. The mother owl.
08:09How amazing.
08:12You're a very beautiful girl.
08:15Isn't that amazing?
08:17Isn't that just an extraordinary experience?
08:19Nice to see what the chick is going to look like
08:21when he loses all his fluff as well.
08:23We're blessed.
08:27Monty, if we go down here,
08:29I can show you a really horrid cycad.
08:32It's kind of like organic barbed wire.
08:35Aren't they truly, truly horrid?
08:37Encephalitis horridus.
08:39Encephalitis horridus.
08:41They're a spiky thing. They really are.
08:44And I guess that when you get spiked by that, you know you've been spiked.
08:47You know it.
08:49And that is entirely designed to stop dinosaur jaws.
08:51Yes.
08:53See, I think they're more beautiful than the king critter.
08:55I knew you were going to build up to that one.
08:57It's true.
09:03I was a bit daunted when I came here.
09:06And I think that was as much as anything
09:08through my sense of not knowing enough about South African plants.
09:12One of the good things about today for me
09:15is that I realise I know more than I thought I did.
09:21However, the majority here is new and unusual.
09:25And it's really good to see them all in setting and in context.
09:28And that's what a botanical garden is like,
09:30like a reference library, really,
09:32and put that against this extraordinary backdrop.
09:34I mean, it really is so beautiful.
09:36And that makes for a fascinating and beautiful way to begin this journey.
09:42But I think with this experience and feeling a bit more confident,
09:46I think the next step is to go and see these same plants
09:49in a much more human context,
09:51somewhere modern, somewhere quirky and utterly different to this.
09:55So I'm going a couple of hours east of the city to Franschhoek,
09:59which is a small town near to Stellenbosch,
10:02the intellectual centre for Afrikaners.
10:04As we travel, I get a glimpse of a different facet of life in South Africa.
10:08Just on the left is a township,
10:11which is just a series of shacks, tiny shacks,
10:14looking more like allotment sheds than houses.
10:18We leave Cape Town and come into a countryside of orchards and vineyards
10:22at the foot of the high mountains
10:24that define the limits of the Cape colonisation for centuries.
10:28The Huguenots, arriving in 1688, based their vineyards there,
10:32and Franschhoek means French Corner.
10:35I'm here to see the gardens of Franschhoek,
10:37and I'm going to see what it's like to live there.
10:39I'm going to see the gardens of Franschhoek,
10:41and I'm going to see what it's like to live there.
10:43And Franschhoek means French Corner.
10:46I'm here to see the garden of Henk Scholtz,
10:49a garden designer and artist.
10:59This is a small garden that circles around the house.
11:04The front path runs between beds containing native strelitzias,
11:08framed and contained by tightly clipped privet hedges.
11:12At the back, Henk has a semi-circular lawn
11:15and a veranda that runs the length of the house
11:18with stupendous views out to the mountains.
11:21You do have this amazing borrowed landscape.
11:24I mean, it is about as dramatic as it could be, isn't it?
11:28No, I mean, it's spectacular.
11:30What do you think is the secret of a small garden?
11:33Because there is a great failing, it seems to me.
11:35A lot of people say, if only I had a bigger garden, everything would be OK.
11:38No, no, no, I don't agree with that at all.
11:40For me, it's what you do with that space, number one.
11:44First of all, it's to divide it up in as many spaces as possible.
11:48It doesn't have to be a solid wall or a solid hedge.
11:52If you step down the steps, down to this lawn space,
11:55you're in a totally different room.
11:59I love this space. I enjoy this space.
12:02For me, this is my palette, where I play.
12:05I don't think I've ever seen a garden so intensely detailed.
12:09Some of this is playful and some very practical,
12:12like the steep angle or batter on the hedges.
12:15Now, in the UK, you really don't see that.
12:17No, they tend to be cut straight.
12:19No, for us, it's with the maximum sun on both sides,
12:22and you get a bit of growth, and it avoids all the dead ends.
12:25And what is this? This is ligustrum.
12:27It is a privet. You see, you very rarely see a privet in the UK
12:31used for a low hedge.
12:34Between the privet hedges and the boundary fence
12:37are clipped balls of plumbago,
12:40which I'd always thought of as a sprawly house plant.
12:44Henk doesn't only shape his plants,
12:46but his sculptures, made from recycled materials,
12:49are also an important part of the garden.
12:52Floating implements, just blowing the wind.
12:56Lovely. Really beautiful.
12:58And I like your water feature, I suppose.
13:00Well, that's basically our South African version of Feng Shui.
13:03Right, OK. If you want to see that.
13:06That's my security guard. Yeah.
13:09With a medusa outrest.
13:11She's a beauty. A great beauty.
13:16Everything in the garden is tweaked, trimmed or adorned.
13:20I love, as obviously one would, all the little touches in this garden.
13:26And there are a lot of found objects.
13:30Although small, at every turn there's a new composed view.
13:35The lawn is describing the circle. Absolutely.
13:38And I really like that.
13:45And this is lovely.
13:47I really like this.
13:49The way that it's enclosed in, and the curves of the hedge.
13:54I mean, it's basically, it grows on you,
13:56it's like an organic thing that's alive.
13:58I mean, you can basically shake this thing.
14:00I mean, it's like...
14:02But that's what we call ragoda, ragoda hastata, like saltbush.
14:06Smell your hands and then you'll stop doing that.
14:10It smells, dear viewer, of slightly off fish.
14:16Now he tells me. But it clips beautifully.
14:18Yeah, indeed.
14:23Hank told me that he trims the entire garden
14:26every 12 days throughout the year,
14:28and the combination of his tight clipping
14:30and idiosyncratic playfulness is evident everywhere.
14:34And the flowering plants seem to thrive spectacularly on his regime.
14:41It's the most floriferous chacra sperm whale I have ever seen.
14:46Yeah. I must say, it's extremely happy. Yeah.
14:49And that's just one plant.
14:51That's one plant that is in that space. Amazing.
15:01And suddenly this muted palette becomes shocking pink.
15:06Absolutely.
15:07And I love that where I'm standing now, that curve is perfect.
15:11Yeah.
15:14Very beautiful indeed.
15:18This is probably the most photogenic garden I've ever been to.
15:23Everywhere you look, you turn your head and there's a picture.
15:31I love the way that it's the expression of one man's work,
15:36that it's personal, it's quirky.
15:38The relationship between the sculpture and the plants and the design,
15:43the whole thing has been fabulous.
15:45And I particularly like the way that it's used indigenous plants,
15:50that it's an expression of South African gardening and art.
15:54And, after all, that's what I came here to see.
15:57So that's been very inspirational.
16:00But the next stop is a complete contrast.
16:04I want to go back to the middle of Cape Town
16:07and really see where all this began,
16:09see where and how the first South African gardens started.
16:16The first South African garden
16:18is bound up with the story of the Dutch East India Company.
16:25By the time that their ships would round the Cape of Good Hope
16:28on their way to the Far East, the crews would be exhausted
16:31and often suffering terribly from scurvy
16:34up to anything up to six months at sea after leaving Holland.
16:38But the story of the Dutch East India Company
16:42Table Mountain stood out
16:44on an otherwise very level and bland coastline.
16:47This meant that sailors used it to navigate
16:50and it became a major landmark on the long, long journey.
16:54So, in 1652, a small group of men and women colonisers
16:58set ashore at its base, specifically to cultivate ground
17:02that could supply the ships with fresh fruit and vegetables.
17:07This was immediately a success
17:10and that initial garden expanded to become the Company Garden.
17:14Most of it still survives
17:16as a public park in the middle of the city.
17:20And this tree is a remnant from that first garden.
17:24This is Pyrus Communus.
17:26It's a pear. It's got these evergreen leaves,
17:30and it's got a very, very long stem.
17:33It's a pear.
17:35It's got these evergreen, rather leathery leaves
17:38that are not typical of a pear.
17:40But I've got one in my own garden.
17:42It's indigenous to northern Europe
17:44and this is a survivor from those days.
17:49People didn't found the initial colony of Cape Town on this site
17:52because of the harbour.
17:54The natural harbour here, actually, was rather poor.
17:57The reason why people settled here
17:59was because of the clouds on the mountain.
18:02When the clouds condense, water falls,
18:04it percolates down through the mountain
18:06and then reappears here on the flat ground as springs,
18:10which meant that they had a constant source of irrigation,
18:13and that's why they settled here.
18:22The Cape has a Mediterranean climate,
18:24which is wet in winter but bone-dry and hot in summer.
18:28So having a constant water supply was vital to the garden's success.
18:38This is one of the original springs that was used for the garden
18:43and, of course, the water which has come down
18:45from the top of Table Mountain filtered that and is still running.
18:50Although in its heyday, this was 5.5 hectares
18:54of very organised, rectilinear Dutch vegetable growing,
18:59it soon proved to be not adequate for the needs of both the colony
19:04and also the ships that kept coming in.
19:07So company employees were given permission to set up farms
19:10which could supplement the original company garden produce.
19:14And in the early 1900s,
19:16the fruit and vegetables were gradually replaced by ornamental plants.
19:20By 1840, it was a full-blown pleasure garden.
19:23But the garden remains the heart of Cape Town
19:26and the birth of modern, colonised South Africa.
19:30Whereas the company garden was very much a corporate place
19:34with practical beginnings that became a pleasure garden,
19:38I've come here to Stellenberg, which is a private house.
19:41In fact, it's the oldest privately-owned house in the world.
19:44It was built in the early 1900s,
19:46and it's the oldest private house in the world.
19:49It was built in the early 1900s,
19:51and it's the oldest private house in the world.
19:54It was built in the early 1900s,
19:56and it's a private house.
19:58In fact, it's the oldest privately-owned house in the whole of South Africa,
20:01which I've heard is a very beautiful garden,
20:04but perhaps, more interestingly,
20:06also should tell me something of South Africa's colonial history.
20:20Stellenberg was part of the cultural mix
20:22that colonised the Cape from the outset.
20:25It was founded in 1742 by an Englishman called John White,
20:28who then changed his name to Jan de Witt
20:31and built it in a Dutch colonial style.
20:35The five-acre garden is set around the house
20:38and has a distinctly European feel.
20:42It's grand, elegant and charming.
20:47Unfortunately, the weather turned only too European as well.
20:52It's typical. I come to South Africa in its summer,
20:56and it's pelting with rain.
20:58Really, really wet.
21:00But I'm English,
21:02and I won't let a little rain come between me and a beautiful garden,
21:05which, even in the wet, it clearly is.
21:13What's interesting about this is that it's a white garden,
21:18with this white parterre and a white house,
21:21a house which is very Dutch, not at all English.
21:25Now, they call this a white garden, and all the plants are shades of white.
21:29But, in fact, it's a green garden,
21:31and I think that's true of all so-called white gardens,
21:33because the white makes the green seem greener.
21:36And the fact that it's so wet today
21:38makes the whole thing shine with that extraordinary green intensity.
21:49Well, it's always nice to see a vegetable garden,
21:52and this is a very carefully mannered, tasteful affair.
22:00You feel that they're not having to survive off these veg.
22:04They're growing for as much the way they look as they are, but it's lovely.
22:08I'm not letting the rain dampen my spirits,
22:10and, in fact, there are very nice touches.
22:13For instance, these steps, very, very shallow steps,
22:17almost a slope, looks wonderful.
22:20It's got real style.
22:22And as I go around the world, I always see little gardens,
22:26and I think that's a very nice touch,
22:28and I think that's a very nice touch,
22:30and I think that's a very nice touch,
22:32and I think that's a very nice touch.
22:34It's got real style, and as I go around the world,
22:37I always see little bits and pieces, and I think,
22:39I'll nick that, I'll use that in my own garden at some point,
22:42and that's one of those things.
22:45MUSIC PLAYS
23:01See, that's interesting. You've got the Melianthus,
23:04which, to me, is exotic and beautiful,
23:06and a very South African plant, and then the canna behind it,
23:09and a fantastic wood mangio.
23:11I mean, look at the size of the fantastic,
23:15huge flowering trumpets.
23:31Here I am in the end of November,
23:35with delphiniums and roses
23:39and verbena benariensis and mullains and foxgloves.
23:44All the elements of a lovely English mixed border.
23:54All the tricks of the horticultural design trade
23:57are being wheeled out.
23:59Partaise with santalina and lavender,
24:02the lucheon seat painted a tasteful colour.
24:05You've seen it all before, but the truth is
24:07the reason why you've seen it before is because it is lovely.
24:14Stellenberg is a garden made with great care and love,
24:18and the Dutch House and English Garden
24:20measure out a colonial past with great elegance and style.
24:25Its heritage is colonial,
24:27but deeply rooted in the culture of Northern Europe.
24:30However, having seen this,
24:33I now think I need to sort of escape all those English influences
24:38and just find something that is neat South Africa, undiluted.
24:48So I'm heading off down the Cape Peninsula, just south of the city.
24:58I've come on down the Cape,
25:00and the rain has cleared, thank goodness.
25:03I've stopped just to take an overview,
25:05because from here I can look back and see Table Mountain
25:08with its tablecloth of clouds still on it,
25:11Kirstenbosch on the slopes,
25:13and Stellenberg, where I've just come from,
25:15tucked in down below that with clouds still around it,
25:18probably still raining there.
25:20But up here it's windy, but for the moment it's dry.
25:26Table Mountain is at the head of a range of mountains
25:29that have run down the Cape Peninsula to the Cape of Good Hope,
25:32which is the symbolic southern tip of Africa.
25:35It was originally known as the Cape of Storms
25:38and is still a tricky piece of water,
25:40whose rocky coast is littered with shipwrecks.
25:47This is the setting for my last Cape Garden,
25:50created by Donovan van der Heijden and called Lilleeden.
26:00Donovan's house and garden is part of an unofficial shantytown
26:04of wooden and tin huts,
26:06thrown up cheek by jowl above the fishing port of Hout Bay.
26:15His garden is a series of terraces on the hillside,
26:18looking out over the blue waters of the bay.
26:23What was your own inspiration to get it going?
26:27From the mountains.
26:29I spend a lot of time roaming the mountains, going to the water streams,
26:33you know, studying the textures and, you know, the forms of the plants
26:38and how they complement each other, that relationship.
26:41What you're describing is a very sophisticated understanding of nature
26:46and how it works.
26:48I take it from the people that we as a local people here descend from.
26:52They lived close to nature, you know?
26:54They had that harmony with nature,
26:56and to me it's really that is my inspiration and maintaining that.
27:01In terms of this garden here, is it constantly evolving
27:06or has it reached a point at which you're happy with it and it's staying?
27:12No, I don't think I'll ever be satisfied.
27:15No, I don't think I'll ever be satisfied.
27:18In terms of my garden, I see myself as an artist.
27:22With an artist, there's always new scenery,
27:24something new that inspires him that he wants to capture on canvas.
27:28And similarly with me, when I walk around in nature,
27:31there's always something captivating there that I see,
27:34and it's like, wow, you know, I must...
27:36And then I come to my garden and I experiment
27:38and I play around with the rocks, you know,
27:40and similarly as an artist, with textures, colors, you know,
27:45so, yeah, it's always changing.
27:48What do your neighbours think?
27:49I mean, everyone around here, they haven't all got gardens.
27:51What do they think about what you're doing?
27:53It's an informal settlement, or squatter camp,
27:56and any available open space is utilised
27:59to put up another bungalow for someone to live in, you know?
28:03So when you take space and make a garden, you know, you get challenged,
28:08and this was met in the same way.
28:11But the community does benefit directly from Donovan's garden.
28:15He's running a project to introduce local children
28:18to the value and pleasures of gardening and growing plants.
28:22The parable, basically, that if you plant a seed
28:26and you water it and you nurture it,
28:28you see it growing and maturing into a well-established tree,
28:31you pick the fruits of it, and at the end of the day,
28:33you can enjoy the fruits, the same way the elders knew
28:37that if they planted the seeds in us as young people back then,
28:41the fruits would ultimately be reaped when we are grown, you know?
28:44We would be taking on that kind of work.
28:46We've got an interest as humans to protect what we have.
28:51Donovan and his vision of a society literally growing out of the soil
28:56and the plants of the Cape
28:58seem to me to make his tiny garden on the shanty hillside truly beautiful.
29:04But now it's time to leave the Cape.
29:06And before I visit my next garden,
29:08I want to see some more of that spectacular South African landscape.
29:13So I'm going to take myself off inland to the Drakensberg Mountains.
29:17If for no other reason, then that's the place where most of the plants
29:21that I recognise as being South African in my own garden come from.
29:25This means that I'm now travelling east to the Drakensberg,
29:29or Dragons Mountains.
29:34It's a curious thing that so many of the plants of this region,
29:38which is so different and so far from home,
29:41have adapted so well to our own gardens.
29:44And you also have the truly exotic growing here almost carelessly.
29:51Look at that.
29:55Here, just by the side of the road,
29:57we've got arum lilies growing like a weed.
30:04This is a wet bit on the margins.
30:07And here it is. Look at that.
30:11You know, people in London walk up to the Drakensberg
30:15That is, I think, Xanthodesia alba maculata.
30:21And it is just beautiful.
30:24Just growing by the side of the road.
30:35These mountains are called the Drakensberg Mountains.
30:38And they're a bit of a mystery.
30:41These mountains rise up to about 3,000 metres,
30:45which is about twice as high as Ben Nevis.
30:56I absolutely hadn't expected this,
30:58a sort of alpine meadow filled with flowers.
31:04This is a candelabra lily.
31:07And this whopping great flower here.
31:10And then next to it, there's a little aster there
31:13and a white cilla there.
31:21The Drakensberg Range is on the east side of South Africa
31:25and has the opposite climate to that of the Cape.
31:28So here the rains fall during the warm, wet summers,
31:31which gives the plants a growing season similar to that of the Cape.
31:36This purple flower here is, I'm sure, Benonia.
31:41Now, I planted this at Berryfields just a few months ago,
31:45and here it is, growing in its true home
31:49in the Drakensberg Mountains.
31:52This is a funny one.
31:54This is Phygelius aquilis,
31:56which is becoming increasingly common now.
31:58You see it in lots of gardens, lots of flowers.
32:01I'm heading back because it's gone from being beautifully clear and hot
32:05to really wet and there's rumbles of thunder,
32:08and apparently the last thing you should do is...
32:10Oh, here we are.
32:12..hang about because there's lightning in the mountains,
32:14because it gets you.
32:16Oh, look.
32:18That's a nice one.
32:20That's a nice one.
32:22That's a nice one.
32:24That's a nice one.
32:26That's a nice one.
32:29That little white flower is a Streptocarpus inflora.
32:33It's growing on an almost vertical, damp bank.
32:43The storms tend to be limited to the afternoons,
32:45and the next morning,
32:47I get up early to go further up in the mountains.
32:52Once you get higher up in the mountains,
32:54you start to see the flowers that are more vulnerable
32:56Once you get higher up, and I'm now at about 2,500 metres,
33:01the landscape forms itself into the kind of thing
33:06that people very carefully construct in rock gardens.
33:12And here you can see these little helichrysums,
33:15just in little niches and perches in the rocks,
33:18which are formed beautifully.
33:20You couldn't do this better with all the money and skill
33:24that British horticulture could give you.
33:35The ground here is dappled
33:38with these lovely little pink and white flowers.
33:43It's Rhoda hyproxis, and it's a tiny little thing,
33:46though I've never grown it.
33:48You can grow it in the UK, but normally it's a pan in a container.
33:52And here there are tens of thousands of them,
33:55sprinkled over the ground.
34:01I'm walking through what really amounts to a field of eucomys.
34:07You can see them here, with the flowers beginning to form
34:10and the little pineapple topknot.
34:12Now, these cost a fortune in the UK,
34:15whereas here they are, nearly 8,000 feet up,
34:18on the side of a freezing cold mountain.
34:23Now, look at this little clump of lobelia.
34:27Here, 8,000 feet up,
34:29growing cheek-by-jowl with the eucomys.
34:43The Drakensberg really is the most extraordinary,
34:48The Drakensberg really is the most extraordinary,
34:52vast, beautiful sight.
34:58But on a day like today, it's hard to imagine
35:01that in winter it quite regularly gets down
35:04to about minus two or three here,
35:06and on the colder parts, higher up,
35:08down to minus 20 or even colder.
35:11And snow is really common,
35:13which means that essentially it's alpine.
35:15And this, of course, is the reason why the plants from this area
35:19adapt so well to our gardens in northern Europe,
35:22and that's the connection.
35:28Seeing plants in their natural environment
35:30is the best way to learn about them,
35:32and I'll never look again on a hanging basket filled with lobelia
35:36without thinking of the Drakensberg.
35:39The Drakensberg is a giant escarpment.
35:42At its back is an arid plateau, the High Veldt,
35:45which has yet another distinct zone of life.
35:49This is the setting for an unlikely garden,
35:52built here nearly 80 years ago
35:54by the magnificently named Tudor Bodom Wettel and his wife Ruby.
35:59Named Kirklington after the Nottingham village where Tudor was born,
36:03the remote house looks over the distant savannah
36:06and is more commonly known as the Garden in the Veldt.
36:15The garden is cut into the hillside in a series of terraces,
36:19although only the area around the house remains tended today.
36:23But there still remain hints and signs of something much grander.
36:27Thick stone paths and walls,
36:29are still there amongst the rough growth.
36:31Beneath the overgrown grass of the orchard
36:34lies a sleeping giant of a garden.
36:42These steps lead down...
36:46..way out of the garden,
36:48and these are really solid paving stones and steps.
36:54You see, they go on and on, right down.
36:58And these steps come down to this grand, sweeping staircase.
37:07This was clearly a deliberate attempt
37:09to make a grandiose English country house garden,
37:13carved out of the High Veldt stone.
37:15This is garden-making on the most out-of-the-way level
37:19This is garden-making on the most ambitious of scales
37:21in the most improbable of circumstances.
37:24Tudor's descendants, the Moffat family, still live on the farm
37:27and told me about its creation.
37:32They had to dress all the stone, cut it on the farm,
37:36haul it in and then start laying out the paths
37:40and the terraces and building the walls.
37:44This is really ambitious stuff you're describing.
37:47Very, very ambitious, yes.
37:51Climate-wise, it was a battle.
37:54We are pretty extreme here, being so high.
37:57January, February, when there's a shortage of rain,
38:00the garden really suffers.
38:02And at times we bring in tankers,
38:04carter up water on an ongoing basis
38:06to keep those few things going which are more important.
38:10The crops get it first, the farm crops.
38:12Or the cattle.
38:13And the rain comes and then you won't have rain for a long time again.
38:17And it streams off the mountain.
38:20Gathering and storing water is the key to the garden's existence.
38:25Even before he began the garden,
38:27Tudor made extraordinary and extreme measures
38:30to trap the stormwater as it tumbled down the cliffs.
38:34This path behind the house,
38:37is essentially a drain, a stone drain that comes down,
38:40goes underneath this building, out this pipe,
38:43and then along this path, which meets in the middle,
38:47the water, which pours off the hillside,
38:50comes down here and comes to this point.
38:55Water pouring in down there, through a drain there,
38:58through this system, into this enormous tank
39:03which was designed specifically to water the garden.
39:07So Tudor's plans were, from the outset, wildly, crazily grand.
39:12And without this kind of ingenious hydroengineering,
39:15a garden like this would never have been possible here.
39:19I came up here to see the water culverts cut into the rock
39:23and get an idea of this great cliff face
39:26of the water pouring down to the garden.
39:29But now I'm up here, it's the view that is fantastic.
39:33It's awesome.
39:35And it's all, or a great chunk of it,
39:37connected to the house and garden.
39:39So you have the house and the garden below,
39:41and then the field stretching right out
39:43for a great chunk of what you can see.
39:46And for most of us,
39:48to live in scenery of this scale is unimaginable.
39:54So now I enter into the final leg of my journey,
39:57heading across the High Plains to Johannesburg.
40:00But I'm going to make a little detour first to visit another garden.
40:05This is one that I know very little about,
40:08but what I've heard whets my appetite.
40:11It's grown organically in so much that it wasn't even planted.
40:15It's grown in such a way
40:17that it's been able to survive for a very long time.
40:20It's grown organically in so much that it wasn't really planned.
40:24I know that it's just sort of accrued.
40:26It mainly uses succulents from the region
40:29and also a lot of rocks and stones.
40:34Unlike my last visit, this is not a garden
40:37that tries to fight the natural environment,
40:39but instead embraces it,
40:41and in that it is truly of the place, a holy South African garden.
40:45And everything here, including the house and its furniture,
40:48is designed and made by the owners.
40:50I asked them what it was called.
40:52It doesn't really have a name, they said.
40:54So let's call it the Mahallesburg Rock Garden.
41:03What I'm absolutely loving
41:08is the way that stone, wood and plant material
41:16are merging and becoming completely fused as an expression.
41:22And this is deliberate.
41:24The garden, made by a painter and a sculptor,
41:27is being created as a work of land art.
41:36See, look up there.
41:38Look at that.
41:42That is just beautiful.
41:46I have to say that when we first came here,
41:48I knew it was going to be quite interesting
41:50and I'd seen an odd picture or two,
41:52but I had no idea that it was all done on this scale.
41:59The natural slope of the hillside
42:01has been gouged and hollowed into one vast sculpture,
42:05so ravines, hillocks and rocky passes leading nowhere
42:09map out this new made-up land,
42:11and bowls, ponds and wooden bony carcasses jostle the stone
42:16until they marry into a kind of composite organic material.
42:20It's breathtaking.
42:32Fantastic.
42:33The health and safety people will be having a fit.
42:37And if I fall off, well, at least I've had fun.
42:42I've often thought, and I suspect often said,
42:45that half of gardening is just grown-ups going outside to play.
42:49And what I feel here is that this is just untrammelled play.
42:54Someone who's raised playing outside in the garden to an art form.
43:12Even though the stonework and the sculpture seems to dominate,
43:17I think if it was just stonework and wood,
43:21it would be beautiful and interesting,
43:23but it wouldn't quite be enough.
43:25What really makes it come alive and what peoples it are the plants.
43:30There are a wide range of drought-tolerant plants,
43:33grasses, agaves and many other indigenous South African succulents,
43:38many of which have been rescued from development
43:41and bought here to be used for food.
43:44But there are a lot of them.
43:46This is a very special one.
43:48It's a very special one.
43:50It's a very special one.
43:52It's a very special one.
43:54It's a very special one.
43:56Many of the plants that have been rescued from development
43:58and bought here to be nurtured.
44:02But it is the giant aloes that dominate.
44:06Some of the bigger ones are just bursting with personality.
44:09You feel like you ought to go up and shake hands
44:11and introduce yourself to them.
44:15All of these plants are perfectly adapted to the arid conditions here,
44:19as is the inevitable wildlife that they attract.
44:22There's even a Weaverbur colony, just outside the front door.
44:26The garden, down to the last stone, is the creation of the sculptor Geoffrey Armstrong
44:35and painter Wendy Vincent.
44:38It's a happy hour garden, that's how it started.
44:41After you'd spent the day painting or carving, you'd then come and sit and all of a sudden
44:48say, right, let's have a stream, let's have a pond.
44:52We all do it.
44:53You sit, you have a cup of tea in the morning and you say, let's have a stream.
44:57And we're already planning another pond, even though the water's drying up.
45:02I like your style.
45:05And it became obsessive and then started to, about six years ago, one started to think
45:13of it as a work of art.
45:16It's quite common to see works of art in a garden.
45:20It's quite common for artists to have a keen interest in gardens as an expression of their
45:25art.
45:26It's not very common to see gardens as a work of art.
45:30Was it intended as that?
45:31It changed.
45:32We were just enthusiasts, you know, bringing plants and rocks in.
45:37And then we started looking at the whole.
45:40And that was then when we saw that it was getting more important than just that.
45:44It was actually important to bring in the environment and to see through and to look
45:49at different aspects from different angles and to see that you needed to repeat something
45:54somewhere else and where you would cluster things, just like painting a canvas, actually.
46:04Now British horticulture can be occasionally a bit pompous and self-referential, but a
46:10garden like this, entirely in tune with its setting, that celebrates the relationship
46:14between plants and art, and yet maybe the sort of earth mania that every gardener recognises,
46:19rekindles every kind of enthusiasm.
46:23So I continue on to Johannesburg, buoyed up with inspiration.
46:27I'm on my way to a garden now called Brenthurst, which is reckoned to be the biggest and the
46:33grandest and the best-known garden in the whole of South Africa.
46:36It's run by a woman called Strilly Oppenheimer, who, since she took it over about seven years
46:41ago, has turned it completely organic, so on two counts this is likely to be a really
46:47interesting garden for me.
46:51Brenthurst is certainly grand.
46:52For a start, it's huge.
46:55Forty-five acres of intensive gardens right in the middle of Johannesburg.
47:06It has belonged to the Oppenheimer family since the early 1920s, whose fortune was derived
47:11from the local diamond and gold mining industries.
47:14The garden has many different sections, including sweeping lawns, statuary, a large Japanese
47:19garden, mature woodlands, a biodynamic vegetable garden, and areas that seem to be left to
47:25grow wild.
47:32Over the past seven years, the garden has been going through a kind of horticultural
47:35revolution, which has shocked some but thrilled as many others, and this is entirely due to
47:40the naturalistic principles of its current mistress, Strilly Oppenheimer.
47:45I could quite easily, and find it exciting, to do nothing at all with the garden and just
47:52watch it become totally wild again and meet its climax and create another rhythm.
48:03The garden was originally laid out in 1904, but much of the existing structure was added
48:08in 1959 by the garden designer Joan Pym.
48:11However, it remained as a conventional, highly controlled Edwardian garden until Strilly
48:16took over in 2001.
48:18Now the lawns consist of local species of grass, whole swathes of which are encouraged
48:23to run to seed, and borders are encouraged to grow naturally, without obvious attempts
48:28to tidy or control.
48:31However, the vistas and views are carefully maintained.
48:37I think that the scale is superb.
48:44On the hillside above the statues is a huge Japanese garden commissioned by Strilly and
48:48her husband, Nicky.
48:59This was done by one of the gardeners of the Emperor, and so, for me, I know something
49:08about Japanese gardens but not a lot.
49:10And what I needed was that if we had something which was called a Japanese garden, that it
49:15was truly authentic to the Japanese.
49:18And for me, what it does is create a tension between the sort of gardening where I am comfortable,
49:25which is very natural and don't prune anything, and this totally clipped garden.
49:36Certainly the obsessive control of Japanese horticulture in this garden creates a dynamic
49:41of balancing tensions and ideologies.
49:43It gives the place energy.
49:45Round the corner, we go up to the kopi garden.
49:47Now, kopi is an African rocky outcrop, and here the plants are again given a free reign.
49:53There are a lot of people who want to garden naturally, are becoming environmentally much
49:57more aware, who want to be in tune with what they conceive as a correct way to behave towards
50:03the natural world, have only their garden in which to operate.
50:07Yes, but I think they must be conscious about what they want and what they're trying to
50:11do and have that relationship.
50:14And when they have a real relationship with the plants, then they're, I mean, it's like
50:19with their children.
50:20They let their children grow.
50:23They don't totally prune and, well, maybe some people do, you know, control their children
50:28and then they're a disaster.
50:32Brenthurst is a carefully managed balance between natural freedom and human control.
50:37Clipped hedges contain untrammeled growth, and everything is connected and interwoven
50:41by paths, many of which are decorated with assay cores from the mines.
50:54Stirling takes me to the terrace just below the house to show me the broad view, but in
50:58particular, the large borders on the lawn below.
51:03These were planned and planted and then left to grow pretty much as they pleased, creating
51:09a constantly evolving display.
51:17This is typical of allowing, really, nature to do what it wants to do and not imposing
51:26one's own view on it.
51:27And it's just as beautiful, if not more beautiful than it was as a mixed border.
51:38We in the UK make these borders.
51:42We plant them carefully.
51:43We plan and design them.
51:44We tweak and prune and preen them and try and establish a picture like a work of art
51:52and somehow take the applause for it ourselves, whereas what Stirling said about these mixed
51:58borders made a huge impression on me.
52:02Let the plants do their own thing.
52:04Let them free.
52:05They'll do it fine without you.
52:08Now, that's so inspirational.
52:11And immediately I thought, yeah, I like that a lot and I want to do it.
52:15I want to get out my own garden and do precisely that.
52:24The effect of Brenthurst, just like the rock garden at Mahalersberg, is to shake up my
52:28idea of how to garden, redefine my image of what a garden can be, not be overruled by
52:34that, but empowered.
52:40Before I leave South Africa, I have one last garden to visit that takes me from one of
52:44the wealthiest white households to a school in the township of Tembisa on the outskirts
52:49of Johannesburg.
52:55Under apartheid, millions of black Africans were removed from their homes and rehoused
53:00in what were often makeshift settlements called townships, which were often the focus of violent
53:05civil unrest.
53:08Today, a million people live here in pretty harsh conditions, and life is still tough.
53:14But when I arrive at Tutuka Primary School, I'm welcomed in song.
53:35I don't know what's going on here at all.
53:37I'm just drifting along in a river of singing children.
53:41I don't know what they're singing about.
53:42I haven't a clue what's happening, but it's lovely.
53:44It's absolutely lovely.
53:54The school's garden is organic, biodynamic, and grows mostly herbs and vegetables.
53:59My irrepressible guide is a teacher, Mr. Lucas Mbale.
54:03Now we're entering the main gate to our garden from our classroom.
54:09So now, here, this is our learners.
54:12They are working here.
54:14They are taking off all the dry and yellow leaves to put in our compost.
54:23This is beautiful.
54:25It's a wonderful garden.
54:29It's mixed with different types of herbs, different types of vegetables.
54:36The reason is that to be able to repel the insects,
54:40and for them to be able to give each plant, it gives food to the other one.
54:48As well as an important supply of vegetables,
54:51there are many traditional medicinal plants being grown here, too.
54:55Here at school, you can see there's no child who's coughing here.
54:59Right.
55:00This is the main medicine we call lingana.
55:03Lingana.
55:04Boil water and put there, and make a tea, and let the child drink.
55:10In no time, that child is healed from flu or from cold.
55:18But there are some plants here which are intended to help with a much more serious issue,
55:23HIV-AIDS.
55:26South Africa has one of the highest incidences of AIDS,
55:29affecting over 20% of the adult population,
55:33and up to a third of these children here.
55:37I've got African potato here.
55:39We don't cure HIV-AIDS,
55:42but we suspend that spreading of that opportunity diseases through the HIV-AIDS.
55:51We take the bulbs, we chop them, we cook them, we let you drink.
55:56We reduce the speed how it can be able to kill you.
56:07A section of the garden is used as an outdoor classroom,
56:10where children are taught all kinds of subjects, from maths to horticulture.
56:17Tell me, do you like working in the garden?
56:20Yes.
56:21What do you like about it?
56:22Watering plants, planting.
56:25I like sweeping.
56:26Why do you like that?
56:28Because it cleans our garden.
56:31What sort of things do you learn?
56:33How to plant trees, how to take care of your environment.
56:36Do you think the garden is beautiful?
56:38Yes.
56:39Why?
56:40We've got flowers, spinach, onions, cabbage.
56:48So that makes our garden look beautiful.
56:51It certainly does.
56:57If it belonged to a keen amateur gardener at home, I'd admire it hugely.
57:03As it is, this is a school garden in a township in South Africa.
57:08So it's beautiful in its own right, and it's a miracle really.
57:11It's just wonderful.
57:18It's been a fascinating journey.
57:21There's no doubt that the gardens I've seen reflect the way
57:24that the nation is in a process of transition,
57:27evolving from a severe colonial past to a true South African identity.
57:35That identity is shaped as much as anything else by the landscape,
57:39which is just staggering.
57:42And then there are the plants in that landscape.
57:46To see so many familiar garden plants growing in their natural form
57:50and habitat was a treat.
58:00Before I came here, I had a fixed image of South Africa,
58:05forged by the horrors of apartheid,
58:07that had, I admit, become a pretty blinkered outlook.
58:11In fact, I go so far as to say that, if I was really honest,
58:14I didn't want to come at all.
58:17And now that I've been here, I am just so glad that I did come.
58:26Next time, my journey will keep me closer to home,
58:29as I go in search of some of the most inspiring gardens
58:32to be found in the more familiar territory of Northern Europe.
58:44To be continued
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