Monty Don's Spanish Gardens s01e01 (2024)
In this first episode, Monty travels across central Spain. He begins at the vast, imposing palace and garden of the Escorial before heading for Madrid, Toledo, other parts of Castile and finally Valencia, visiting such gardens as a tropical garden in a railway station, the garden of a former Andalusian palace and a park formed out of a disused riverbed.
Transcript
00:00Like many people, my experience of Spain has come from going on holiday,
00:04mainly in the sun-soaked south.
00:06But that's only a very small part of this huge country.
00:13Spain's history is deep and complicated,
00:17and its landscapes, climates and cultures have huge diversity.
00:26And in this series, I want to get under the skin of the country,
00:29by visiting as many gardens in Spain as I can.
00:33So I can shed light on this nation's past, its future and its people.
00:39Wow, that's a whopper.
00:42I've seen gardens that are public, as well as gardens that are very private.
00:48I've seen gardens made for unlikely clients.
00:51Now, show me the garden.
00:52I've also found inspiring gardens in unlikely places.
00:57It's a surprise inside a building, it's a surprise inside a school.
01:01And as I've travelled over 4,000 kilometres,
01:05I've seen modern masterpieces, as well as lovingly tended historical jewels.
01:15This is a complex and vast country.
01:18There is so much to see and so much to learn.
01:28MUSIC
01:43In this first programme, I'm going to base myself in the centre of Spain,
01:48making a rough circle around the capital,
01:51and obviously visiting Madrid as well,
01:54heading east towards Spain's Mediterranean coast,
01:57finishing up in Valencia.
02:01I shall be visiting a garden created
02:04to celebrate the harsh landscape of central Spain.
02:11A vertical garden inside an office building.
02:16And a garden of special interest to me, because it's made for and by dogs.
02:22What we do is to bring the dogs here, and they do, for us, the design.
02:27They do the paths and...
02:29Stop for a moment, because this is a crazy idea.
02:41This is El Escorial, an enormous royal palace and monastery,
02:4750 kilometres north-west of Madrid.
02:50It's one of the world's largest religious buildings.
02:54It's massive and, quite frankly, forbidding,
02:57and built from stone quarried from the Guadarrama Mountains that rise behind it.
03:04It was begun in the 1560s, which was a time when the Spanish Empire
03:08was by far the largest in the world, and included the Netherlands,
03:12most of Italy, much of the American continent and the Philippines.
03:17I'm starting here at El Escorial,
03:20not just because this vast granite building is such a monument
03:24to what is often thought of as the golden period of Spanish history,
03:29the 16th century, but its monarch of that period,
03:33Philip II, until his death in 1598, didn't just make buildings,
03:39didn't just oversee what was then the largest empire the world had ever seen,
03:45but he was also a gardener.
03:47And wherever he went, he made gardens,
03:50and he made them with a fantastic attention to detail.
03:56The modern gardens at El Escorial feature parterres of box hedges
04:01on a wide terrace that wraps around the building.
04:04However, these are an 18th-century addition.
04:08In Philip II's day, the terraces would have been laid out
04:12as a series of intricate knot gardens made up of tightly interwoven,
04:16low hedges of woody herbs,
04:18and perhaps infilled with flowers and coloured stones.
04:22The result was described at the time
04:24as looking like fine rugs from Damascus.
04:30Perhaps the nearest we get to the garden of Philip's day
04:33are the roses that climb up the wall along the south-facing terrace.
04:37And Philip wanted roses to symbolise a heavenly cloud
04:41upon which the uncompromisingly stark building sat.
04:47The formal gardens butting onto the building
04:50are only part of the design.
04:53So, below, you have, first of all, the orchards,
04:57and then beyond that, there are thousands of trees planted in the fields,
05:02and then, as you recede towards the horizon, the forest.
05:07Everything that the king could see, he controlled.
05:12I talked to the landscape designer, Monica Luengo,
05:16about Philip II's genuine passion for horticulture.
05:20He loved plants, and here he had a huge collection.
05:24He could afford it.
05:26And these were plants that were coming in from the Americas, were they?
05:30Of course. Most probably, you will have here tomatoes
05:33that, you know, when they arrived, were first used as ornamental plants.
05:38So, this was a collection, a sort of library of these new plants coming in.
05:42Quite experimental.
05:44He had tulips that were quite exotic at the time, that came from Turkey,
05:49and he had all kind of small carnations, irises,
05:54huge variety, huge.
05:57How is modern Spain, through its designers and through its garden makers,
06:02how is it developing?
06:04Our second half of the 20th century, with Franco's regime,
06:08was really not very exciting in an artistic and cultural sense.
06:14And then, suddenly, everything was open.
06:18Everything was new for us.
06:20So, we were all, like, discovering new worlds, no?
06:25And we were so receptive to everything.
06:32Today, El Escorial remains the most potent symbol
06:37of the Spanish monarchy and empire at the height of its powers.
06:50Like all monarchs of the period,
06:52Philip moved around all the time between his various palaces,
06:56which meant he never spent very much time here at El Escorial,
06:59but he did come here to die.
07:01He would lay in his small bed.
07:03On one side, he had a window that meant he could look out into the basilica
07:07and hear mass, and on the other side, there was this window here.
07:12So, as he lay dying, he could look out across to the garden
07:17and the landscape that he had made.
07:25Philip built El Escorial here
07:28primarily because of the abundant supply of granite,
07:31and the landscape is still dotted with spectacular boulders.
07:39I'm setting off now to explore more of this huge central part of Spain.
07:46I'm heading to Madrid,
07:48before then setting out to visit three very different regions.
07:52Extremadura,
07:54Castilla y León
07:56and Castilla la Mancha.
08:00And after visiting Toledo in Castilla la Mancha,
08:03I'm going to travel to Valencia on the Mediterranean coast.
08:11On my way to Madrid,
08:13I'm making a small detour amongst this vast wooded plateau,
08:18because I want to visit a private garden
08:21that's situated at the end of a long driveway
08:25flanked by umbrella pines and home oaks.
08:31As well as the fascination of seeing an estate and a nice garden,
08:35the really interesting thing for me is that the owner,
08:39who has lived here for most of a very long life,
08:42has agreed to talk to me
08:44and tell me how not just this garden has evolved and changed,
08:48but also how modern Spanish gardens have adapted during her lifetime.
08:56The approach to the house is formal,
08:58with low hedges,
09:00lots of symmetry
09:02and flower-filled urns.
09:05Although this part of Spain is known for its extreme temperatures
09:09and often suffers terrible droughts,
09:12this garden is a richly green oasis
09:15and the heavily watered lawn would be at home in an English country house.
09:20But there are also classical and Islamic influences,
09:24with a water feature perfectly framed by Moorish arches.
09:28It's clearly an immaculately tended, much-loved garden.
09:33And the owner, Piuro Urquijo, told me a story.
09:37When did you first come here?
09:39I came here in 1957
09:41because my late husband inherited the house from his parents.
09:48And was the garden here then, when you first came?
09:51Well, there was a garden, it was a very French garden,
09:55which probably was much prettier.
09:58And then we had an experience of an English nanny
10:02who said there was no place for the children to play
10:05and for her to promenade the pram.
10:08So we built it up and then we had much more fun here on the lawn.
10:13Nowadays, actually, the gardens are totally different in design.
10:19People think much more that you don't need so much water.
10:24But my opinion is that they're making gardens
10:29which look a little bit like if we were in the desert of Arizona.
10:34But I guess the climate here is quite like the desert in Arizona.
10:37Absolutely.
10:38What do you think this garden will look like in 50, 60 years' time?
10:43I hate to think about it.
10:46I mean, everything is going to change tremendously and drastically too.
10:51Although the climate of central Spain has always been severe,
10:56it's recently had one of its worst ever droughts,
10:59and that was followed by serious flooding.
11:03And Piru's traditional garden,
11:05which perfectly illustrates how the Spanish garden has developed
11:08over the last 60 years,
11:10will become increasingly difficult to maintain.
11:15This has been interesting because it does add another piece to the jigsaw.
11:20You've got all these different influences.
11:22There's French, there's the English nanny, which has created the lawn.
11:26There's the Moorish influence on the water and the courtyards.
11:29But it feels to me very Spanish.
11:32I think that's because of the way that it's used.
11:36The division between house and garden is so loose as to almost not be there.
11:41In its curious way, despite its grandeur, it's homely.
11:55Modern Madrid is a busy, bustling capital city.
12:00But until Philip II based his royal court here in the 16th century,
12:04it was a relatively small town.
12:08But Philip created parks and gardens,
12:11and the modern city remains full of superb green spaces,
12:15both public and private.
12:25I've come straight to El Retiro.
12:29This is a huge park in the middle of the city.
12:32It started life as a private royal pleasure ground in the 17th century.
12:37But today it is open to all and is extremely popular,
12:42not least for its superb hedge-lined woodland walks.
12:50It also has some more formal spaces,
12:53like these avenues of immaculately clipped parterres.
13:01At the beginning of the 19th century, during the Peninsular War,
13:05Napoleonic soldiers used the Retiro as their barracks
13:10and apparently in the process completely destroyed it.
13:14And then, in 1830, it was rebuilt and replanted.
13:20And in the 1860s, one of the first public parks in Europe
13:26to be open to anybody who wanted to come and use it.
13:30And ever since then,
13:32it has been used as a green lung of the people of Madrid.
13:44Close to the Retiro, the Paseo del Prado,
13:48one of Madrid's main boulevards,
13:50was Europe's first tree-lined urban promenade,
13:54running through the city, north to south.
14:02Situated on this central avenue
14:04is a branch of a well-known Spanish bank.
14:08The building is modern and when it was first built in the 1970s
14:12was an example of radically contemporary office architecture.
14:16But something even more radical lay inside the building.
14:28At the back of the offices,
14:30in a void between the bank and the adjoining building,
14:33is a garden that rises up and cascades down eight floors.
14:42It was created in 1975 as an integral part of the building
14:48and was the first of its kind in Madrid.
14:54The designer was the landscape architect Luis González Camino.
15:01This was actually my first project when I was 20 years old, 21 years old.
15:07So quite a dramatic thing to do for a 21-year-old.
15:11Yeah, it was hard because I was the youngest person in the team.
15:16There were all people from maybe 50 and 60 years old
15:21and I had to explain everything I planned here.
15:26Luis's intention was to create a lush, constantly green garden
15:31for the bank's employees to enjoy.
15:34English ivy was planted at the top
15:36so that it could tumble down the sides of the building
15:39and now some of the ivy's tendrils are up to 24 metres long.
15:46Outside the top two floors of the bank are planted terraces
15:50filled with tropical plants that are best seen from inside the meeting rooms.
15:56And the roof is glazed, enclosing and protecting the plants
16:00and creating what is in effect a large greenhouse.
16:05The thing that is often talked about
16:08is the role of greenery and plants in office spaces.
16:14How do people react? What do the workers say?
16:16They are very, very happy,
16:18especially when they have the lack of working in this part of the bank.
16:23You see that all the meeting rooms are here
16:27so everybody can share this.
16:33The vertical garden was revamped three years ago
16:36and Luis, who has since become one of Spain's leading garden designers,
16:40returned to oversee the work nearly 50 years after he initially created it.
16:47Did you change it in the light of experience?
16:49Somewhat. Not the ivy carton, but some of the plants here
16:52because of the experience of keeping the garden for many years.
16:56I came to the conclusion that there were some plants that weren't very happy here.
17:01So I planted different plants now.
17:04Do you think that there is such a thing as a typical Spanish garden?
17:10Yes, I think there is a mixture of the monastic gardens,
17:15which were all over Europe,
17:17and the Arab garden that the Arabs introduced in Spain when they invaded it.
17:22We don't have these huge French or English gardens
17:26because the climate in central and southern Spain is not very good for these kinds of gardens.
17:32But smaller gardens with a lot of architecture
17:36and a lot of ponds and water features,
17:41I think this is very Spanish.
17:52I'm heading now to the southern end of Madrid's green artery.
17:56This is the impressive entrance to Madrid's Atocha station.
18:00It was built in 1892 and its outstanding feature is a huge wrought iron train shed.
18:11In the 1990s, the back of the station was extended to serve Spain's new high-speed trains.
18:18As a result, some of the old platforms were no longer needed.
18:23And in an act of huge inspiration,
18:26they decided to use this now defunct glass roof space to install a tropical garden.
18:34This space is much bigger than any glasshouse could ever be,
18:38and the planting amounts to an acre.
18:40And because it's been here for 30 years, some of the plants are really colossal.
18:45It's like being in a jungle.
18:50There are 7,000 plants of more than 200 years old.
18:57And what better place than to sit and wait for your train?
19:02However, I'm not leaving Madrid yet,
19:05because I've got a couple more gardens that I want to see.
19:12This is the Atocha station.
19:14It's the largest station in the world,
19:17and it's one of the oldest stations in the world.
19:21And I've got a couple more gardens that I want to see.
19:31So, the next morning, I travelled to a residential suburb,
19:35just to the north of the city.
19:37And I've been told that there was a garden here that I would find particularly interesting.
19:43It turned out that my hosts were four-legged.
19:47Come on.
19:49Now, show me the garden.
19:51And the designer, Alvaro San Pedro,
19:54was given a specific but rather unusual brief by the garden's owner.
19:59She told me, do you know how to do a garden for dogs?
20:02And I say, well, yes.
20:04And then what we do is to bring the dogs here,
20:08and they do for us the design.
20:10They do the paths and...
20:12Stop a moment, because this is a crazy idea.
20:16You say the dogs do the paths. What did you mean by that?
20:18Yes, we bring the dogs to the plot,
20:21and as they go through the postman to go to see other dogs from the neighbourhood,
20:30they make us the lines that they are going to use.
20:36And then we fill the gaps with plants.
20:40I mean, I can see down here there are gravel paths working through.
20:44Those are dog lines?
20:45Yeah, yeah.
20:47With that, they don't touch the flowers at all.
20:50And I've never heard of this before.
20:52Anywhere.
20:57The garden is filled with plants that are adapted to Madrid's dry climate,
21:03such as salvias, alliums,
21:07and other familiar plants like verbena and valerian.
21:12And they're all encouraged to seed themselves freely into the gravel paths.
21:17I love the white, we call this valerian.
21:21Yeah.
21:22Centanthrus.
21:23Yeah, for me it's a super plant.
21:28We give to this garden super plants that always grows,
21:32and it's very easy to maintain it.
21:34Tough plants, strong.
21:36Yeah, yeah.
21:38But visiting dogs, like Alvaro's joana,
21:42don't know the rules or the roots, and often go off-piste.
21:48So if the dogs decided, I mean, your dog there is nosing around,
21:52to cut through your planting, would you move the plants?
21:56Yes, we move the plants, put gravel and make another path for them.
21:59So we don't mind.
22:01So it changes all the time?
22:03All the time, yeah.
22:04Interesting, very interesting.
22:06There is something about this garden that makes you want to wind through it.
22:11Maybe dogs can teach us something about gardening.
22:14Of course, always.
22:18I think it's very clever, it's very well designed,
22:21because by allowing plants to be moved,
22:25by not being precious about the paths,
22:27and having that fluidity,
22:30creates a dynamism,
22:32which is held in place by the simplicity of the planting.
22:36I say simplicity, I don't mean that in a negative sense at all,
22:39but it's pared down, you have a limited palette of colours,
22:43a limited range of plants,
22:45all chosen because they will thrive in these extreme conditions.
22:49I like it very much indeed.
22:51But what's much more important,
22:53that not only do the clients like it too,
22:56that not only do the clients like it too,
22:59but the dogs love it.
23:12While I'm in the north of Madrid,
23:14I want to visit another contemporary project,
23:17albeit one that is very different.
23:19This building, with its zigzag roof,
23:22sprouting chimneys like aluminium periscopes,
23:25and the porthole windows set in cork cladding,
23:28is the Reggio School.
23:31The design of the school is based on the idea
23:34that the exposed details of the architecture
23:37will stimulate a desire for exploration.
23:40Thus, the building is deliberately composed
23:43of a number of educational ecosystems,
23:46where the boundary between inside and outside
23:50is often blurred.
23:56From the very beginning, the architects and the school
24:00worked together to include as much space as possible
24:04to have green and living plants
24:07and room for them to grow and get bigger.
24:09One of the details I really like
24:11are these, I suppose you'd call them glorified window boxes.
24:15Clear, huge panes of glass
24:18and really large borders outside,
24:20tucked as part of the building,
24:22so that children, as they walk past,
24:24can see the plants grow,
24:26see how they change across the seasons.
24:28So as well as enjoying it
24:30and making the quality of life better,
24:32it's really good education.
24:36The classrooms are organised around a huge atrium greenhouse
24:40that contains a miniature temperate rainforest.
24:44This is beautiful.
24:46Yeah. Surprise inside the building.
24:49It's a surprise inside the building,
24:51but it's a surprise inside the school.
24:53Yeah.
24:56Eva Martin is the director of the school
24:59and worked closely with the architects from the outset
25:02to plan the various gardens both in and outside the building.
25:06I noticed that you have areas in the school
25:10with glass in front of it
25:12and then plants growing on the outside of the building.
25:16One of the ideas that we make with the architects
25:20is that the plants colonise the building.
25:24So the plants are coming into the building.
25:26Yes, that's the idea.
25:27This is very new and it looks wonderful,
25:30but it has to last a long time and stay wonderful.
25:34How will you do that?
25:36We use the people who help us to create it
25:41and also we work with the children
25:44to keep on like this and take care of this.
25:48Do you feel that this is missing from many children in their lives?
25:54They're missing in the cities.
25:57It's very difficult to find these things, no?
26:01So that's the reason that we put inside in the building.
26:12The youngest children are also encouraged to plant
26:15and harvest produce from the raised beds in the outside kitchen garden.
26:38These are then prepared by the school cook for their lunches.
26:46I love you.
26:54Are the children reacting differently?
26:57I think so. I think it's more peaceful.
27:08How I wish I'd gone to a school like that.
27:12Whatever has created pretty much single-handedly
27:16and the architects have helped build
27:19is something that is exceptional.
27:22And I love the way that they have included gardens and plants
27:29and gardening into the warp and weft of the curriculum
27:34so that when the children grow up they will accept it and also participate in it.
27:40It's part of their lives and their world and that's brilliant education.
27:48The work of designers like the ones I've seen here in Madrid
27:52were all part of an upsurge of creativity
27:55that followed General Franco's death and the restoration of democracy
27:59in the mid-1970s.
28:05So I'm now leaving the capital
28:08to see more examples of these modern gardens.
28:14I'll visit a garden near the village of Jarandia de la Vera
28:18to the west of Madrid
28:20before I travel to the walled city of Avila
28:23and then on to the wine region of Ribera del Duero
28:27before heading south to the ancient city of Toledo.
28:33It's interesting that the modern gardens I'm visiting
28:37are breaking the traditional pattern of a Spanish garden,
28:41which is a courtyard, has symmetry, has water
28:44and is very much an oasis, a retreat from the world outside.
28:48And this garden that I'm about to visit goes further.
28:51It looks out into the landscape
28:53and includes this landscape that I'm passing through into the garden.
29:03The Haussengarten is at the end of a long, dusty track
29:07set in remote mountainous countryside.
29:13It belongs to the landscape designer and photographer
29:16Eduardo Mencos and his wife Annalie.
29:20Hello. Hello. Hello, I'm Monty.
29:23Yes, I'm Annalie. Hello, welcome. Eduardo's wife.
29:26Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you.
29:28And your dogs are fantastic.
29:30He's Tony. Tony's beautiful.
29:32And who's this? Martin. Martin.
29:34How many dogs do you have? There are four.
29:37Eduardo bought this 30-hectare olive farm in 2006
29:42and has subsequently turned it into a garden
29:45that is both beautiful and productive.
29:52What I'm looking at is an agricultural landscape
29:58that's been very carefully fine-tuned.
30:01Is that all done by you?
30:03Well, we had the olive trees, we had them here.
30:07These trees are oak trees that come from other areas of the farm.
30:13So you've moved these oak trees, have you?
30:15They are all... Even the big ones?
30:17The big ones.
30:19So what we have done is to try to play the whole area as a garden,
30:26but very subtle.
30:28So it was farmland, but from the beginning
30:31you knew you wanted to combine farm and garden.
30:35That's it.
30:37And why did you choose this area?
30:39Climate, because here we have more rain than in London.
30:44But when it comes, it comes very strongly,
30:47with a lot of passion, like everything in Spain.
30:51Eduardo has deliberately embraced the concept
30:55of an ornamental farm, or fermorne.
30:58So, for example, along with the oaks,
31:01he's planted cypresses to create avenues
31:05and punctuate the olive groves.
31:08The idea is to respect nature, but to enhance it.
31:14However, for all this careful artifice,
31:17it is still a working farm with grazing animals.
31:25It must be quite difficult balancing,
31:28because I know that if you have sheep or cattle on the ground,
31:32they're not good for gardens, you know.
31:35I know. It's a difficult relation.
31:39But I am specialised in difficult relations.
31:42OK.
31:46That relationship between garden and farm is very finely balanced,
31:52harnessing the natural landscape
31:54and yet at the same time shaping and controlling it.
32:00Eduardo moved these oak trees.
32:04And other trees around his grounds.
32:07And he was quite sort of casual about it.
32:10So, yes, we moved trees around and took it in his stride.
32:14In fact, it's really impressive, I mean, to move a tree of this size
32:18and of any of these sizes is both technically very difficult
32:23and also a big undertaking.
32:26What he's done is major and dramatic and transformative.
32:31But it's done in such a way as you just accept it.
32:34It just works with what is already there.
32:47I'm making my way north-east, through the Sierra de Guerreras.
32:55Coming through the mountains, we reach a place
32:59Coming through the mountains, we reach the city of Avila,
33:04which is still bounded by its medieval walls.
33:08And although we've descended down from the mountain passes,
33:11Avila is the highest provincial capital in Spain,
33:15at over 1,100 metres.
33:18This landscape in central Spain is very beautiful,
33:23but it's so stark and harsh.
33:26The climate is really extreme.
33:29It's bitterly cold in winter, unbearably hot in summer.
33:33Even today in autumn, it's cold now, it's chilly.
33:36But I know that in an hour or two, it'll be like a really hot summer's day.
33:41And to make a garden seems completely counterintuitive.
33:49Despite this, I have come here to visit a garden
33:52that doesn't just survive in these conditions,
33:55but positively thrives by embracing them.
33:59This is Dehesa de Llonte,
34:02situated just outside Avila, at the edge of a reservoir.
34:07The garden was designed by the husband-and-wife team,
34:10Miguel Oquijo and Renata Kastner.
34:14And I met Miguel in the garden.
34:19Miguel, when you came here, what was here?
34:22Nothing. The house was nearly derelict, and there was no garden.
34:27So you put walls round an empty space?
34:30An empty space, yeah.
34:31And what was the soil like?
34:33Boulder there, maybe a bit of soil there.
34:36Nothing reliable.
34:39Having taken stock of the site,
34:41Miguel realised that the owner's initial request
34:44for a Mediterranean garden was just not feasible.
34:48For the garden to flourish,
34:50it needed to adapt more closely to the realities of the location.
34:56But he did take inspiration from the home oaks,
34:58with their olive-coloured foliage
35:00that were successfully growing among the granite outcrops.
35:04Olive trees themselves do not traditionally grow well here,
35:08but the owner did insist on having them.
35:12It gets very cold, minus 15, constantly in winter.
35:16As I understand it,
35:18olives really don't withstand very cold temperatures.
35:21So how on earth have these survived minus 15
35:24for, what is it, eight years now?
35:27I did some research, and there's some varieties
35:30up in the north-east of Spain, below Catalonia,
35:34a region that's called Aragon,
35:36and they withstand cold winters as much as here.
35:39So we went for them.
35:45There are three different sections to the garden.
35:49The largest area of planting is either side of the driveway.
35:53Miguel created broad terraces
35:56and then filled them with imported topsoil
35:59and planted trees and tough evergreen shrubs like filaria
36:03that are tightly clipped to capture the flow
36:06and movement of the surrounding landscape.
36:10The central graveled section
36:12is specifically designed for large-scale entertaining,
36:15so it's very open,
36:17with just a few olives and clipped evergreens.
36:22Behind the house is a lawn,
36:24dominated by a magnificent pine overlooking the reservoir.
36:29But other than the irrigated greenness of the lawn,
36:33Miguel and Renata had to work with the landscape
36:37rather than try and impose a garden onto it.
36:41This outcrop, coming into the garden like that,
36:45I mean, this is the only place
36:47where the landscape muscles into the garden, isn't it?
36:50Mm-hm. How have you worked that in?
36:52We had to work this.
36:54It was probably the part of the garden that took more effort
36:58and more time and more money
37:00because we had to bring a big machine.
37:03But this stone, you can see the level was going more or less here,
37:07up to that house.
37:08So, hacked into the rock.
37:10We had to.
37:15So you have this very limited landscape,
37:18beautiful, these stark stones and the colour of the home oak,
37:22and there's not much else in that palette,
37:25these glaucus greens and greys, which, of course, is picked up here.
37:29The stone of the wall, the same granite,
37:32but it's a man-made wall, it's a clear dividing line,
37:36and the manipulation of the curves and the flow of the plants
37:41says it's gardened, it's managed.
37:46But at the same time, there's no dissonance with the landscape.
37:51It blends in, it is of the place.
38:00I've driven here last night in the dark.
38:03It seemed to go on for miles through this flat land.
38:06And looking out the window this morning,
38:08I realised we were driving through vineyards.
38:10There are miles and miles and miles of them.
38:12Spain has more vineyards than anywhere else in the world.
38:19I'm going to go and have a look.
38:21I'm going to go and have a look.
38:23I'm going to have a look.
38:25I'm going to have a look.
38:27I'm going to have a look.
38:31This is the heart of the Castilla y León region.
38:36I'm on my way to visit the Danish winegrower Peter Sisek,
38:40who is famous for producing one of the most expensive wines in Spain.
38:47Peter's farmstead is set on a remote hillside
38:50overlooking the valley of the Duero,
38:52around 50km away from his vineyards,
38:55and the strikingly modern house has a garden that tumbles down the rocky hillside.
39:04Peter worked with the English garden designer, Tom Stewart-Smith,
39:08to create a radical vision of using only local plants and then giving them minimal attention.
39:17The results challenge many preconceptions of what a garden is or should be,
39:22so I had to ask Peter exactly what he was trying to achieve.
39:28Peter, I confess this is quite extreme. Tell me what's happening here.
39:33We don't have water here. The plan is try to do something without irrigation.
39:37Okay.
39:38Because what you see most of it is planted.
39:40How many plants did you put in?
39:42We started with around 15,000.
39:45Wow, okay, so a big planting project.
39:48Yeah.
39:49One is tempted to say, where are they, Peter?
39:52Yeah, exactly.
39:53What happened?
39:55Exactly. On top of it, we even put in more.
39:58Right.
39:59So the waste is enormous.
40:02What we do hope over time will happen is that it will start reseeding itself.
40:07If you look, you have a lot of seedlings.
40:11Is this all being cut back?
40:13Yeah, it's all being cut back.
40:16There are few people who'd have the confidence or even the courage
40:20to experiment on this scale.
40:22But now I know Peter's bigger picture.
40:25It does make sense.
40:27Now, where nature is left to fend for itself,
40:30marginal plants tend to fail and a few others become very dominant.
40:35The result here is that Santalina and Rosemary, for example,
40:39seem to be very happy and form low mounds around the house.
40:44Euphorbia also survives and seeds itself freely across the hillside.
40:49Inevitably, there are many failures, but that's all part of the process.
40:54The result may be horticulturally harsh, but it is fascinating.
41:00What it seems to me you're describing is the least hospitable place in,
41:05if not the world, certainly in Europe, that you could build a garden.
41:10Yeah.
41:11Why bother to try and fight nature to such an extent?
41:14Or maybe you're not fighting nature.
41:16I don't think we're fighting nature.
41:18We're trying to understand what nature needs in this site.
41:21OK. And it is trial and error a lot.
41:25Do you think this is something that all of us need to be thinking about
41:29or something that only applies when you have extreme conditions like this?
41:33So it's a good laboratory.
41:35Even in the worst conditions, you can actually try to push something forward.
41:39It is a lab, isn't it? It is a laboratory.
41:44Peter doesn't use any compost to feed his garden,
41:47but he does use biodynamic compost on his vineyards,
41:51and that is made at the farmstead.
41:54And for it, you need manure, and that needs cattle to produce it.
42:02The same compost is also used on Peter's elaborate
42:05and much more conventional vegetable garden.
42:09Which makes what he's doing, or rather not doing, on the hillside
42:13seem even more extraordinary and interesting.
42:21It's fascinating to compare and contrast the similarities and differences
42:26between yesterday's garden by Miguel Urquijo and this garden,
42:32because they both share the similarities of being sensitive to the environment
42:37and blending the colours and the shapes and the forms.
42:40But the big difference is that yesterday,
42:44Miguel had created really good growing conditions.
42:48Here there is no water. It's an experiment.
42:51Where it will go, who knows?
42:54But maybe, actually, this is the future.
42:59MUSIC
43:06Having seen how we may all have to adapt and plant in years to come,
43:11I now want to step back in time and look at Spain's past.
43:16So I'm on a 260-kilometre journey south,
43:21bound for the ancient city of Toledo.
43:25Toledo's history stretches a long way back.
43:30It was occupied by the Romans, the Visigoths and then the Moors,
43:34after which the Emperor Charles V, who was the father of Philip II,
43:38made it his main residence.
43:45Toledo's setting is magnificent,
43:48and its history manifests itself from every aspect,
43:52including its gardens, and I'm going to visit two of them.
43:59This is Palacio de Galeana, just outside the city of Toledo.
44:04It's called after Galeana,
44:06who was the daughter of the royal household who owned the palace,
44:10and she married Charlemagne,
44:12and the story is she renounced her Islamic faith
44:15in order to make the marriage.
44:23MUSIC PLAYS
44:31The palace was built in the 13th century
44:34by King Alfonso X of Castile,
44:37on the site of an earlier summer villa of the Moorish king of Toledo.
44:41The Moors were driven from Toledo at the end of the 11th century
44:44after 350 years of rule,
44:46but the surviving 13th-century building
44:49reflects their tradition and history,
44:51especially in the Islamic arches and doors.
44:56We know that the gardens were an important aspect
44:59of the various incarnations of the palace.
45:04But by the late 1950s,
45:07the palace and its gardens had been abandoned
45:11and were badly neglected,
45:13until it was bought by Carmen Marañón and her husband Alejandro.
45:19And although he died quite soon afterwards,
45:22she devoted the rest of her life to restoring both the building
45:27and making a garden around it.
45:36And the garden's fascinating
45:38because it's a combination of different cultures.
45:40You obviously have the Islamic culture, which relates to the building,
45:45but she also planted all these cypresses,
45:48which give it a distinctive Mediterranean silhouette and feel.
45:52And, on top of that, you have a very strong Italian influence.
45:57And it's this quite unlikely combination,
46:01which actually makes a very Spanish garden,
46:04at least of a distinctive period.
46:15The second garden I'm visiting in Toledo is very special.
46:20It is private,
46:22so I can't say exactly where it is or who it belongs to,
46:26but very few people get a chance to see it.
46:30It shares the fact that its story is integral, in this case literally,
46:35with the building it is set amongst.
46:39The garden is set in the ruins of a 15th-century monastery.
46:44And the grandeur of the surviving buildings
46:47is a very important part of the story.
46:50It's a garden that's been abandoned for a long time.
46:53It's a garden that's been abandoned for a long time.
46:56The garden is set in the ruins of a 15th-century monastery.
47:00And the grandeur of the surviving structure
47:03is matched by the scale of the planting,
47:06combining to make something breathtakingly dramatic.
47:18However, there was no sign of a garden here
47:21when work started on renovating the site in 1985.
47:26There are different sections or parts of the garden,
47:29but the heart of it is centred on the ruins of the old church and cloisters.
47:34MUSIC PLAYS
47:54Obviously, the first impression is to be overwhelmed by the scale,
47:59to have a full-blown monastery
48:02becoming the structure of a garden.
48:05But actually, the thing that strikes me most from a gardening point of view
48:09is the restraint.
48:11For many people, there would be a temptation to plant climbing roses
48:15and all kinds of things to cover the walls
48:18and use the walls as a kind of glorious trellis.
48:22But the restraint and just having the green, simple shapes
48:26and letting the building be as much part of the garden as it deserves,
48:31which is a lot because it's so extraordinary,
48:34I think really adds to the beauty.
48:44The monastery was a thriving religious and cultural centre
48:48until the 19th century, when it was pillaged by Napoleon's troops
48:53and later confiscated by the government,
48:56who then sold it to become a private residence.
49:00And the current owner's family bought it in the 1940s,
49:04although the restoration didn't begin for another 40 years after that.
49:09Really interesting to see that the Christian arch
49:13compared to the Islamic arches of Palazzo dei Galliama.
49:22The fusion of Islamic and Christian cultures
49:25is what I find makes Spanish historical gardens and buildings so fascinating.
49:31So here in one section,
49:33there's a very Christian laurel maze amongst the cypress trees.
49:38In another, there's a water labyrinth.
49:44But the most dramatic feature of the garden
49:48is this long flight of brick steps,
49:52water running down the centre in a narrow rill
49:56before cascading into a pool at the bottom.
50:04That is quite something.
50:06There's absolutely nothing, no hint of a garden here before.
50:10So to see a modern garden made in the Islamic style,
50:15and it is pure Islamic with the rill and the little fountains
50:19and then the long stretch will come out like this,
50:22is something I don't think I've ever seen before on this scale,
50:26with this confidence and this drama.
50:28And, of course, it's very, very simple.
50:30And there is that other quirky fact
50:32that at the end of this big, dramatic Islamic garden...
50:37..is a crucifix.
50:40I think that this garden, with its simplicity of planting
50:44and the dramatic fusion of Islamic and Christian history,
50:48seems to get right to the heart of what makes a truly Spanish garden.
51:02From Toledo, I'm heading east, right across to the Mediterranean coast,
51:07to my final destination on this trip, the city of Valencia.
51:13Valencia is Spain's third largest city after Madrid and Barcelona.
51:20It was founded by the Romans and lies on a highly fertile flood plain.
51:26Its climate is characterised by hot summers and various rainfall.
51:31But, like Madrid, it does have many generous tree-lined boulevards
51:36that cast a delicious green shade,
51:39and also features many beautiful public gardens.
51:49It's at one of these public gardens that I'm making my first stop.
51:54This is Monforte, an elegant, neoclassical garden built in the 1860s
52:00on the site of a former vegetable plot.
52:04The gardens of Monforte were made for a family
52:08in the middle of the 19th century,
52:10and they were intended as an Italianate, formal,
52:14but actually quite intimate garden.
52:16And the family used them and enjoyed them privately for over 100 years.
52:22But in 1970, the council bought it,
52:25and in 1971, they opened it to the public.
52:29And since then, it has been a haven of tranquillity
52:33in the heart of the busy city.
52:47Valencia has been chosen as the European Green Capital for 2024,
52:54and it has a newer and much bigger public space to be proud of.
53:04Valencia was founded alongside the banks of the River Turia,
53:08and across the centuries, this vast river periodically flooded,
53:12and in 1957, there was a disastrous flood, over 80 people were killed,
53:16and the city decided to divert the river,
53:20and the city decided to divert the river.
53:23Now, having done this, they were left with a dry riverbed
53:26and they thought it would be an excellent idea to build a motorway
53:29to whiz people to and from the airport.
53:32But the citizens of Valencia revolted against this idea
53:36and had a much more interesting and radical proposal.
53:43The river is ours and we want it green, was their slogan.
53:48So the people of Valencia overturned the motorway proposal
53:51and won their battle to turn the dry Turia riverbed
53:55into a massive urban park.
53:58And work began on this in the early 1980s.
54:06At nine kilometres long and around 200 hectares in size,
54:11the Turia has now become a hugely successful green corridor
54:17that flows vibrantly right through the centre of the city.
54:34Up there at street level, it's a normal modern city going to work.
54:39But down here, even though we're quite close, it's much quieter.
54:43The sound is muffled by the fact we're below ground
54:46and the trees and the shrubs, which, by the way, are really fragrant.
54:50There's a new mown grass, there's the smell of leaves,
54:53there's the flowers and the blossom.
54:55But it's not a retreat. This is a busy place.
54:58People are going to work, they're walking, they're cycling.
55:01So in its own way, this too is a busy part of the city.
55:06But the difference is huge.
55:17Thanks to sustainable development projects like the Turia Gardens,
55:21Valencia aims to be completely carbon neutral by 2025.
55:28I met Ignacio Lacomba,
55:30who is responsible for sustainable gardening at the city council.
55:36This is one of the most visited and used gardens in the city.
55:41It's really a health asset
55:44because lots of people go there to make sports.
55:48Is Valencia leading the way in terms of greening the city in Spain,
55:54or is this something that's happening all over Spain?
55:56Are people looking at you to follow the lead?
55:59Yes, I think so,
56:01because Valencia has made big efforts
56:05in the matter of urban sustainability
56:08and ecological and green transition.
56:12And this has been recently recognised all around Europe.
56:23The Turia Gardens stretch all the way
56:26from the old city of Valencia in the west
56:29to the city of arts and sciences in the east.
56:33And this is a stunning modern architectural and cultural complex,
56:38filled with dramatic sculptural buildings
56:41like the clam-shaped Opera House
56:44and a bridge strung like a harp.
56:52There are plans to extend the Turia Park
56:55beyond the city of arts and sciences
56:57right the way to the port of Valencia.
57:00But all this is part of the goal that Ignacio Lacomba told me
57:04of making Valencia the greenest city in Europe.
57:09My journey in this central area of the country
57:14has been all too brief, but very intense.
57:18And all of it confirms any preconceptions I might have had
57:23that this is a complex and vast country.
57:26There is so much to see and so much to learn.
57:30But what I have seen has been thrilling,
57:33to see gardens made by and for children.
57:39Gardens that are immaculate and beautifully designed.
57:44Gardens made in seemingly impossible situations.
57:50Gardens in cities and gardens in the middle of the countryside.
57:55And I've seen some lovely dogs.
58:00The next programme takes me to the south of Spain,
58:04where I will visit the self-styled world capital of palm trees.
58:11An Islamic paradise garden built for a duchess.
58:16And a hugely ambitious project
58:18to reconnect a coastal community back to its plants and gardens.
58:23How many pots are there in all in the city?
58:25More than 16,000.
58:27Wow. Wow, wow, wow.
58:35The World Capital of Palm Trees
58:38The World Capital of Palm Trees
58:40The World Capital of Palm Trees
58:42The World Capital of Palm Trees
58:44The World Capital of Palm Trees
58:46The World Capital of Palm Trees
58:48The World Capital of Palm Trees
58:50The World Capital of Palm Trees
58:52The World Capital of Palm Trees
58:54The World Capital of Palm Trees
58:56The World Capital of Palm Trees