A Year at Kew_01of12_Pests in the Palm House
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00:00The Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, a 300-acre oasis seven miles from the centre of London.
00:11They've been growing plants here for 250 years, but that's not all they produce.
00:17The School of Horticulture is the most prestigious in the world,
00:21a highly competitive hotbed of tomorrow's gardening talent.
00:25They keep the ghosts of the past in a glass case behind the door,
00:29and if you look closely at the class of 69, you might notice a certain A.F. Titchmarsh,
00:34an old boy, this year invited back to give out prizes to a new generation.
00:40And to me, there's still nothing quite like watching the year turn at Kew.
00:45So please accept an Access All Areas invitation behind the scenes of the Royal Botanic Gardens
00:51to reveal the secrets, to meet some of the extraordinary people who work here,
00:56and to enjoy a year at Kew.
01:15At the south end of the garden, an old beech tree has honey fungus and must come down.
01:21For John Hammerton and Kew's tree gang,
01:24this felling is their sign that a long winter has finally given way to spring.
01:29You don't often get to fell big trees like this.
01:34I haven't had one yet go wrong, but they can go very wrong.
01:38In the States, they call them oakmen and nookmen,
01:42and the nookmen are the people that squash roads and squash cars,
01:46and the oakmen are the professionals.
01:50I'm sad about taking any of them down, any of the trees that we take down,
01:55but if they're dead and diseased, then it's like anything in the world.
01:59You've got to take one out, put a new one in.
02:01There's always going to be a new one put in.
02:03But I get very attached to the trees, especially at Kew.
02:06People come round, and I see people hugging trees all the time.
02:10They say that you can hear the sap rising in trees.
02:13They're called tree huggers, and there's lots of them about, and I'm quite one of them as well.
02:18John doesn't just hug trees, he climbs them too.
02:23It's just old-fashioned climbing.
02:25I just climb up by pulling myself up.
02:28Pelvic thrust is what it's called.
02:32You obviously love trees.
02:34Did you used to go climbing them when you were a kid, John?
02:37I used to climb trees when I was young over the pits.
02:40I live in Ham, and I've got lots of pits and lots of trees,
02:44and that's all I've done from a youngster.
02:46A job like this is just carrying on my childhood.
02:49Right, I'm rolling.
03:01This always makes me a bit nervous,
03:03but if you have a head for heights, then I'm told there's no job like it.
03:07When I was a student at Kew, everyone wanted to get a placement on the tree gang,
03:11and they still do.
03:13And for anyone who ever dreamed of flying,
03:16this is as close as you're likely to get, so long as you don't mind an audience.
03:20John always draws a crowd, which today includes his boss, Tony Kirkham.
03:33You have to admit that for a man who uses a chainsaw, this is poetry in motion.
03:39Take one off where your foot is, and then one below.
03:44So I get two?
03:46Yeah, is that alright?
03:49The gardens have been changing and developing for 250 years.
03:53These days, Kew treads a fine line between conserving a historic landscape
03:58and running a 21st century tourist attraction.
04:02Manager of the conservation area, Simon Cole,
04:05is getting ready for the Go Wild festival,
04:08a celebration of Britain's rich variety of flora and fauna,
04:12and, Kew hopes, its biggest attraction of the year.
04:16You know, when we sat around the table
04:19and started to dream up ideas for this Go Wild festival,
04:24we came up with some absurd ideas, along with some good ones.
04:28Absurd being something like
04:31two life-size Tyrannosaurus rexes fighting it out in the palm house.
04:35And someone would have come up with the idea of
04:39what about an underground badger set that you can walk into.
04:44Yeah, well, you know, that's a good idea.
04:47And now seeing it all come together, I'm really happy with it.
04:52As it's in part of the gardens that I manage,
04:55I'm certainly going to be using it a lot.
04:59If I'm running late and can't get home, I'll bed down in here.
05:03Definitely.
05:05How much longer have you got, Simon?
05:08Well, officially, next Thursday.
05:12Doesn't look like it that much, really, at the moment.
05:15But, er, we'll have it done.
05:21So the pressure's on.
05:23With deadlines approaching, the badger set has a long way to go,
05:27and the public are going to expect to see it finished.
05:31Felling a large tree like this beach takes time and patience,
05:35especially in such a public place.
05:38The first big sections are about to be cut.
05:41Preparation is everything.
05:43John's ready to wield his chainsaw,
05:45but the only way he can bring this tree down
05:48is by dangling from a line 20 metres up in the branches.
05:53HE CHAINSAW BUZZES
06:04As each section is cut,
06:06the idea is to attach it securely to a cable and pulley system
06:09rigged between the beach and a neighbouring healthy tree.
06:18Now, with a bit of luck,
06:20giant sections of the trunk can be safely lowered to the ground
06:24with no danger to either the public
06:26or valuable trees and shrubs nearby.
06:40PIANO MUSIC
06:51This is the conservation area back here.
06:54It covers about sort of 37, 40 acres,
06:57and really it is completely different to the rest of the garden.
07:00We're managing this area for biodiversity conservation, really,
07:03so the sort of plants that you'd find in the garden
07:06that the gardeners spend eight hours a day pulling out
07:09are really important here.
07:11Things like stinging nettles, brambles,
07:13you know, all the kind of weeds that people are so...
07:16people call weeds are important,
07:18usually important wildflowers in this area,
07:20so, you know, I'm not...
07:22I'm not worried too much about how it looks in terms of being tidy.
07:26Which is just as well, as Simon has his hands full
07:29finishing the badger set
07:31before the impending launch of the Go Wild festival.
07:34Inside, the earth has finally been dug out
07:37and the set's ready for details to be added.
07:40But with lots of work still to be done to the outside,
07:43the cavalry's just arrived from the arboricultural unit
07:46in the shape of Tony Hall and a team of helpers.
07:49This makes your average garden makeover
07:52look like a walk in the park.
07:54It's taking shape now, isn't it?
07:56Normally, things are fairly well structured
07:58and we've got our days and weeks planned,
08:00but because it's Go Wild festival,
08:02we just have a lot on to get done in a short period of time,
08:05so, yeah, it's been very, very sort of panicky at the last minute,
08:08but hopefully we're on top of it,
08:10and it'll all come together for the day.
08:12It's different from their day-to-day maintenance,
08:14especially the time of year,
08:16we tend to get down to our maintenance,
08:18and that's it, so it's fairly basic.
08:20So it's a nice change for them to come up
08:22and, you know, work with other people,
08:24race around, get a job done.
08:26No, I think they relish it, actually.
08:28And your optimistic forecast for the weather today?
08:30Not good, mate.
08:34It's not pretty.
08:41Originally, Kew was the playground of royalty.
08:44These days, it counts on the public to pay for its gardens
08:47and 21st-century laboratories,
08:50and Kew Palace, once a place for Mad King George to convalesce,
08:54is now just a backdrop to a garden.
08:57So these days, Kew is always on the lookout
08:59for people with ideas to capture the public interest.
09:03Judith Palmer's a woman with ideas,
09:05and Kew has given her a mission.
09:07Hi, are you Emma?
09:09Oh, hi, I'm Judith.
09:11Hi, nice to see you.
09:13I've been asked to put together...
09:15Kew have asked me to come up with an idea for Go Wild,
09:18and I've been an amateur botanist all my life,
09:21so I was wanting to do something with British wildflowers.
09:24And then I woke up one morning
09:26and I just had the word, the phrase,
09:28the field hospital in my head,
09:30and I thought the field hospital, and I thought, mm.
09:32And I've kind of been trying to mull this over
09:34and working out what I can do with it,
09:36but I wanted to sort of look at native flowers
09:38and maybe the medicinal uses of them.
09:40This one's quite funny, the comfrey.
09:42Yeah. Or knit bone, isn't it?
09:44It's the other thing it's known as.
09:46The slimy substance of the root made in a posset of ale
09:49and given to drink against the pain in the back,
09:52gotten by any violent motion as wrestling
09:55or overmuch use of women.
09:57Mm. So that's comfrey.
09:59That's quite a good one.
10:01There's another one down here, which is quite funny.
10:03This one here. Camilla Bulgaris.
10:05Oh, yeah. A lady's mantle.
10:07Helpeth also such maids or women
10:09that have overgreat flagging breasts,
10:12causing them to grow less and hard.
10:15When people think of herbal medicine,
10:17they always think of Chinese herbal medicine
10:19and, you know, it sometimes be echinacea,
10:21which is from North America, all that kind of thing,
10:23and they don't realise that British plants are actually...
10:26have been very valuable
10:28and still are very valuable medicinally today.
10:30So I'm kind of trying to work it out, what I'm going to do,
10:33but I'm sort of...
10:35..hospital-type arrangement in a field
10:38about medicines from the field.
10:41And in a disused glasshouse behind the scenes,
10:44Judith's vision is being realised.
10:47I've got a friend, Tim Cole, who's built fantastic structures.
10:52He builds out of reclaimed wood and old bits.
10:55He scavenges. He will not have anything new, even nails.
10:59They have to be rusty and he has to have found them.
11:02And so I thought, can I build some glorified garden shed
11:06of an indeterminate age, so you can't quite tell
11:09whether it's maybe been at Kew for 90 years
11:12and you've just never spotted it before.
11:16Tim is also Simon Cole's brother.
11:20We were brought up in a way that by the age of about five,
11:23I think we were denailing wood
11:25and dragging it down to the cellar to get reused, recycled.
11:30The whole thing about what you're doing here, which is good,
11:33is that you're building something which is, you know,
11:36really very close to the concept of what this festival stands for,
11:39and that is, you know, sort of sustainable issues.
11:44There are 14,000 trees here,
11:47a stunning sight no matter what the season,
11:50making it one of the best-known and best-loved collections in the gardens.
11:54Though now strictly discouraged,
11:56a few have carvings, like the Condemned Beach,
12:00sweetheart's etchings going back over three decades.
12:04This could be a heart.
12:07These are obviously people's initials.
12:11Names.
12:14Rosie.
12:16It goes back to about 69, some of these etchings,
12:19so some people will be a bit depressed that it's gone.
12:23It won't be long now for this grand old tree.
12:45The trees just don't want to fall, do they?
12:47They seem to hold on and hold on for the last second.
12:51Cos there's about four inches just holding that,
12:54one strip of four-inch timber holding that whole piece,
12:58especially with the lean as well.
13:05I love that sound.
13:07It's been there a long time and it just doesn't want to go.
13:09Just don't want to go.
13:18The ground moved for me.
13:22Well, there you go.
13:24One more down.
13:26The last of this year's winter removals.
13:30But look at the hole it's left. What a shame.
13:33You know, a big tree like that leaves a big space in there,
13:36just plant a small tree,
13:38that's going to take another 150 years to grow.
13:42So, not in my time, when I was a kid,
13:45so not in my time will I see another big tree here.
13:50You're quite sad about that coming down, aren't you?
13:52Well, you know, it's a big tree.
13:54It's been here a lot longer than any one I know.
14:00There she was, down.
14:05It went where we wanted it to as well, didn't it?
14:09Yeah, good film.
14:16MUSIC
14:31Tony Hall has had an emergency call
14:34from another national institution, the Kew Gardens Constabulary.
14:38They have a problem that only Tony can handle.
14:41There's three small clusters in the tree.
14:44The main one will be the swarm.
14:46In actual fact, what I'm going to do now,
14:49I'm going to get a box and just collect them.
14:52Luckily for Kew, Tony's a keen beekeeper.
14:55Yeah, this is a nucleus box.
14:58You can use it for collecting swarms in.
15:00So I'm going to put them in this for now,
15:02take them away to another area
15:04and hopefully make a good hive for next year.
15:07Probably one swarm.
15:09One swarm.
15:10And what they've done is they've just split
15:12and they've clustered in three different areas.
15:14This is a mass of bees that have swarmed from a hive
15:17to relocate because where they were,
15:19there wasn't enough room for many more.
15:21If the weather goes downhill,
15:23the bees on the outside of the cluster will die.
15:25If they get too cold, they'll die.
15:27They're keeping the inside ones warm.
15:29So, and again, if it rains,
15:31which the forecast is for it to get wet and windy,
15:33so they'll also become slightly more aggressive.
15:36Unfortunately, the field hospital
15:38is still rather more field than hospital.
15:41Work is going slowly
15:43and Simon's been worrying about Tim's progress.
15:46Tim, if you need me to cut that...
15:48Sausage roll.
15:49If you need me to cut that up in the yard...
15:51Is that going to be OK?
15:53Yeah, I can get that cut. No worries.
15:55Because if they've got to organise it and do the paperwork...
16:03We love a bit of paperwork.
16:05Could be a few days.
16:07Shall I put the kettle on?
16:11Have you seen this side?
16:25The bees are attracting an audience.
16:27The swarm is getting agitated
16:29and Tony is getting worried.
16:31It's been a weekend.
16:33If the weather picks up, the potential is for there to be a lot of people,
16:36especially in this area, because they come to the lake to see the birds.
16:39So, yeah, it could be a problem.
16:43So I'll gather the bees up
16:45and we'll put them out of harm's way,
16:48both for the public and for the bees' sake.
16:52Basically, all I'm going to do is cut them off the tree
16:56and drop them into the box.
16:59Just in case.
17:10I'll lay them in there a minute.
17:12I need to probably shake them off in a moment,
17:15but that'll do for now.
17:29And the last one, which is a bit bigger.
17:39A lot of bees in the air.
17:41What they should do is,
17:43all the ones that are hanging around,
17:45as long as the queen's in the box, will all end up in the box.
17:49Drop those in there for a minute.
17:52Make sure they sort themselves out.
17:54Just rub some of these bees back in.
17:59And then this evening, in an hour or two,
18:02I'll probably come and collect them and take them away,
18:05and all these flying bees we should have as well.
18:10So...
18:13How's the bed going? All right?
18:15It's stater there.
18:19Oh, dear. I should empty all this stuff.
18:24Right, Si, what cup do you want?
18:26The dirty one or the even dirtier one?
18:28I think I've capitalised on the situation and gone for the dirty one.
18:33Smart choice!
18:44Everything is bursting into flower,
18:46and the garden is filled with blossom and sweet scents.
18:50But behind the scenes in the Jodrell nursery,
18:53some very different flowers should be blooming soon.
18:56They're famous for being among the most obnoxious plants in the world.
19:01John Sitch and Lynn Jenkins have the unenviable job of caring for them.
19:05Oh, you can smell that paleo-lithonious, can't you?
19:10And the bulbiferous smells like it's still out as well.
19:13Among all the specimens, one very special bud has appeared.
19:17They've waited seven years for this particular plant to do its thing,
19:21not only is it extremely smelly,
19:23but it's reckoned to be the largest flower in the world.
19:26This is one very famous one, the big one, the Titanarum.
19:30This is Amorphophallus titanum.
19:32It's coming up now. It could be a flower and it could be a leaf.
19:36We're waiting to see. The plant knows what it is, but we don't.
19:40Here we are. I'll just clear a bit of the compost away.
19:43It's beginning to look a little bit fire-shaped,
19:47which we're hoping might signify
19:49that it's going to be a flower as opposed to a leaf.
19:52But we don't know.
19:54And Lynn isn't the only one troubled by uncertainties.
19:58It's going to go right to the wire. It really is.
20:01There'll be a queue of badgers waiting to move in.
20:06Bloody been here for about three weeks now
20:08waiting for this bloody set to be finished.
20:10Bloody outrageous.
20:13Yeah, that one's going to be tight, I know that.
20:16Well, it won't be as tight as my one.
20:19Right, Lynn, what do you reckon?
20:22John and Lynn are trying to work out
20:24if the Titanarum is going to flower at long last.
20:27Looking at it, I think if it was a leaf,
20:32it's going to be a flower.
20:34It's going to be a flower.
20:36Yeah, it's the right shape to be a flower bud.
20:39If it was a leaf, I think it would be thinner,
20:42more pointed at this stage.
20:44It looks good comparing it to the photographs from last year.
20:47Yeah.
20:48So you're saying I can have two people, Fran and Tina?
20:51Yeah.
20:52Isn't Fran smaller than...?
20:54If you had a couple of lads or a couple of strong people,
20:57how long would it take to get all this out?
20:59Well, to get it out, it wouldn't take more than an hour.
21:02Well, I'll get Steve Ruddy and Gareth
21:04or I'll come down here with someone and we just work it all out.
21:07OK.
21:08Monday?
21:09Yeah.
21:10Just lay it on the grass, sort of thing.
21:12It'd be good to get it outside, Tim.
21:14No, no, absolutely.
21:16Because people are beginning to wonder.
21:20The Palm House, built in 1844.
21:24The finest Victorian glasshouse in the world.
21:28It's home to an extraordinary and exotic collection of plants
21:32and is the garden's top visitor attraction.
21:36But there's a problem for keeper of the house, Emma Fox.
21:39One of the things that a lot of the visitors to Kew aren't really aware of,
21:43they see the plants and the green side of things,
21:45but they're not necessarily so conscious of the fact that
21:48because this is an artificial environment,
21:50we've actually got a lot of pests and little creepy crawlies in here
21:53which actually damage the plants and we need to control.
21:55So we're actually quite active and conscious of maintaining an environment
21:59where we're as pest-free as possible.
22:03Certain plants, you get to know, will be attacked by certain pests.
22:16On this plant here, behind this vine growing behind here,
22:19the brown leaves are just the fact that the leaves are getting older,
22:22but this discolouration to the leaf,
22:24the actual green pigment's gone completely from the leaf
22:27and it's become kind of like silvery and yellowed.
22:30That's caused by thrips which, when you actually start to look at the plant,
22:34you see these tiny, tiny little crawling insects over the surface of the leaf.
22:38All they're doing basically is feeding from the contents of the cells of the plant
22:43and they're extracting the chlorophyll, the green part of the leaf,
22:46while they're sucking this up.
22:48That results in this discolouration of the plant.
22:52And you might think, well, so what?
22:54But it's the chlorophyll that does the photosynthesising,
22:56that's what makes the energy that helps the plant grow,
22:58puts on new leaf flowers, etc.
23:00So it's actually quite important that we try and control these pests.
23:06After hours, once the house is empty,
23:09Emma transforms it into a mysterious and magical rainforest.
23:16Kew has a policy of not using chemical where possible,
23:19but much more user-friendly methods of controlling our pests
23:23and this can be done using insects which might eat other pests.
23:28We're actually tonight using fungus,
23:30so we're actually going to apply fungal spores into the palm house
23:32and they'll actually attack a number of our pest problems we've got here,
23:36which include thrips, mealybugs, aphids, which damage the plant.
23:41The fungus that we're using requires humid conditions
23:44and so if you can actually make a really humid environment
23:46around each of the leaves where the pests are lurking,
23:50then you're increasing the chances of the fungus
23:53actually being able to penetrate the body of the insect
23:55and then the hyphae of the fungus will grow into the body
23:58and that's how the insects die,
24:00actually just get infected with fungus
24:02and have quite a gory death in that respect.
24:08The Titan Arum is growing fast
24:10and Mike Marsh, manager of the Princess of Wales Conservatory,
24:14has decided to move the plant
24:16while it's still small enough to fit through the door.
24:18I'm just worried about getting down that slope, really.
24:21Anxious moment.
24:25Well done.
24:27Yeah.
24:32Put the fleece on just to cover it over a bit.
24:35Right, so we're away.
24:39There's an unnerving chill in the morning air,
24:42a far cry from the Sumatran climate the Titan enjoys in the wild.
24:46John and Mike negotiate the giant pot
24:49into Kew's newest glasshouse, the Princess of Wales Conservatory,
24:53a little piece of the tropics on the edge of London
24:56and for the Titan, home from home.
24:59This house has ten different computer-controlled climate zones.
25:03The heat and humidity is monitored 24 hours a day.
25:07For a tropical plant, life doesn't get much better than this.
25:12One safely delivered titanium.
25:16Big relief. Big relief, yeah.
25:22Will Kew be able to show off this much-awaited flowering giant,
25:26or will it just produce leaves again?
25:38Once a Kew student,
25:40Emma is now the youngest keeper in the palm house's 160-year history.
25:45This is the palm house the public never sees,
25:48and the one Emma loves best.
25:51That's proper rainforest.
25:53That's the best bit, when you've got the lights coming through.
25:56That's my favourite part.
26:11I do like to make something that looks really nice for people to enjoy,
26:15and you have people walking in here,
26:17and you get a sense of achievement
26:19in the fact that they're just appreciating what you're doing here.
26:23They might not even be aware of what you're creating, but we enjoy it.
26:27You can get on your bike to go home, and you can be in a bit of a mood
26:30because you've had, I don't know, paperwork to go through
26:33or something's got on your nerves,
26:35and I cycle away and look back at the house,
26:37and that's like, oh, my baby.
26:55That's the damping down.
26:57It's real in the hoses so we don't trip over them when we come to spray
27:00because it gets so misty,
27:02you can't actually see where you're walking very easily.
27:05So the next step's going to be putting the fungus into the tank sprayers
27:09and then spraying it out,
27:11and then we'll just leave it to cook on a low heat overnight,
27:15and that'll be it.
27:26They're inventive souls in the palm house.
27:29These Heath Robinson contraptions are leaf blowers
27:32converted to do a very different job.
27:35Billions of fungal spores are blasted out
27:38to start their murderous work in the misty darkness
27:41and preserve Emma's precious collection.
28:02That's it for this night's job done.
28:33Next time, as Tim starts to burn the midnight oil,
28:37will the field hospital be ready in time for the go-wild launch?
28:42After seven years of waiting,
28:45will the mighty Titanarium ever put in an appearance?
28:49And John gets caught up in some fishy business
28:52with a government minister.
28:54Want to know more about Kew?
28:56Then log on to the BBC website.
29:02.