Tom Hart Dyke talks about Lullingstone Castle gardens
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00:00The other weekend it was 25 years since me and a friend tried to cross this area on the
00:04Panamanian-Colombian border looking for new species of orchids.
00:09Idiots!
00:10And we got ourselves kidnapped by this Colombian guerrilla group.
00:13We should never have been there in the first place, but after being kidnapped, ten months
00:18in total we were kidnapped for, three months into our captivity they said you've got
00:23five hours before we shoot you and I started dreaming up the world garden in the centre
00:27pages of my diary.
00:29It was petrifying and it's as if I'm talking about somebody else, I mean I cannot believe
00:34that we got through it and I cannot believe that we were silly enough to go and I cannot
00:38believe that we survived, especially that day when they said they were going to execute
00:43us.
00:44But the garden, although I didn't believe I was really going to fulfil my dream because
00:48they said they were going to kill us, but it just kept me going.
00:51It distracted me from the thought of the terrifying circumstances around us and the thought of
00:57death.
00:58It was a fantastic distraction and I know gardening is therapeutic, but this is absolutely
01:03ridiculous.
01:04It was a way of complete, pure and utter botanical escapism and it saved my life.
01:10Dreaming up the garden during captivity saved my life during very, very scary times.