Monty Don Explores Secret Greek Gardens Monty Don's Adriatic Gardens

For centuries Venice was one of the great cultural and economic centers of Europe and every traveler made a beeline for this beautiful city. Although few visited for its gardens. Nevertheless on this journey I'm looking for gardens where you might not expect to find them. Starting here in Venice with its hidden horticultural treasures. I then follow the ancient Venetian trading route down the Adriatic. Discovering glorious landscapes and gardening gems. With Croatian tropical and monastic gardens and perfect wildflower meadows. What could be better? Wildflowers on the ground, bears and wolves on the hillside. Fabulous! In Corfu I visit a breathtaking private garden. It doesn't happen often, and on mainland Greece a modern masterpiece. Athens a huge new park as well as an inner city allotment. Oh thank you! Before ending my journey on a small island in a very personal garden that I've been helping to create. Bruno is it nice? I think it's nice too. I'm now on the final section of my Adriatic garden journey and have reached Greece. I've been visiting Greece for many years both for holidays and more recently to help make a garden. But I'm starting at the most northerly and greenest of all the Greek islands Corfu. Then I will head to Athens, travel down the coast of the Peloponnese and from there take a ferry to Idra, a Greek island that I have a special connection with. I'm beginning this leg of the journey here in Corfu town and behind me is the old Venetian fort and that fort is an indication of the strong links that Venice had with Corfu because Corfu was part of their republic. So I'm fascinated to see how all these cultural layers and influences are reflected in their garden. I'm first visiting a garden a few miles down the coast from Corfu town. It's the Krivatsoula estate and just as the original Venetian owners would have done, I am entering it from the sea. I come here because this is one of the very few surviving Venetian houses and it's been faithfully restored both inside and out. Before I go in the cave you can't smell it but there is the most incredible rich fragrance from the pittosporum overhanging the wall here, covered in flowers, which is so typical of Greek gardens at this time of year. The estate was built in the 16th century. It's both a country retreat surrounded by its garden and as a major agricultural holding with groves of citrus fruit, pomegranates and fields of potatoes and hay. And like many similar estates on the island, it was huge, stretching to over 500 hectares. And the direct access to the sea meant all their produce could easily be transported to Corfu town or up the Dalmatian coast to Venice. But the most prized product of all was olive oil. The Venetians brought the olive tree to Corfu and they did this to ensure that they had a really good supply of high quality olive oil for themselves. And to that end they encouraged the Corfiots by paying them 10 gold pieces for every 100 olive trees that were planted. A particular type of olive, very small, dark, but producing very good copious amounts of oil. And by the time the Venetians left at the end of the 18th century, there were millions of these trees on the island. I wanted to understand more about the links with Venice. So, sitting under the arches of a Venetian house in Corfu town, I met up with the art historian Daria Coscuro. I know that the Venetians came to Corfu. When did that relationship begin? That was at the end of the 14th century and it was the beginning of a very long relationship that lasted 400 years. And did they invade and conquer it? No, it happened seamlessly. Nobody got shot, I think. But why? What was it about Corfu that the Venetians wanted? Why was it a good move for them? As Corfu sits very strategically at the gate of the Adriatic Sea and the Ionian Sea, basically the entrance to the Venetian Republic, the landscape of Corfu is something that the Venetians left us. Corfu is a huge olive grove, a magnificent olive tree forest. And they really pushed the Corfeans to turn to that sort of agriculture. And then when the British defeated Napoleon, we have a British influence. I mean, it's changing over, isn't it? You're going Venetian, French, British coming through. Yes, the ginger beer I'm drinking here. Couldn't be more British. But underneath all that, it's a Greek island. Absolutely. And the Corfeans have assimilated and negotiated so many influences, but they always felt that they were Greeks. How interesting. Thank you. Thank you so much. 400 years of Venetian influence have left magnificent olive trees and a lasting architectural legacy. But in the 20th century, a British family have become synonymous with the island. This is the Durrell Garden in the middle of Corfu town. And it's named, of course, after the Durrell family, which I guess for many British people are the first thing they think of when they think of Corfu. In his best selling books, the naturalist Gerald Durrell described the idyllic years he spent growing up in Corfu, where his fascination of flora and fauna was first sparked. Gerald's wife, Lee, has continued his passion for conservation and has invited me to join her on a visit to wildflower meadows high up in the north of the island. It's an hour's drive up the narrow winding roads that climb Mount Panto Crattle. As we climb higher, it's not hard to see why Gerald Durrell was moved to call Corfu the Garden of the Gods. Lee Durrell and I come to Old Perithea, which is now an abandoned village. It's rather grand art. Although the buildings are empty, the surrounding fields are filled with astonishing wildflowers. Isn't this just gorgeous? It's beyond beautiful, it's wonderful. What I love about this is it's quite subtle, it's quite understated in a way, and yet the more you look, the more you see. Looking across, what's noticed is all the Smyrna as the mid-level and then these mulleys rising up. Yeah, these are beautiful, these are beautiful. I mean that's sort of such a feature. Of the whole landscape, isn't it? Yeah. Pink daisies. Yeah, yeah. Hawksbird, I mean I don't see these in England, not that pink. You suddenly look in and there's just so much to see. Such a variety, really. So this, this is all meadow. Beautiful, beautiful, yeah. It's just glorious. This is what I would imagine, you know, great swathes of Europe were like, but is this typical of Corfu or is this a treasured remnant? Well, I think it's certainly a treasured remnant, but I think what's typical is that we're high in the mountains, so you'll not see any olive trees around, of course. There isn't an olive tree? No, no, we're too high for the olives. Right, because in winter it's too cold. It's too cold for olives, yeah. What sets the Corfu climate apart from the mainland is its rainfall, which is more than twice that of London, and this creates the perfect conditions for over 1,400 species of wildflower to flourish. The cooler air may not be good for olives, but allows other trees to thrive. Oaks. At one time there were great forests of oaks on the island, but now just a few pockets remain, as most were cut down and taken back to Venice for use in their famous boatyards. I know that the honey up here is particularly glorious because this is what the bees are all feeding on, because there's no spraying up here, no pesticide. I'm intrigued, so we set off to visit the local beekeeper, Vassilis Siriotis. Bees produce the most wonderful honey in Corfu. Let me show you. Okay. We have the spring honey with a lot of flowers, different flowers, and then June honey, end of June, which is the herbs, oregano, thyme, and also chestnut. Is it possible to have a little taste of honey? Of course, why not? Do I just dip my finger in? Yes, yes. Okay, there we are. So I'm tasting the sweetness of the flowers that I've just walked through. It's very good. It is very good, isn't it? It is delicious. Thank you. Thank you so much. In Greek mythology, bees were the messengers of the gods, and their honey was the source of wisdom. But these bees depend upon meadows that are fast disappearing all over Europe. A little, little gem. Precious and could easily go. Yeah, because in my opinion, and I'm sure in yours probably, this is what is most important in the world. Yeah. What we've got to, got to save. You know, we won't have honey, we won't have soil, if this sort of thing goes. And most people don't really realize that, yeah. I'm now heading back down the mountain to the northeast coast, where it almost touches the Albanian mainland. This has been a favorite holiday destination for discerning British travelers since the 19th century. And I've come here to visit a very special garden. This is a garden that I've long read about and seen pictures of, but never been able to visit, because it's very private. And it was created by an Englishman, but with a strong Greek influence. This is Kanonis, reputed to have one of the most fabulous gardens in Corfu, if not Greece. It's set in an idyllic spot, overlooking a quiet bay. You enter through a doorway and into the first of a series of courtyards. This is intricately mosaicked with a pattern of pebbles, paving, bricks and stones. It then leads to a second courtyard, which has a nod towards the traditional village square, with trees for shade. But just a nod, because this is a unique and idiosyncratic work of a major Greek artist. The story begins in 1969, when Jacob, now Lord Rothschild, was setting up the coast of Corfu with his mother and his stepfather, the great Greek painter Nikos Gika. They saw this spot with its then ruined olive press, and were so entranced by its beauty that they bought it. And then the work of transforming it began, with the help of friends, including the British writer Paddy Lee Fermer, and under the guiding eye of Nikos Gika. And there is a lovely image of Gika sitting here, and pointing to the exact spot he wanted that particular pebble put, or that brick maybe turned at an angle. And slowly, this mosaic terrace evolved, and it is the basis from which the rest of the garden was established over the following 50 years. The garden is full of classical artefacts, but its essence remains with the simple natural beauty that first attracted the Rothschilds. The planting is deliberately restrained, using the muted palette of the indigenous plants, although I'm told in spring there are a few weeks of glorious wild flowers beneath the shade of the giant olives. All olive trees become venerable with age, with lovely bumps and dips and hollows. And the olive trees of Corfu are not any older than others in the rest of Greece, but they are different, and that's because they're pruned differently. They're allowed to grow out more, and that means that the branches and the limbs become much bigger, and the tree itself becomes much grander, which of course gives the olive groves a very distinctive character. I wander through the trees down to the sea to get a wider view of the whole estate. From here I can look back and see the bigger picture of the garden, because it's created on two promontories, one with the olive grove, and behind me is another whole section of the garden, dominated by this large building with two square towers, and then down below that is the swimming pool. Andy Belson is the estate manager, and he has offered to take me up across to the second promontory to see the swimming pool. It is, as they say, worth the detour. My goodness, quite an entrance. It certainly is. Gosh, it doesn't happen often. I'm actually speechless. This is easily the most extraordinary pool I've ever seen. It both looks natural and dramatic. It looks like a stage set. I think without the backdrop it just wouldn't be the same. Yeah, that's for sure. And the view with the Albanian hills. Absolutely makes it, doesn't it? A narrow path below the pool is flanked by undulating hedges of tightly clipped rosemary. Fantastic cloud pruning. Rosemary works really well, I think. We have two varieties of rosemary here, the prostrate rosemary and the upright rosemary. That enables us to get that effect a lot quicker. And do you have any sort of problems with the planting pool? Is this something that you have to constantly work at to get it to look like this? Yeah, we're situated so close to the sea, of course, a lot of salt air, and that causes its problems. And where does the water come from? The water's pumped up from the sea. Because it's saltwater, you can't use that to water plants, can you? No, we can't. I think that's the reason we chose the plants that we use is drought tolerant, really. Have you enjoyed it? For 25 years, and I'm still here. Yeah, I think that's the answer. Yeah, that is the answer. I think this is the right moment to leave Corfu and move on. Here in this extraordinary, dramatic garden made by an Englishman who had a Greek stepfather and helped along the way by a group of cosmopolitan friends. I think I now need to go to the heart of Greece. And that means heading south to the much drier Greek capital, Athens. Gardeners the world over owe a great deal to a botanist from the classical, which is this part of Athens, where he once studied, that I am in now. Down there are the modern national gardens. And I'm going to go down and visit them. But for the moment, I just want to savor being here on this site. Because it was here two and a half thousand years ago that Aristotle began his Lyceum, where they studied philosophy. And his successor was Theophrastus. And he was a father of botany. He studied plants, he wrote about them, and everything that has followed has a huge debt to him and his love of plants. The National Gardens, near the site where Theophrastus studied, is now a 38-acre, heavily wooded oasis, right in the center of Athens. The National Gardens plays a vital role for millions of people, as a green lunge, right in the heart of the city, accessible immediately off these very hot, rather chaotic streets. And you enter in and can bathe in the shade of all the trees, and with the sound of cool running water in the background. And people use it to meet friends, to walk, for children to play, and to make that vital direct connection with nature, but in the middle of the city. The garden is dominated by over 7,000 trees. Many are native, but many have been introduced from all over the world, right from its inception in 1839, when it was commissioned by the Greek royal family. I like the story of these palms. Queen Amalia, who was the consort of the Greek king in the middle of the 19th century, collected palm seeds, and that was really quite a hard thing to do then. And these trees are grown from the seeds of the seeds that she collected. Queen Amalia was born and brought up in Bavaria, and when she married King Otto of Greece, and moved to Athens in 1837, she was inspired by the warm southern climate to make a garden. The garden butts on to what is now the Parliament Building, which was then the Royal Palace. And we have letters from Queen Amalia to her father back in Bavaria, about the intense pleasure she got from being able to open her window in the morning, and be greeted by this glorious fragrance rising up from the But the garden had no natural water supply, so it had to be brought in from afar. The water tumbling into this garden, and used as irrigation, comes over six kilometers from a spring on Mount Hermetus. And the aqueduct and the channels that transport it have been working for the last two and a half thousand years, bringing water into the center of the city. And that's the only irrigation system. It comes into a lake at the top of the garden and is redistributed by rows and channels. And of course it means that they can have a collection of plants that otherwise just couldn't survive. Athens is the hottest capital in Europe, and the intense heat and dryness of the Greek summer in this region make gardens without an intricate and expensive water supply very demanding. And I'm now heading to the outskirts of Athens, on the Attican plain, to visit a garden that has become famous for embracing the challenge of this kind of extreme gardening. The Spiroza Garden was created in the 1960s by an English academic and landscape designer called Jackie Tyrwhitt, who decided to retire and make a garden in Greece. She gradually bought up a barren rocky hillside, sold off most of her friends, but kept four acres. Jackie died in 1983, but the garden remains and is the headquarters of the Mediterranean Garden Society. And the current curator, Lucinda Willem, showed me around. This does look extraordinary, but it actually confounds all one's preconceptions of what a harsh Mediterranean garden can do. That's true, Monty, but this is an irrigated part of the garden, don't forget. So this is absolutely not natural. It's not at all. In the early 60s, there was nothing here. There were one or two olive trees, but that was it. It was just rocks and incredibly barren. And Jackie saw the potential, but she also recognized that it was extraordinarily hostile, almost like a lunar landscape. Jackie began by planting a windbreak of cypresses, as well as pines and olives up the hillside. In order to create the planting holes, she set dynamite, put it in... Let me just stop you for a minute. Are you seriously saying that she used dynamite to blow up the hillside to plant trees? That's exactly what I'm saying, yeah. I mean, the landscape here is so rocky, you have to do something extreme, and her solution was dynamite. Sounds fantastic. I wish I'd been there. And when I first came here, I got laughed at, because when I was asked to go and plant something, I took a spade. And you don't take a spade to plant things here, you take a pickaxe. It's an extreme form of gardening. Although Jackie was committed to planting native, local species that were adapted to the extreme conditions, she supplemented them with equally resilient plants from all over the world. The thing that strikes one, and I guess obviously it's famous for it, it's Mediterranean gardening, but not Mediterranean gardening. Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, the ante is up beyond most people's realms of possibility. Absolutely. It's a beautiful sort of hodgepodge and is very ambitious and very artistic. Lucinda leads me to another area of the garden. I can see it's changing. Which has a completely different range of plants. Yes, goodness, gosh. What's interesting is you suddenly think, oh, I've got to recalibrate. Absolutely, it's a different landscape, isn't it? Yeah, it is. This area is dominated by a collection of very un-Grecian succulents. What it looks like, at first anyway, it seems a bit of an unholy mix. It absolutely is. It means that you have this extraordinary drought-tolerant landscape that touches on native plants but also brings in exotics. When we talk about Mediterranean plants, we're not just talking about the geographical Mediterranean. Absolutely. So the Mediterranean basin is the largest area of Mediterranean plants in the world. There are other zones, so you've got the west coast of America, you've got Chile, South Africa, and you've also got Australia. What's so exciting about a garden like Sproza is you can bring together lots of different plants from around these Mediterranean zones and they're all adapted to be drought-tolerant. Apart from loving the beauty of this garden, from the Mediterranean cottage garden, colour and looseness, to the stark sculptural shapes that you get from the aloes, it's made me realise that actually Mediterranean gardening and planting is not about coping with limitations. And the range of planting and possibility for the future is really exciting. The landscape around Athens has changed a great deal in modern times, often for the worse, as a result of urban expansion, fire, war, and even famine. But early the next morning, I set off to see a superb example of regeneration. Come to visit Mount Hermetis, just on the edge of the city, which since classical times has been famous for the purity of its honey and its water. But since the Second World War, mainly for the extraordinary reforestation scheme that's taken place here. The morning air up on the hillside is deliciously cool. Walkers and joggers are out making the most of it. Thankfully, this area escaped the terrible fires of last summer. And I joined Nikos Pangas, who is the manager of this forest. How long have you worked here? 32 years. That's a long time. Yes. So you know it very well. I think so. Yes. This has been replanted partially, completely. How much replanting has gone on since the war? How many trees? How many? Yes, about three million. Really? During World War II, when the Nazis occupied Athens, people were driven to chop down every single tree and even dig up the roots for fuel. But after the war, the gradual process of replanting began. On this rocky hillside, the work was unbelievably hard and took decades. But now, it's difficult to imagine how bare it once looked, as the hillside is thick with pines, cypresses, oaks, and wild olives. And even the indigenous wildlife has slowly moved back in. Look at that. Acropolis. Where is the Acropolis? Yes. What a view. And all these wonderful cypresses replanted since the Second World War. Yes. It's a garden. It's a man-made garden with one of the most extraordinary views in the world. It must be lovely to be able to come up into the hills and into the forest to cool down in the summer. That's why this nature is something with great value for the society. And that's why we must conserve and protect this place. As I wander down the mountain towards a botanical garden started at the same time as the forest, I stop off at this 11th century monastery and its courtyard garden. This little garden, which has been restored, was for the monks as they went from the church and passed through to their dining hall. So they passed through this lovely little flowerbed in the shape of a cross. The botanical garden is just beyond the monastery walls. Its custodian Sophia Stathoutou explains that they are raising a collection of over 200 species of native plants. Our main concern was to acquaint people with Greek plants rather than relying only on imported plants. So at first people are not, you know, really wowed by the plants because they're fairly humble plants. But they're the ones that really survive. And I think we've managed to change a lot of people's mind by them coming here and seeing them in situ. It begs the question of people's minds needed changing. What is the resistance to these? Well, first of all, one has to say that Greece doesn't have any kind of gardening tradition, though people had, let's say, pot plants in villages that looked really very, very pretty, basically because there were other things that needed to be done after the war, and gardens were an expensive proposition. Back in Athens, it's time to see what an inner city garden looks like in this climate. This is the urban garden, Aios Dimitrios, built on a disused car park and squeezed in between apartment blocks and a football ground. It covers an area of barely one hectare, that is then subdivided into 45 separate plots, all available free to local people in receipt of state aid. Good morning. I'm Monty. Good morning. Peter. Peter. Hello, Peter. Plant away. I like your hose pipe. I love the fact that three different bamboos lash to the hose pipe. It's a good system. Absolutely. I'm going to steal that and pretend it's my idea. Not much water, it's interesting. Much, much less water than I give them. Perfect. Bravo. It must get very hot. Do you water them every day? I think what you've made is very beautiful. I think you've got it all here. You work here, no electricity, just sunshine, just labor, and it's beautiful. Oh, thank you. Thank you very much indeed. It's very beautiful. These allotments were created in the wake of the Greek economic crisis when pensions were slashed and people were, and many still are, struggling to put food on the table. So these plots are not a horticultural hobby, but provide an essential supply of good, healthy food. Think of a Greek salad. All of these allotments have tomatoes, cucumber, onions, and then you have some potatoes, some peppers, aubergines, and that's about it. And of course, there you have the core of the Greek diet. Just how vital vegetable gardening has become to these city dwellers is clear to the agronomist Dimitra Luka. I think the major contribution is on their psychology. They come here, they work the land, they have created a community here, they have friends. How do you see the future of this? Do you see more plots like this growing up across the city? I want to see more plots of this growing into the city, and I want to see this community garden becoming something more than a community garden. Maybe have a kitchen, maybe helping more those in need. Those are the plans. Well, good luck. I wish you well. Thank you very much. Modern Greece is evolving rapidly, even though its long history is always evident and influential. Of course, Athens is dominated by its classical culture, and there are glimpses of it everywhere, not least of the Acropolis, that you can see from different angles all over the city. But actually, what I really want to see is a 21st century modern public space. So I am visiting the Niarchos Cultural Center on the outskirts of the city. This is a brand new 24 hectare park, set around the new homes of the Greek National Opera and the National Library. When Renzo Piano, the architect, famed for London Shard, visited the site, he asked the name of the area, and was told that it was Kallithea, which means beautiful view, although that view had long been hidden by the Athenian urban sprawl. So he decided to restore that beautiful view. By lifting the park up and over the roof of the National Opera, creating an enormous sweeping roof garden in the process. Now this was a huge project, costing over 700 million euros to build, and was completed just five years ago. I'm meeting Heli Pangalou, one of the landscape designers for the park. What I find extraordinary is that a really sizable part of the planting are roof gardens. You have these enormous roof gardens. Was that a major problem? There were different issues involved, not only in terms of structural and energy saving issues, but also what kind of plant do they actually grow up on the hill, and what you can grow on 20 centimetres of substrate. But of course, just having 20 centimetres of soil, of poor soil, pretty much mimics a Mediterranean hillside, doesn't it? I'm very happy that you say that. Yes, that was the whole idea. The great curving stretch of the roof garden is planted with drought-resistant native grasses. It actually reminds you of, you know, vast, let's say grasslands that you walk up, and what I really like is how they're moving with the wind. And then finally you come to the sea and you have this change of golden yellow to the blue, and I think that's very archetypical Mediterranean. Despite the need to irrigate tens of thousands of plants, through a clever mix of harvesting rain, converting seawater, and using drought-resistant planting, the park's water supply is self-sufficient. With climate change increasingly influential, this has become an essential aspect of garden design. One of the great values of this park, or this big garden, is to give us a different concept of what a garden can look like in the future. From the outset, the park has been open to the public, and is enthusiastically used by local people with over three million visitors a year. But on a hot spring Athenian evening, it doesn't feel crowded. There are still wide-open vistas and secluded corners, and the space to walk amongst the evening fragrances of the Mediterranean hillside, despite being in a large, crowded city. I have to say I didn't really know what to expect when I came here, because I knew it was simply enormous, and I couldn't quite see how that could cohere. But this is a triumph. It's fantastic. And to have roof gardens on this scale, and all these different features that are informing and using the local planting, and clearly people do use it and love it. It's certainly very modern. Now I'm moving on to visit another huge modern project, but this time there's no ambiguity. It's very definitely a garden, and it's a very private one at that. I'm traveling west along the coast to the Peloponnese Peninsula to visit a garden that takes its inspiration from Greek culture, mythology, and the surrounding landscape. The drama is immediate, as the entrance sweeps me up through a vineyard with the vines set out in curving, semi-circular rows around the natural bowl of the hillside, so they form a green amphitheater. In order that I might get a sense of the larger estate, I've been lent a buggy, which I'm sharing with a very important member of the household. Bruno, is it nice? I think it's nice too. It's a lovely, lovely game. Good boy. This is a garden that I've been longing to see, because it's by one of the most preeminent garden and landscape designers from Spain. And his trademark is to combine both horticultural and agricultural elements in a really creative way. Right, Bruno, you ready? Come on. That designer is Fernando Carancho, and his theatrical vineyard takes you to the house set high on the hillside, with the garden falling steeply down below until it reaches the sea. But for years after he designed it, this was just a huge building site. So Carancho's work had to wait. By the time the building work was complete, the hillside had been reduced to this steep drop running down to the sea, and completely inhospitable to a garden. So Carancho made a series of terraces, nine in fact. And for the next three years, all that happened was the construction of miles of stone walls to retain those terraces. And then the planting could begin. And the result were these contoured lines working their way around the hillside, picking up the lines of the vineyard in front of the house. The horizontal lines of the terraces across the hillside are broken by strong verticals of scores of cypresses, set in immaculate lawns, clipped rosemary and myrtle hedges, and beautifully tended citrus and olive trees. And everywhere you stop to take it in, there is that breathtaking view out to the sea. The stone used for these miles of thick and high walls to hold up the terraces, and the flights of steps to link them, is all local. And it's made out of this compressed mud, set with small pebbles. And they look a little bit like almonds. And it's known as almond stone. The steps and paths taking you from terrace to terrace, all lead down to a perfect little beach. And then if you turn and look back, I think you see the real genius. Because what Karancho has done, has worked together these giant almond stones, and planted and clipped all the bushes so that they follow the rhythm of those stones. You've got the path echoing the line of the rocks. And then finally, the wall which is horizontal, which ties it all together. And it's that ability to take nature in its purest form, as in the sea, and light, and connect it to a garden, that I think is practically genius. My next stop is to visit a nursery, which is always a pleasure. But in this case, it has a special purpose too, because I'm meeting up with an Austrian friend, Micha Schneider, to help him choose plants for his new garden. Do you know the sort of thing you're looking for? Quite well, I think. But of course, we're open to all suggestions. Okay, fine. Is that the plan? That's the plan. Let me get rummage for my glasses, so I can see. Micha is an architect, and he's building a house on the island of Idra. The garden is an exposed terrace on a rocky hillside, and his plan is to plant a number of small trees to add interest and shade. So it's quite small, but what's the actual area? Upper garden is 20 square meters, something like that. So you're not looking at a large number of plants? No. But presumably some key plants. The trees here that really work and will grow on Idra, pomegranates, olives, cypress, citrus. They're pretty standard, but it's better to go with that than fight it. Well, here they've got rows of pomegranates. The flowers are really spectacular, and the fruits, I think, are wonderful. When this nursery has got hundreds, probably thousands of examples of all rows, it's a question really saying, I want that one. Yes, exactly. And there's a second challenge. Okay. To get it up. You're right up on the hill, aren't you? It'll have to be mules. Fortunately, Manolis Faustinis, who runs this nursery with his daughter Callie Roy, is an expert at not only nurturing, but transporting large plants to awkward locations. Manolis. Hi, Manolis. How are you? Now, Mika here wants to buy a lemon tree for his garden on Idra. Yes. But it's right up at the top of the hill, so it can't be too big, because otherwise we'll never get it up there. If you by hand, for sure, you take some. Take this one, yes. It is nice, no? It makes lemon twice per year. And do they taste good? Yes, yes. It tastes like lemon. How do you feel about lavender? I'm fine. The thing about lavender is, don't clip into old wood. Okay. You need to leave some new wood. Then you kill it, probably. Well, you might. Sometimes it does. It's a trick. Yes. Which you do with lavender. You cut in the middle. You make a hole in the middle, so the sun is looking at the sticks, at the wood. It shoots, and it regrows, and it's something new again. Which is a good trick. Yeah. It's a good trick, yeah. It's a good trick. Anything else you feel you must have now, rather than just wait and add later? I'm afraid of bougainvillea. Really? Okay, all right. You want a bougainvillea? You shall have a bougainvillea. It leads us to the bougainvillea. Yes, of course. What color do you like for your garden? We were hesitating between, rather, the white or the clear lilac, exactly. I'm really glad you didn't say brilliant, shocking pink or this lurid orange. I think the lilac is actually very pretty. I mean, I've often been a bit sniffy about bougainvillea, but I think that's rather nice. Our decisions have to be finalized because we're working to a strict deadline. The plants have to be loaded up, ready to catch the ferry on their journey to Idra. This is my third visit to this nursery, and I love it. Minerva is such an extraordinary character, and his daughter seems to be taking after him. And it's so exciting to see all these huge trees lined up in pots. It's the antithesis, really, of the sort of sedate domestic gardening that most of us do. And this semi-industrial process, we're gathering plants, they're going on a forklift, and then they're going into a lorry, and then they go on a boat, and they've got to come off the other end, is a very exciting part of making a garden that most of us never see. But this is the first stage. Now I've got to make a garden. While the plants will travel overnight by cargo, I'm taking the Freedom passenger ferry. This is the last piece of this journey that began back in Venice, and it's across a short stretch of water to the island of Idra, which is effectively a bare piece of rock sitting in the Mediterranean. And about as difficult and as inhospitable a place to make a garden as anywhere in Europe. And I have direct experience of this, because I've been helping to make another garden here. But despite its harsh landscape, Idra has cast its enticing spell for centuries. The little port has acted as a refuge from those fleeing wars, including between the Venetians and the Ottomans. And then in the 19th century, it became an important commercial port, and more recently has become the home of artists and musicians, including Nikos Giger and the late Leonard Cohen. And a few years ago, a friend of mine also moved here to one of the older houses near the port with a typical Greek courtyard garden. I first came here just over five years ago, and it looked very different to this. It was a half-cultivated, half-abandoned area. There was a lot of bare soil, a dead almond, a line of cabbages, and just one small cypress. Well, now we've transformed it to this. Creating this garden was great fun, but took time, a few failures, and involved a very steep learning curve. Above all, everything had to be able to survive poor soil, burning summer sun, and drought. Even though Idra is the Greek for water, for months on end, there is little or none for the garden. It is very overgrown, but it looks surprisingly good to my eye. I love the abundance. But this is my first visit for nearly two years, and there's some pruning to be done. The last few weeks have made me change my mind about how to prune an olive so it looks really good in a Greek garden like this. So I'm going to reprune this. Let me take this out. It used to be a pom-pom, it's grown out now, but I want to change it so that it looks less like a tree that would be at home outside a smart house, to something that is much more closely connected to the olive groves in the landscape around. And that means some fairly radical pruning. That is very drastic, based on the idea that you want light and air in, so flowers and fruit can form and ripen well. And it sometimes takes two or three years to get the shape that you want, but that will now regrow really vigorously. I have to say, just sitting here, I feel a glow of pleasure and satisfaction of having been a small part in this. Michael's plants will arrive tomorrow morning, and I'm looking forward to taking all the experience that I've gained with this garden to help him. Next day, Michael and I are at the port early to watch the plants unloaded and packed in strictly regulated loads onto the waiting mules. On an island with no motor vehicles and few roads, absolutely everything, including garden trees, has to travel by mule. As they start their journey, we head off up the hundreds of steps of the steep, narrow streets until we meet up with a mule train ascending the final dirt track to reach Micha's house high on the hill. That is just incredible. Incredible. This is why it's worth it. Exactly. It is amazing. I'll just go like this. Now to work. Very good. I suggest that we place the plants exactly according to the plan, and then step back and have a good look so we have the opportunity to reconsider before we commit to planting. Now hold it. Okay, ready? Oh, you're not heavy at all. I've got it. Honestly. Okay. This is the orange. Yes. And that should be somewhere there. Tell me where. Here? I'm happy we didn't choose the biggest one. There we go. We can finesse that. So just to be clear, what we've placed is faithful to your original plan? Up to now, yes. Drawn up on a rainy afternoon in Brussels. I must admit. Under the bright Edren sky, we can now assess how the trees work, not only in the garden, but in the wider context of the surroundings. The landscape is actually mountain. It is. With the verticals of the cypresses. Yet I come in here and I'm looking at an orange. What I'm saying is there's a dissonance between garden and landscape. I've drawn that. Absolutely not realizing or thinking of the landscape behind. If you move the orange, I'll get the cypress and we'll re-dig them for the moment. Okay. Let's see what you think. Just pop that out of the way for the moment. Now, I think if we put this here and obviously we can fine tune this. If you go back to where we were, is that now working with the hillside a bit better? I must admit it does, yes. This change also has another unexpected benefit. Now, if I put that upright, it obscures the telegraph pole. There's absolutely no way you could have known that from your office in Brussels. Not really, no. But it was covering a telegraph pole we looked at from that view. Next, I persuade Miha that there is a better home for the two citrus trees. And this goes there. Come and have a look. So you come in. This is where you start. What will be lovely is you'll have the orange fruits against the blue water. Will look fantastic. Right. What I say is now is just put some of the understory around to get a feel of where it's going to go. Okay. Then the planting can begin. All right. Okay. Sort of there. No, too close. Think of time like this. Okay. Time to plant. Okay. Just damage it like that. Yes. Okay. And that stimulates regrowth. That way? Clockwise. Okay. Tell me when. Yeah. A bit more. Perfect. Yeah, that's good. All right. I love this stage of a garden with all the excitement of it coming into being. And I think the changes will definitely improve how it's used and enjoyed. But unfortunately, my time on this visit to Idra has run out. I would love to stay and finish this, but I have to go. Okay. But I think it's going to be lovely. Remember, these are all plants that have adapted to cope with tough conditions. So don't be tempted to overfeed them or overwater them or anything like that. Okay. You know, they do best in the harshness of this landscape. Okay. Thank you very much. Bye-bye. I was delighted when two months later, Miha sent me an update. I've seen and learned so much on this journey from the moment I entered the lagoon in Venice. These small courtyard gardens in the city itself and the grand estates on the Veneto. And then going down the Dalmatian coast by the aviatic, I was seeing stunning natural landscapes of lakes, coastline and wildflower meadows. An extraordinary exotic garden and a small but magical monastic garden. To Greece with gloriously dramatic private and public gardens. And it strikes me that most of us visit these places when we're on holiday. We love the sea and the blue skies. But these are places where people live and those blue skies are getting hotter. And although it's getting harder to make gardens, it's nonetheless important because a good garden is always part of a good life.