Monty Don’s Adriatic Gardens (Episode 2): Croatia

For centuries Venice was one of the great cultural and economic centers of Europe and every travel 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 I'm actually speechless. 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 continuing my journey starting here in Trieste and although Venice is just 115 kilometers barely 70 miles away across the water it feels like I've come to a distinctly new territory. Trieste is now the most easterly outpost of Italy. Set on the Adriatic sea and a short distance from the Slovenian border. From Trieste my journey will take me into Croatia down the Istrian peninsula to gardens along the Dalmatian coast with a few diversions both to islands and inland ending near Dubrovnik. But before I set off there is a garden here with a special legacy. I've come a few miles outside Trieste to visit a castle and this was built and the grounds around it created by a passionate plantsman in the middle of the 19th century. In 1856 the 24-year-old Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian younger brother of the Habsburg emperor of Austria took shelter from a storm at the rocky headland of Grignano and decided that this was the perfect site for a castle overlooking the sea that he loved but with land to create a grand estate. Other than its location the site had little to offer being rocky and barren. However undaunted work began and over the next 10 years the ducal castle was built with views out over the Adriatic and backed by a garden filled with exotic plants and velvet lawns running down to the sea. Today what survives is over 50 acres which is about 22 hectares of garden and mature woodlands. Dr Andreina Contessa is the director and curator of Miramari. Let's start at the beginning. Why here? You have to know that he was the head of the Austrian navy and he believed that Trieste would be the port of the Habsburg empire and so he wanted a place upon the sea with a huge park and this is Miramari. The garden is a rare example of 19th century planting which combines mediterranean alpine and exotic plants side by side in formal beds. Plans and a collection of photographs from 1872 show in detail how the gardens were planted with a wide selection of what were then exotic plants such as yuccas and a monkey puzzle tree. He was bringing plants in from all over the world and expecting them to perform. They brought seeds from South America, from India, from Singapore, from Greece and he tried it. It was an experimental place. I think that the experimental side of this park is very important because sometimes it works and you know sometimes it doesn't and it was the same for him. In World War I the gardens fell into disrepair and remained neglected for decades. There are some photographs of the 19th century that are very very important and we try to rebuild and reconstruct the garden of Maximilian. Maximilian didn't have the chance to see his garden grow. As he died in 1867 at the age of just 34, executed by a firing squad on the other side of the world in Mexico where he had taken up the doomed invitation to become the first Habsburg emperor. Do you think that local people like the gardens? Of course. It is just a kind of the earth of Trieste and it is the garden of everybody. Everybody thinks that it is his garden. Interesting. Belongs to them. Well that's where I've come from which is Venice. That's where I'm staying which is Trieste and behind me is the coastline of Croatia which is where I'm going to tomorrow. The next day I leave Italy and cross into Croatia to travel down the Istrian coast and following the trail of Venetian merchants I head to Revenge for a spot of lunch and the first thing you notice sitting here is that rising up out of the old town is a second great Campanile like the one in St. Mark's Square in Venice and that's because this was controlled by the Venetians and this whole coastal strip for hundreds of years right up to the end of the Venetian Republic at the end of the 18th century. They wanted trading voices. These were mercantile people and that meant they had a port, they could come in, they could pick up goods, they could deliver them and then head back to base camp in Venice. Croatia is justly celebrated for its beautiful coastline and hundreds of islands and has become a hugely popular holiday destination. Once part of Yugoslavia, Croatia was under communist rule for 45 years. When communism collapsed across Eastern Europe it suffered terribly in the Balkan conflicts of the 1990s. But in recent years Croatia has had the chance to think again about its gardens as more than just somewhere to grow food and to consider the pleasures of decorative plants. So I made a stop to visit a young plantsman who gave up being a dish jockey to start his own nursery. Davos Artina began this project about 12 years ago when he was still in his early 20s and now produces over 20,000 plants a year. Do you have any special interests? I like mainly irises. Then I have collections of tulip flowers. So you're a collector. How many different irises do you have? I have around 700. 700 different types of irises. That's a very substantial collection. Yes. The iris was designated the national flower of Croatia over 20 years ago, chosen because it symbolizes wisdom and peace. That's a beautiful one at the back. That's lovely. This is an old Japanese variety. What's it called? Fujiyama. Fujiyama. Beautiful. And you breed your own. How many new varieties are you producing? I selected so far around 70 varieties. 70. That's a lot. Yes. And that's a very pretty little one, isn't it? That's beautiful. One of my early. That's one of your own? Yeah. What's that called? They don't have names. They only have numbers now. What number is that? This is the curl 0614A. And are they all on a computer? Yes. Are you very organized like that? I try to be, but sometimes I... As well as his hundreds of beloved irises, Davos nursery is filled with a wide range of truly superb plants. You have everything. You have water lilies. You have woodland plants. You have such a wide collection of plants. Do you feel that you may have to focus in a little? I'm trying, but it's really hard. Why is it hard? Because I like the plants so much. It's an obsession so far. Yeah, I can tell. I can tell. As I walked around, I was struck by how perfectly interwoven Davos choice of plants were. Grasses, perennials and evergreens sitting easily aside each other with the harmony of a well-designed border and strikingly in tune with contemporary European garden design. The planting you have here where we're standing, which I think is charming, and it's really lovely. Is this a style that you see in a lot of Croatian gardens, or is this something that you are trying to introduce? No, this is my laboratory for experimenting with the new perennial style of planting, but adapted to our conditions. Do people appreciate it? Local people? Local people, not so much. They think I'm growing weeds from the field. Weeds from the field? This was the first comment I have been given when I opened the nursery. It seems to me that you're saying that Croatians have yet to love plants. Yes, mainly, yes, to love plants and then to love beautiful gardens. But you're running this business, selling plants to Croatians. Yeah, because I'm hoping to change Davos' deep passion for his plants is a delight, and it's exciting to think that he represents a young generation of Croatian horticulturalists. All in all, it was one of the most inspiring visits to a nursery that I've made for a long time, and one day I certainly hope to return. Traveling on, I head northeast towards the Dalmatian coast. Croatia has one of the longest coastlines in Europe, and my next stop is the spa town of Apache, which is where Croatian tourism began. In the 19th century, this small town became a spa resort for European aristocracy. They were attracted by its climate and accessibility, and the grand villas that were springing up for wealthy families. This was created almost from nothing, from a tiny village towards the end of the 19th century, as a spa and a resort for the Habsburgs. And what it meant was that people living in Vienna, Budapest, or in Germany could come overland and holiday here and take various treatments. And critically, gardens were always part of the plan, really, so they could walk in them and enjoy them. And it seems that they treated this as a sort of perfect resort on their territory, with fabulous climate and beautiful sea, very much in the same way as the British have always treated Cornwall. But it was not just the balmy climate that proved so attractive. Apache is celebrated for its green spaces. There are 10 different parks in this small town, and each one has its own character, with some enjoyed as a quiet retreat, and others as a good place for exercise classes. I'm meeting a local guide, Željka Stasić, to find out more about Apache's history. Were the gardens and parks part of the city from the very beginning, or have they evolved, have they developed? Apache was built as the city of the parks, so today we have lots of small parks. The most famous is Angelina Park, which was created in 1845. The villa was built by a wealthy merchant for his wife, and the original formal garden in front of the villa has retained its 19th century design. This style of formal bedding has long fallen out of fashion in the UK, but it's still much admired here. From the beginning they start asking all of their guests from all over the world to bring the plants from their part of the world, so today we have more than 140 plants here in this Angelina Park, and it's really important for us to preserve it for the generations to come. Apache's policy of preserving its 19th century Habsburg heritage is clearly working, because it's still much loved and much visited by modern Central European tourists. I'm now taking a four-hour winding drive down the Dalmatian coast. There are over 1,200 islands in Croatia. Some sparsely populated, but many have growing numbers of visitors who can take one of the networks of ferries to island hop. I've now come to this ferry which is taking me across a narrow strip of water to the island of Pag. Now this is famous for being exceptionally barren because it's blasted by cold winds, but it does have, so I'm told, some really fine old olive trees, and I want to see them. Pag is one of the largest islands on the Dalmatian coast, and as we approach the shore, the landscape rises up almost lunar in its bleakness. It seems inconceivable that anything might grow here, let alone fine olives, but as I drive to my destination, the scenery changes. The olive gardens of Lund cover 60 acres with around 80,000 olive trees, including some of the oldest in the world. Although the land is communal, each individual tree has an owner. Andrea Cantori Badurina and his family have been cultivating their trees here for many generations. This land is public. It is traditionally used as a common pasture, and the ownership of trees is not related to the land. You will see in this place several different marks, and each one indicates a family. Different people own different trees, but they don't own the ground, they don't own the land, just the tree. Correct. Every family comes here during the harvest season and recollect their own trees, so this particular tree has the owner. Is it still productive? Yes, it is. And what sort of age are the trees that we're looking at? We calculated that the approximate growth is something one millimetre per year, so when we see the tree, we should measure the radium, and the radium in millimetres gives you an approximation of the age of the trees. So this one is something like 60 centimetres, right? So you take the radium, 30 centimetres, 300 millimetres, 300 years. Well, that's a very simple equation, isn't it? The ability to thrive in this harsh landscape, and their slow growth from initial scrubby plants, is what gives these olives their extreme longevity. We have several trees which we think are more than 1,000 years old. And how big can they get? There is one here which is almost four metres wide. Can we see it? Sure. Okay. The track becomes a labyrinth, bounded by dry stone walls. These are built from stone cleared from the terrain, and serve to mark out individual olive holdings, contain sheep, and provide cover from the cold, borer wind that blows relentlessly over Pag during the winter months. Here we have the wide one. So this is your oldest tree? This is the widest tree. So how wide is that? That is almost four metres. Four metres, so a radius of two metres, so 2,000 years-ish. Yes. According to that, to the mathematics, that's it. So for 2,000 years, this has been producing olives? Yeah. Truly ancient trees like this, that were already old when western civilization was young, always inspire a profound sense of reverence and awe. This is one of the most extraordinary landscapes I think I've ever seen. It's hard to express how stony it is. There's just stone everywhere, and these gnarled trees growing up out of stone. The stone is not owned by anybody, the land is not owned by anybody, but the trees are treasured possessions, handed down from generation to generation. I have heard that just nearby, there is a house, a new house that's been built that's tried to incorporate the elements of this landscape into their gardens. I want to go and see that. As soon as I arrive, I can see that these elements, the olive trees, the stone walls, are indeed central to the garden. But the olives are neatly clipped, their stems are trained to be dead straight, and the walls are elegantly slim. That landscape that felt so elemental has been tamed. As I walk up through the garden, it becomes increasingly apparent that everything revolves around the house. It's the house that's dictating the lines of the terrace, the planting on the terrace. And I know that house and garden were designed simultaneously by a design team, and they have agreed to come here and talk to me about the project. The architects Radovan Sobat and Teja Horvat run their practice in Zagreb, the capital of Croatia. Did you design the garden and plan the garden at the same time as the house, when you'd finish that? No, it was the same time. It was a process. So we want the house to be embedded in the terrain, and the terrain was a slope, so we create the terraces with the walls to make the terrain more utilitised. And we actually make it all together at the same time. It was a continuous process. Plants such as aloes, rosemary and lavender don't just define the look of the garden, but have been selected for a very practical reason. Why did you choose the plants that you did? The plant species should be indigenous, so that they can survive because it's a rough climate. Plants should feel good in a garden and have, from the very first beginning, a chance to survive. In the centre of the building, with the glass-walled rooms revolving around it, is a gnarled old olive tree, bringing the rawness of the landscape into the heart of the house. Olive symbolises the eternity of living on this space where we stand today. So olive came into the house in a period of construction. They had the tree craned in over the walls to take her rightful position, and they are in no doubt that the tree is indeed feminine. She's the heart of the house, of the home. And here, actually, the border between inner and outer space disappears. So this is like harmony or synergy of the nature and the architecture. It's time to leave the blasted, stony landscape of Parg and head south and inland to central Croatia. After a while, the landscape starts to change and gradually I realise that what we're passing through is thrillingly beautiful, and back home in the UK, all too rare. I had to stop here because I couldn't help notice from the windows of the car mile upon mile of wildflower meadows, and these are wonderful. They're fantastic. You can see the yellow rattle is in full flower, and all around them this tapestry of pinpoints of flower, and I can hear the birds much more than I've heard anywhere else. And I had to stop and get out because I've never seen anything like it anywhere. And beyond the meadows, you have these wooded hillsides, which I'm told are full of bears and wolves. Now, what could be better? Wildflowers on the ground, bears and wolves on the hillside. Fabulous. I'm actually on my way to the Plitvice Lakes. When I told people I was coming to Croatia to visit its parks and gardens, this was the one place that everybody said I just had to come and visit. And you can see why. It is incredible. Since 1979, Plitvice has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site and is famous for the diversity and richness of its wildlife. Sixteen lakes, numerous stunning waterfalls and deep forests, you can spend days here walking around the many trails. I met up with Krasimir Čilinović, who has spent almost 20 years as a warden here. What sort of wildlife do you have here? We have all European great carnivoras, bear, wolf and lynx. Bear is the emblem of a national park, and there is also more than 50 different little small mammals. I would mention just 23 different species of bats in this national park. 23 different species of bats is impressive, but I have to say that in a more vulgar way, I'm just terribly impressed by the fact you've got wolves and lynx and bear, which seems to me very exciting and less traumatic, but I think just as important and beautiful. What about the wildflowers? They look to me wonderful. I mean, the woodland wildflowers on the edge of the path in the meadows. Is that something that you carefully protect or is it just taken for granted? Yes, of course, that we must very carefully protect this and also we must conserve the conditions we have and to keep all these plants we have here. It's more than 1450 plants discovered in this area. In this area, indigenous to this area? Yes, indigenous plants to this national park. So that makes it a very important nature reserve, doesn't it, as well as a beauty spot? It is. The waterfalls that ribbon the hillside throughout the park fall into a succession of turquoise lakes that are separated by barriers of tufa, which is an exceptionally porous rock. The formation of tufa is a complex process created over centuries by the interaction of calcium carbonate with bacteria, algae and moss. As these living rocks grow, they contribute to the changing appearance and flow of the lakes and waterfalls. The water is super saturated with calcium carbonate. It is very good for tufa creation, but it's very bad for your washing machines. So it's lime? It is the lime. It's lime, yeah. What's the future, do you think? What is the future of these lakes and the Croatian relationship with nature? I think that the future is in education, how this place is important and we must preserve this area for the future generation, that also people for 100 years could see these beautiful waterfalls, this biodynamic process of tufa creation and say, wow, our grandparents lived this too. The coast, about 100 miles south of Pag, to another Venetian stronghold here on the Dalmatian coast, this is Šibenik. It's got a natural harbour and was really important to the Venetians and remains so right to the end of their republic in the closing years of the 18th century. And when you walk the streets of the town, the architecture, the layout, the feel of the place is very Italian. Šibenik is set in a bay, looking out towards some of the many islands of the Adriatic. The old town is dominated by the 15th century cathedral of St. James, which is one of the finest examples of Renaissance architecture in Croatia. 74 distinctly human gargoyles run around the exterior and are said to be portraits of those citizens who refused to pay towards the cost of the cathedral. The narrow streets that wind up around the building and up the steep hillside of the old town are all of a stone, faded and softened by salt wind and fierce summer sun. I love the way that capers grow out of the walls of the buildings all over the city. And these were apparently brought here from Venice in the 15th century and have become a feature ever since. I'm looking for a secret garden hidden behind one of these high walls. And this is it. It is the convent garden of St. Lawrence and is one of only two monastic gardens in the whole of Croatia. It's the brainchild of a remarkable local headmaster, Svonko Pesic, who wanted to find somewhere outside for his pupils to enjoy. Svonko and his wife Mariana told me how it all started. We opened the school and of course we wanted to add some open area for that school because this is a very tiny piece of the town, everything is so narrow and actually we didn't know for that because it was somehow closed, hidden from the public. Svonko explained to me that he realised there must be something hidden behind the walls next to his school and together with his pupils they cleared the abandoned ground. Why did you decide to lay the garden out like this? Because it used to be a monastery garden and we found in the monastery books, we explored the history of that place and then we decided well you know it's worth to recreate things to be as it used to be. Svonko no longer runs the school but he and his wife continue to use the garden to educate young people about plants. On this visit these students are learning about the stories and medicinal benefits of rosemary and yarrow. The plants are laid out in neat geometric beds cultivating herbs and shrubs that were both useful in the kitchen and medieval medicine. Is this to teach children how to garden or about plants? Not how to garden because there is not much space for gardening but about plants. What sort of thing are you teaching them about? Importance of the plants, use of the plants, we do some projects picking some plants and do things connected with the subject like chemistry, biology. Right so it's an outdoor classroom? Yes, yes of course. You've made this garden in the last 14 years. What were gardens like 30, 40 years ago under the communist system? Were there lots of gardens there? No, not at all. Why is that? I don't know, people didn't care as much as they needed to about their environment, you know, and also our local people they were more interested in planting plants for food. So you're saying that under communism particularly in Dalmatia people were essentially too poor to make a garden just for beauty, they would grow food? Yes, absolutely. It works fantastically well on an educational level and I'm fascinated that children are taught rather differently than we were because we tend to equate plants and gardens with horticulture, with the nuts and bolts of growing things, but here they've got a much broader approach. They're tying in plants to every aspect of the curriculum and actually gardening as we know it is not really an important part of that, but the garden is still really powerful educational tool. Before I leave I asked Svanko what he would regard as a typical modern Croatian garden and he said rather than tell me he would show me by introducing me to his sister, ah look at that, who lives a few miles outside Šibenik. Hello, this is her garden. Can I come in? Okay, I'll come in the door. I speak English. You speak English much better than I speak Croatian. Hello, my name is Monty. What? My name is Monty. Monty? Yes. I am Katie. Katie, show me, leave it on. My husband come in. Okay, so where is your husband? Is he here? He's asleep, I'm so sorry. Well, we mustn't wake him up. Oh dear, he's not going to be very happy. Is it an orange or a lemon tree? Yeah, do you think he's going to get some oranges? Do you think this is going to be the husband or oranges or both? Look at that. I doubt it is both. Oh there, it's a marmalade. Look at that. Honey, you're stronger than me. Smells delicious. It's very, very good. I will treasure that. That's very, very kind of you. Okay, and this is your garden you've made through there. Let's have a look. Potatoes. It looks like courgette or cucumbers. Cucumber, yeah. Aubergine, what do you call that eggplant? Ah, you've got a vine there, so you have your wine, tomatoes, aubergines, potatoes, cucumbers, onions, paprika. You have everything. You have all that you need and that's chard, yeah, chard, rocket. I love this. This is very delicious. My favorite. Very good. Avocado. Do you get fruits from avocado? That's very good. You obviously live well. You eat well. Well, I think this is wonderful. As I drive through the Croatian villages, I can't help but notice that any spare bit of cultivated land or garden is much more likely to be used for growing food than flowers. It's really interesting to see what vegetables people are choosing to grow in a typical Croatian garden, but actually the purpose of this visit was to come here just a few miles further down the road to visit a garden that I've heard is very atypical. This is the garden of Ante Karanusic, who began to make this exotic retreat from a bare site around 11 years ago. Ante, how nice to meet you. I'm Monty. Yeah, very nice. I found my way here. So tell me, what are you doing? I mean, I love the initial appearance. That's so dramatic. Is this, I mean, cacti and succulents you have here, is this something you've always wanted to grow? Yes, garden like this, it's a learning process. It's an evolution process. Initially, Ante tried to create the sort of garden he admired from reading British gardening magazines, but that proved to be very challenging here with its baking hot, very dry summers. We start to buy magazines, roses, every kinds of plants, but I didn't understand the climate, important bond between the plants and the climate. And when you go deep into it, you learn about all kinds of plants, all kinds of climates. We have what we have today. You evolved from growing conventional plants that maybe I had in my garden to poor things having to cope with your climate. When was the last time it rained, for example? Two months for now, and the summer has just started, so three next months it will be dry. So the cacti and the succulents are not so crazy, are they? This is something that will adapt well. I see you've got cannas and bananas there. Yeah. They need a lot of water. Yeah. So I put them there. They are not by accident here. I plant them here because my boys like to jump in a pool. When they jump, I don't want to waste anything, so the water is... The splash. Yeah, the splash. Brilliant, brilliant. It's an interesting mix because it looks natural, but actually you have a mix of plants that is not... I don't like architectural gardens. It's very sterile for me. I like forests, natural things, tropics. But it's a controlled jungle. Yeah, it is a control. I mean, this is a garden. It's not natural. Yeah, it's supposed to be natural, free. As long as you are not in charge. Yeah, yeah. Summer has to be. Do you bring any of these plants indoors in winter? What is in the soil, it stays in soil. Only plants in pots. Some tropical, like Euphorbia, like Ravenalis, like... So all this stays outside. All this stays outside. So that's quite extraordinary. But things like the Anceta there. Anceta ventricosum can take down to minus six and grow like a phoenix. No. Yeah. Just give it water and minus six, no problem. Well, I grow it and we are always under the impression that it can't go below plus five. No. I have pictures with snow and temperatures. Wow. This is like a display, a Chelsea flower show. Yeah. I mean, obviously it's a garden and it's very beautifully done, but it is like a display. It's for public consumption. Yeah. It's like a picture. Yeah, it is. They are living sculptures. I love to be a pioneer with the plants here that no one grows in Croatia or in this area. You have these very dry summers. Yeah. Do you have a good water supply? Actually, no. That's the main problem. Because we don't have, still in the 21st century, we still don't have mains water. We don't have a pipeline. So how do you get your water? Fire brigade. The truck comes and you buy water. We buy water. We have a tank and that is all we have. And if it's rain, we can drum a little bit. Gosh, no wonder you're growing these drought tolerant plants. That makes sense. Absolute sense. Sitting on the terrace, Antti showed me the before picture. This is the same place 10, 11 years ago. Just to see the difference and see all the work. Gosh, it's very different, isn't it? Yeah. We don't see the progress until we see all the pictures and we are always amazed how different it is. Do you think you are beginning to influence people? Yeah, I think it's a little by little you are changing the world in your direction because you can seduce people with your passion and with the beauty of the garden easily. In Croatia for long periods, we have some wars and the nation was poor. Land equals food and that is the main thing that's going for centuries. Now with the tourism, with some other jobs that brings more money, there is room for more. I think the culture of the garden little by little it starts. I like Antti's optimism about the future of gardens here in Croatia and certainly what he has created in his garden is spectacular by any standards anywhere. I'm now going to another natural landscape which is famous for its fruits and vegetables. These are the floating gardens of Nurekva. Hello, can I come in? Thank you. Okay. The gardens are effectively tiny fields separated by water and the only way to visit them is by boat. The area was once swamp but these channels of very shallow water have been cut into it leading to gardens or fields that specialize in mandarins, watermelons, strawberries which are then sent all over Croatia. Moving along the interconnecting grid of reedy channels, my indomitable guide takes me between dozens of small cultivated islands. Above all there are mandarin plantations everywhere and in a few months time the Nurekva mandarins, renowned for their particular sweetness, will be ready to be harvested. But mandarins are not the only fruit. Yeah, big fat watermelon, look at that. Not quite ripe yet. There's more here. One, two, three. They will harvest these in about two to three weeks time in the month of July but what you have to realize is that it gets to 40 degrees here. It's really hot so in July and August to have fresh watermelon is a great treat so presumably they can charge good prices for it and anyway everybody wants it. And then crop's done and they come in with the winter crop which is almost invariably cabbage, look at that, and when the cabbage is over in spring they plant the watermelons so it goes. The Nurekva delta is 225 kilometers long and crosses through Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina before emptying into the Adriatic. On its way to the sea this water feeds into these hundreds of plots enabling them to be so fertile and productive despite the summer heat and drought. I've come to meet Ivana Sheshel, a local school teacher, on the plot that her family have tended for generations. How much of this does your family own? So everything here is family owned so this used to be my grandfather's and now my uncle and my father work these lands. Oh look, there's the lovely looking apricots. Yes. Do you grow these as a Can I try one? Yes, of course. Are they ripe? Well I don't think they're fully ripe but maybe the other tree. The other tree is better. It's riper, yes. Okay, this one. And how do you know when an apricot's ripe? Well they're soft, softer, they should be softer and maybe redder. It depends on the variety of course. Yeah well and of course now I'm squeezing them all. Oh look, that's good. So that's pretty red. Yes. It's quite shiny, isn't it? You think of an apricot being furry but this is quite shiny. Okay, taste test. I love apricots. Yeah, one of my favorite fruits. Really good. You should be selling these. You should be growing rows of them and selling them and they'll be delicious. I came here because I was told these were gardens. Now clearly they're not gardens as we would judge them. They're small gardens. And at first I was a bit disappointed but actually it's really informative because it tells me quite a lot about Croatia and their attitude towards land. Because one thing has become absolutely clear within Croatia, land equals food. And whether it's a scrap of land around your house or an area in amongst water or what we would think of as an allotment, the prime purpose is to grow food for your family to eat. After a two-hour drive from the Naretva valley, I have arrived in the best known and the most visited town in all Croatia, Dubrovnik. I got here last night as it was getting dark but I've woken up this morning to a lovely bright clear day and on my balcony I can look over this magnificent fort and the calm waters of the Adriatic beyond and then just down there is the old town of Dubrovnik which was pretty much destroyed by the earthquake of 1667 but has been rebuilt and so therefore has a lovely harmonious melding of grooves and stones around the narrow streets. So I'm gonna go down there and explore them. There are few places that can be gardened in the streets of the old town but that doesn't stop people from decorating the steps outside their doors with a range of cheerful plants in pots. The gardens in old Dubrovnik are obviously very small because it's very crowded but quite a few of them have really large orange trees like these casting delicious shade and obviously supplying fruit apparently all the year around and the reason why they're so big is because historically when couples got married they're encouraged to plant an orange tree. In the Balkan wars of the 90s the old town was heavily bombarded and shelled damaging many of its buildings. It was restored and the tourists duly returned but the bullet holes on the walls can still be seen. A 20-minute drive outside of Dubrovnik takes me to a renaissance garden famous for its collection of trees. We were driving through Tresteno looking for the arboretum which everyone said we must visit when I saw this tree this enormous incredible magnificent oriental plane and of course I realized that this is the entrance to the arboretum. Now I found out that not only is it the entrance to the arboretum but this tree is one of the original ones grown from seed over 500 years ago. This tree is said to be the same age as Tresteno arboretum which is the oldest in Europe and contains over 300 species of exotic and decorative trees. The arboretum was in existence when the summer villa and its garden was created by a family of Dubrovnik nobility in the 15th century and the aqueduct that they built bringing fresh water from the village into the garden still stands. Water is the key to this garden and it was brought into the garden from spring outside by this aqueduct built in 1492 by the then owners the Gotatic Godse family as well as bringing water in they brought in plants from seeds they were collected by sea captains all around the world and in fact as well as seeds they bought soil to make this stony barren hillside fertile. The aqueduct ends in a grotto with a statue of Neptune the Roman god of the sea flanked by nymphs that take the medieval pragmatism into baroque classical symbolism with a frenzy of fountains pools and rills before finally entering the garden itself. The gardens have suffered a good deal of neglect and were badly damaged in the Balkan wars of the 1990s but the process of restoration has begun. My final destination is the island of Lopud opposite Trastino. It's become an easy excursion from Dubrovnik as it's only a 25-minute ferry ride away. In the 15th and 16th centuries the island of Lopud had a merchant fleet of some 80 ships and a population of two or three thousand but wars communism and neglect hastened its decline until today there are only a few hundred permanent residents. There are no cars on the island and to get here you have to come by boat and above all it is beautiful. Near the harbor is a 15th century monastery which has been restored over the last 20 years and now includes a beautifully tended herb garden. Lopud is also attracting a new generation of homeowners often from outside Croatia who are restoring the many dilapidated handsome buildings as holiday homes. I'm visiting the garden of Lucian Rees Roberts, an architect and designer who works and lives mainly in New York and quite by coincidence whose garden I once visited in Palm Springs. Although the range of plants used here is very limited and the color palette is very constrained because you have clipped and unclipped plants growing side by side there is a real sense of textures that run through it and the result is rich and very satisfying. The rises of these steps down to the pool are lined with thyme and it looks good but its main effect as your feet brush against it is to release this incredible rich fragrance. With the hoopoes calling on the hillside Lucian and I sit and chat about his garden. What brought you here? I just loved it the idea that this had no cars and for me that quietness is really so important also just the light the olive trees the wonderful. What was it like when you came? It was quite overgrown the owners were living in Sarajevo and it's been that badly damaged the house during the war so they didn't have the resources to rebuild that and to garden. So how did you set about organizing it because I know that although it looks very natural it isn't. It was really just enjoying that sort of palette and its lavender the rosemary the smells. From what I've observed there is not a strong gardening culture at the moment in Croatia. What do they think of your very artistic garden? They do like it they do like coming here and looking at it and so on and they're always surprised the number of plants coming up the hill. I do sense that people are enjoying the idea of redeveloping the gardens the idea that these were medicinal gardens and fruit trees and so on but I hope I think more people are moving here and restoring things. I hope that that will be the next side of it. There is a younger generation yes and obviously with Croatia that didn't know the war yes that didn't know communism yes you know that they're entering a new world yeah so maybe they will bring new I think to it yes. I confess that I thought this journey was going to be a process of just visiting lovely gardens and finding identity but it's been much more than that. Through the gardens I've learned an awful lot about Croatia and their history and you can't get away from that history. Whilst northern Europe has embraced gardening as a lifestyle choice and equated it with mental health and with pleasure and with luxury here in Croatia I've been told again and again that land equals food but there's change afoot you can feel it things are changing and maybe part of that change will be to enable people to make gardens for pleasure and beauty and not just for necessity although I'm leaving Croatia the journey is not yet over and I'm going from one island to another because I'm off to Greece and the island of Corfu with its strong Venetian connections and there I'll be visiting a very private garden as well as a very public one in Athens I will be finishing on an island where I have strong personal connections to