The Great Garden Detectives ITV3
A visual feast of horticulture, landscape, garden design and natural beauty, The Great Garden Detectives takes the viewer on an extraordinary and privileged journey through the secret history of eight British gardens all used extensively as locations for TV dramas and feature films.
Each programme is a story-telling treat, revealing the history of each garden, the horticultural excellence to be found there and the uniqueness of their location and environment. Presenter, Chris Beardshaw, a Gold Medal winner at Chelsea with extensive horticultural and garden design expertise, takes the viewer on a journey. He meets the people who own, work and cherish these gardens, discovering the hidden tales and gardening secrets they have at their fingertips.
From Brideshead Revisited to Oscar-winning film The Queen, and Sherlock Holmes to The Darling Buds Of May, the series looks at how Britain’s wealth of historic gardens have been used to conjure up some of our best-loved films and TV dramas.
In programme one, Castle Howard in Yorkshire: a house, garden and estate on a grand scale built to make a public statement of wealth, confidence and spectacle. It survives today, still owned by the Howard family and paying its way by opening its doors to the public and to film crews.
Famous as the location for the Granada production of Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited where it became a character vital to the series in its own right. We go behind the scenes not of the production but of the garden itself, visiting the famous Atlas Fountain, Ray Wood, the demolished Temple of Venus built by Hawksmoor, the kitchen gardens and the vast waterway system that threads its way through the entire estate and garden. We meet along the way the gardeners and custodians responsible for maintaining the past and building for its future.
ITV3 Sunday 21 October 2007 8:00pm - 9:00pm