Floating over Cornwall
Helen Shields, assistant producer
Back in May 2014 when there were three of us in a little office working out how to put the series together, it was difficult to imagine how we would do it in time. But once we started putting in the phone calls, we wondered why this hadn’t been done before. Who could fail to enjoy seeing glorious gardens from a different angle? The stunning gardens are just part of what has been a beautiful series to work on. For each episode we found a person who had a real connection with one of the gardens and their stories are all touching.
Gardener’s son Marcus, at Cornwall’s Trebah Gardens, has fond childhood memories of roaming free through its many acres. I’m a little bit biased: I love Cornwall, and so this programme is possibly my favourite. The idea is simple but the logistics are less straight forward. What can you see from above? What about the weather? We picked two stunning gardens: lush Trebah is like a lost world with its huge gunnera patch and river of hydrangeas flowing down the valley. St Michael’s Mount offers a stark contrast – a rocky island crowned with a medieval church and castle, and where the surprising gardens decorate the granite cliff face.
Add into the mix the amazing Minack Theatre, hewn by hand from the living rock, and you’ve got some amazing settings. The sun shone, Christine tried her hand at gardening on the edge and abseiled down St Michael’s Mount. My overriding memory of this series will be the voices of the Treverva Male Voice choir ringing out round the valley at Trebah as the sun set and our drone camera buzzed overhead.
Every garden tells a thousand stories. We’ve touched on just a few but they’re special and they all reveal how captivating and inspiring these landscapes can be.
