Alan Titchmarsh's Garden Secrets - 18th Century

Alan Titchmarsh presents a stunning series that reveals the amazing secrets behind Britain's great gardens, examining how they continue to influence gardeners, including himself, today. Few gardening movements can match the impact of the 18th-century landscape movement, and Stowe in Buckinghamshire is one of the most important examples of their revolutionary designs. Here we find a rejection of the rigid formality of the previous century and an embracing of nature, no matter what the ecological cost. Alan demonstrates how they 'borrowed' views, manipulating the landscape to draw the eye to certain features. Creating a focal point is now a staple of modern garden design and Alan shows how it can accentuate a garden's best bits and also be used to hide things. Designers such as Bridgeman at Stowe were the first to sculpt huge areas of lawn, and Alan meets Kim Wilkie who is creating his own modern version of this type of lawn at Boughton Park. And Alan shows how the landscape movement pioneered the meandering path and placed statues and buildings in key places, aging them deliberately to fit with the landscape. Alan shares his own tips on aging, and how to recreate this type of 'set dressing' in a garden.