Monty Don's Adriatic Gardens

Episode 1

Venice

59 mins

In traveling to Venice, Monty does what he realizes most tourists don't do, namely visit their gardens which most tourists probably don't even know exist in most of them hidden gems behind tall stone walls not visible to the public. With the exception of one garden in Padua, all the gardens he visits are located in the central part of the city. While many of them contain traditional Italian Renaissance elements, most of them are relatively new by European standards. One of the few things unique to Venice as opposed to the rest of the country is the city being located in a salt water lagoon, hence many of the gardens needing to contain salt tolerate plants. In that vein, he visits a few gardens that were hit hard by the flood of 2019, the second worst flood in the city's history, he however, unable to notice any damage in not knowing what those gardens looked like before the flood. The other, also related to water, is everything needed to be transported via the canals. As such, he watches a parks crew prune some large trees, the debris, which must be transported out of the city via the canals, and visits a nursery which in turn must bring in all its inventory via the canals.