The Don's grand tour is small on horti and big on culture
One of the side effects of middle age is enjoying gardening and staying in on Friday nights. And every other night for that matter, though that's beside the point here. So an hour with Monty Don spent traipsing around other people's rather large gardens is never less than a pleasure, as Don is one of that rare breed of presenters who doesn't allow his ego to take centre stage; his enthusiasm and knowledge underpin the narrative and the pictures, rather than vice versa.
After taking us round Florence, Rome and the south of Italy, Don ended the series in the north of the country. And in the best traditions of the 19th- century grand tour, Don's journey has placed the emphasis on the cultural rather than the horti- in horticultural. If you want to know how to grow the best tomatoes, watch Gardener's World; if you want to know that tomatoes are non-native to Italy and that it took the Venetians years to realise you could actually eat the fruits of these strange plants that traders had brought back from South America, then stay tuned.
Starting in the Orto Botanico in Padua, the world's oldest garden dedicated to the study of plants' medicinal properties, taking in the Villa Pisani in Stra, the estate in Lucca annexed by Napoleon for his sister Elisa, the multimillion-euro lakeside villas of George Clooney and Richard Branson and winding up on the Isola Bella on Lake Maggiore, last night's episode was a lesson in Italian history from the Renaissance to the present day told through its gardens.
Fascinating as it was to see how the Italians assimilated both exotic plants and landscaping influences from around the world into their own distinct garden identity, the most remarkable thing for me personally was how Don managed to make me see the beauty in box hedges. Normally one glimpse of a formal layout with neatly trimmed hedges – Don showed us one that two gardeners spend four months a year cutting with scissors – has me wanting to run, but I found myself coming round to the idea. Is this the onset of old age for me, or am I just another to have fallen under Don's spell?