Winter Movies 2021: Monty Don's Southern Gardens

Time for more winter movies, where plants get top billing! This year we're watching the BBC series "American Gardens" hosted by Britain's Monty Don. This time Monty visits beautiful Southern gardens during a heat spell in his quest for America's contribution to garden design. So make yourself a cup of hot chocolate (or a mint julep), and let's join Monty in his search for the typical American garden.

Monty starts in Washington D.C. at the home of former United Kingdom ambassador Nigel Kim Darroch, who observes that many American gardens do not have fences (lawns simply run into lawns), and speculates that Americans like big open spaces without boundaries. Next, Monty visits Monticello to learn about the estate and its history, including Jefferson's scientific contribution to gardens and the complex role that slaves played in sculpting and tending the landscape.

Across the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia horse country, Monty visits Oak Spring, designed by Rachel "Bunny" Mellon, and is surprised by its modest loveliness. In Charleston, South Carolina he visits Middleton Place, which was first settled in the 1670s, and is one of the oldest landscape gardens in the United States. Monty is surprised to see an alligator lounging on the lawn, and loves the ancient oaks festooned with long draping moss. He visits several private gardens and learns how much the hot humid climate of the South has shaped gardens in South Carolina. 

In Miami, Florida, Monty visits Vizcaya, a Renaissance garden built in the early 1900s, and observes that even with unlimited resources, you can't force some plants to thrive in a Florida swamp. But on the Big Cypress National Preserve he finds a place where many plants thrive. At The Kampong (Indonesian for "enclosure"), he visits the botanical garden of Dr. David Fairchild, a plant collector who sought the best food plant species of the world and changed the face of America's food production. Here Monty sees the Madagascar Periwinkle, or primrose, found by his plant hunter ancestor, and now thought to be important for cancer treatment.

Monty ends his Southern tour in Louisiana, first in New Orleans, where jazz was born and quirky homes and unique gardens abound, and then at rural Longue Vue House & Gardens, with its grand garden rooms. Despite the heat and humidity, Monty seems to enjoy his tour of Southern gardens. I appreciated the straightforward way that he interviewed historians to seek information about the slaves that created and tended the historical gardens of the South. Monty Don notes the optimism that permeates the American garden.