So you spiral up
like going up [inaudible] or something
and you find the shell keep
which is just like a sort of James Turrell oval
of high, high walls and an open roof
We were going to have chickens out there
which I still quite want to do because it's very safe
Julian started thinking about having plants in there
that people can't touch like giant hoghweed, which is very, very--
a massive irritant to the skin
If you touch it you grow huge blisters
and there are lots of other poisonous
sort of Jurassic things with magnificent leaves
and the gunnera has these huge spikes all over it
but it looks fantastic
What is a weed? Oh, what is a weed?
Tell you a very good, funny story very quickly.
A very posh interior decorator walking around a very very posh garden
with a herd of the posh people and being shown the posh garden
by posh garden designers, members of everything
and after about four and a half hours
had seen every single clipped board or clipped everything
wonderful rose beds
He's heard to whisper as they come to a rather dinghy corner
"My God, hooray for nettles! Nature won."
A lot of people don't see gardens early in the morning, that are open
I always think its' a sad thing, all the great so-called gardens
[inaudible] by people lived in them, drunk in them, argued in them
and they saw dawns and dusks in them
and we all see them very sanitized now
We came here in 2012
and it just poured with rain for 12 months after we arrived
and all we did was take things out and poison them
and so, that was a very hard year
I don't want to live in a castle
I don't really want to live in the ruins
so we live in a sort of white light box
with the surrounded gardens
The house itself was built in 1806 by a pupil of Soane
and it's so simple
and it sits sort of strangely in this sort of--
It's a castle, but yet it's not a castle
It's very outward going. Most castles are closed walls inward
because he knocked down the walls to get the view
I mean, which you wouldn't be allowed to do now
Davenport, it's the remains of Her Majesty's Navy
and there's lots of whoops and screams and sirens
and I think it's like looking over the Bay of Naples
There's something about the sound in this castle
I think that's partly to do with the [inaudible]
but it's also to do with the castle
and these curtain walls go almost all the way around
except for the view
and other people have noted it to me
and there's particularly a sort of density of silence
and quality of echo
I mean, the way your photographs are sort of making people look again at plants
and there's an amazing photo she has
of a poppy
There's this sort of birth of this pussy pink
bursting out of its green nature
- and crinkling as it's forming. - Yeah, very crinkly
And in Isabel's photo she's often so fascinated
by the thing you'd remove, normally
Yeah, it's the rot. It's part of the fecundity
It's part of the whole cycle of replication of the selfish gene
and the smell is all part of that too
because it's all about getting fertilized by a moth
I think a lot of people who don't touch
should realize what all of this lovely day of nature surrounding us is
It's just really one huge sort of orgy
- Sex organ. - Orgy!
I mean, it really is!
- It's the smell of-- - Phallic erections and fennel...
- Sperm lilies and-- - ...driving out of the ground
It's like the beginning of a sort of strange orchestra
where things pop up and--
There's standard ways of doing it
but quite often, the whole magic of doing it
is not sticking to the standard ways
It's like doing flight controls in an airport
but you mustn't worry too much about it
If you have a crash, it doesn't matter