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'Planet Earth'.

                With the British voting to leave the European Union this year and the United States imploding politically, it's clearer today more than ever how different - how divided - we are as a race. There's been so much mistrust and so much anger. As this stormy year reaches its end, however, an oasis of common ground has emerged. Ten years ago, naturalist and broadcaster Sir David Attenborough brought to the nation his most astounding television series: 'Planet Earth'. It revealed scenes of wild species and their behaviour from the highest peaks and the deepest jungles which most humans had never seen before. Now in 2016 'Planet Earth II' has come. Ten years of further developments in science and technology have meant even more breathtakingly special stories from nature recorded on camera. The once-familiar thud of my awestruck jaw hitting the floor on a Sunday evening has returned. Best of all, from what I've heard from social networks and conversations it seems that regardless of our societal and political divisions, its a thud echoed across millions of homes worldwide.

                There have been three episodes of this series so far, and each has completely inspired me. The scenes of jungle fauna yesterday were too stunning for me not to place them here, on the blog, for me to return to and continue gazing.

"Cloud-breathing"

“They cover less than six percent of the earth’s surface but they are home to half of all the plants and animals on land. Jungles have just the right amount of light, water, and nutrients, and they have had - every day - for millennia.”

“Everything in the jungle has to compete for space. Only 2% of the sun’s rays reach the ground, so even the plants must battle for the light they need if they’re to grow. 300 years ago, this Hura tree began its race for light. And every day since, it has absorbed the light and water it needed to grow into a giant. It has succeeded in doing what every tree must do to survive… rise above the gloom of the jungle floor. And what is more, its success has given life to others. Its branches now carry a thousand other plants. These particular ferns, figs, and orchids live only on the branches of other trees. A thousand plants growing on one single tree. Throughout the forest, this story is repeated endless times. As a consequence jungles are home to more species of plants than anywhere else on earth, and they in turn support a wealth of animals.”

“In some jungles it rains so much that for part of the year the trees are almost totally submerged - the forest floor is thirty feet below the water’s surface. This is a mysterious world, a place few people have explored. We have much to discover about the animals for which this is home… including some you might never to expect to find amongst trees. Here, a thousand miles from the sea, are dolphins.”

“For the coming of the night, a new cast of jungle characters takes to the stage. Fungi unlike plants thrive in the darkness of the forest floor. They’re hidden until they begin to develop the incredible structures with which they reproduce. Each releases millions of microscopic spores which drift invisibly away. Many have fruiting bodies which reach upwards to catch any feeble current there might be in the clammy air. But some become luminous. Why fungi light up has remained a mystery - until now. Scientists studying the brightest fungi in the world think they might have an answer. Like a beacon the light attracts insects from far and wide… [which - like bees and pollen - the fungi use to spread their spores.]”

The Dell in autumn, Bodnant Garden.

                Anyone who has set foot into Bodnant Garden knows that it’s a very special place. You don’t need to have a blog on horticulture or fluency in botanical Latin, anyone I’ve met who has been there knows it. It is spectacularly beautiful, and I shall always count myself blessed for having had the chance to pop along as a volunteer gardener three years ago, when I first got started. Bodnant was the first experience I wrote about on the blog, in December 2013, and I was there every week until the RHS invited me down to Essex the following summer. I hold the garden in the highest esteem, and I have been there through winter, spring, and summer - yet for all the drifts of daffodils I have seen, the azaleas in flower and the laburnum arch dripping with yellow, it is only now that I have been there in autumn.

                There is no need for me to point out how lovely it looked - it is the most romantic garden in the United Kingdom, with a further brush of autumnal colour of course it looked wonderful (and the mild weather has even kept Bodnant’s roses lingering on). To add to the enjoyment, I wasn’t alone but with my mother, sister Charis, and Michelle who was visiting Bodnant for the first time. The only slightly regret I had was in bringing a cameraphone with no battery - the garden’s loveliness would go appreciated, absolutely, but not photographed. However, perhaps noticing that for once I wasn’t annoyingly dashing about or getting myself lost for the sake of a few photos, Charis kindly offered me her cameraphone instead. Looking back at the photos now (at the subject, rather than my skills as a photographer!), I'm so glad she did. Hopefully I can use them to persuade my friends to visit the garden!

Much of Bodnant's fame rests in its evergreens - the mighty redwoods and rhododendrons - but it's wonderful to see hitherto green-camouflaged acers deepening into reds and purples.

Although some sort of enchantment appears to lie on this land,
protecting the leaves from falling, cyclamen are a true sign of the
shortening days. In the image below, it is barely possible to see
white-flowered cyclamen at the base of the Sequoiadendron giganteum -
a hint of its vast scale.

Michelle pondering to herself whether Bodnant would host a wedding reception!

Pinus strobus ‘Minima’ aglow in the warmth of a setting sun.

The greens, yellows and pinks upon a Deutzia scabra ‘Candidissima’ slowly recalling that it is decidious after all.

One of Bodnant’s countless pretty streams, babbling toward the Pin Mill.

The Mourne Mountains.

What a day the Lord God Almighty must have been having when he put together the Mourne Mountains! We had six hours here of hard walking, in high winds and then under a setting sun. Having finally climbed Doan, it felt as if we were sat in the heavens, with breathtaking views before us whichever way we turned our eyes. Epic. Truly, biblically epic.

Castlewellan Forest Park.

                I'm certainly no aficionado when it comes to art. As a painter my mother has always taken the family along to galleries, and as a result I could name some names - da Vinci, Caravaggio, Monet and Manet, Picasso and Pollock - but whether I would be able to express much of an opinion on any of them is a different question! However, there is one artist I really have come to admire: Bob Ross. He's no longer with us, but through the 80s and 90s he had a great old show called The Joy of Painting. With his tips and tricks he taught his audience to paint some of nature's most beautiful scenery - mountains, waters, and famously "happy little trees". His ethos was to make things as simple and as encouraging for the public as possible, and while painting he would often be rambling about his Christian faith or his love of wildlife, even bringing rescued animals and birds from home into the studio. In reality that was the charm of the programme, more so even than the finished work. It may not have produced a generation of Botticellis, but it left thousands of people interested and willing to try - and if I could replicate that in some small way with horticulture I'd be a very happy man. All the same, his finished works were lovely to look at: the glades of Florida, Alaskan pine forests, morning mist rising from bubbling streams.

                It was a surreal but very enjoyable feeling then, to find Michelle and I wandering into one of his paintings about a week ago. Castlewellan Forest Park is a favourite of Michelle's family, a really mixed forest with so many different species of tree encircling a great lake at its centre. Each colour from the rich autumnal palette there loomed out at us - softer shades from a distance, through the day's fog, and brightening as we walked closer. Sounds came echoing from every side of the water, with geese honking and children shouting on their bikes, but the lake's surface lay undisturbed, by evening as still as glass. It really did seem as though we had had our little figures painted into one of his scenes.

Although it's not unusual for 18th century parkland to come with a folly, Castlewellan's Moorish-inspired tower is absolutely unique. With countless little ferns growing between the brickwork, it has been "Irishised" rather nicely, and the gracefully-shaped windows are marvellous for gazing out on to the forest's canopy. We found it on our second lap of the lake, following as many paths as we could and remaining until it was quite dark.

Belfast Botanic Gardens.

Irish novelist Forrest Reid, Apostate (1926):                 "When I was about six or seven I used to be taken out each morning by my nurse, Emma, to the Botanic Gardens, at that time not yet transformed into a public park. There was a large conservatory there, and the wing of the building where the palms and cactus grew had a glass door bordered with red and yellow panes. On chilly October days I was very fond of flattening my nose against one of these coloured windows, and peering out into an exotic world. What I saw then, in spite of the familiar shape and position of each tree and shrub, was not the Botanic Gardens at all, but a tropical landscape, luxuriant and gorgeous. The damp warmth of the greenhouse atmosphere, the moist earthy smell of the ferns and creepers and mosses growing there, helped to deepen the illusion that I was far away in the virgin forest."