Lea Gardens on TV
ONE OF Shetland’s most extraordinary gardens will feature in the forthcoming episode of Beechgrove Garden, to be broadcast on BBC2 Scotland on Thursday at 7pm.
Lea Gardens, at Tresta, started up 40 years ago when Rosa Steppanova and James Mackenzie bought a derelict croft with ten acres of land and started turning part of it into a garden that today is the home to 1,600 plant species and cultivars from around the world.
Filmed back in July, presenter George Anderson is in his horticultural element when he joins Rosa for a tour of her garden, now the largest plant collection north of Inverewe Garden on Scotland’s west coast.
Rosa said: “Most surprising for George Anderson was finding an authentic Andean hillside at 60º North with Chilean bamboos, fire bushes, lantern trees, magnificent southern beeches and a barberry not found anywhere else in the British Isles.”
Lea Gardens is open to the public from March until October, daily from 2-5pm except Thursdays, or by appointment.
The team of Thursday’s Beechgrove Garden also visits Glasgow Botanic Gardens in their 200th anniversary and taste-test new super sweet tomatoes.
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