 Hello, thank you for joining me today. I've come to the National Trust property Clifton. I'm just standing by Up to the house Now my plan today is I'm just going to do a video in one set of gardens There's so many different gardens here that what we'll do is another day I'll come back and I'll do another bit of the estate and I'll do another bit We'll just keep doing it till I've done all of them, but it's not I'm not setting any time scale for this I'm just going to do it as and when so if you look up that way That's the main house. So I thought we'd do that in a future video. I thought today. We'll look at more the water Clifton water gardens and this lovely fountain here. It's called the fountain of love Placed around a huge stone shell. I Always used to used to come here a lot as a child Fascinated by the lady up there how she's holding a jug with water coming out And how The jug never ever seemed to run out of water. I never used to quite be able to work that one out So I'll do a walk around the fountain of love just you can have a good look So it really is kind of water coming off in all directions To come round here you can see the better the jug I said about how the water is always coming out And I could never quite understand that as a child And then there's the house up there the house is actually now a hotel I've been on the roof of it once I don't know but as I said will another day at some point in the future. We'll do that in Got a more Italian eight gardens. So again, we'll do that in a future video. So we started with one topic on water We're now going to go to the water gardens And see a lot more water and lakes That building over there that is the old head gardener's cottage These walls here This is where the kitchen garden would have been once it's actually now the estate main carpark But what they've done, there's quite a few Gardens Inside so it's all still quite pleasant What we'll do, we'll follow Where that Mercedes is driving We'll walk a bit through the car park and through to the water gardens That way So when you first arrive here by car See it's not particularly exciting as a car park, but there are some quite nice There's a little information kiosk in the middle. I remember when they built that Must have been in the mid 90s. I said I came here a lot as a child Pleasant little gardens It's the shop in the plant center. So I came as a child What's the shop now that used to be the toilets and the toilet's right over there and they swap the shop in the toilets over So just going through the garden center. We are going to head for that door over there There's a good section of plants you can buy here So we're going to go through this door It's also fairly modern This never used to be here See that's about the kitchen garden. You see how they grew cherries all around the edge And just see the cherries They're not quite right just yet. I've just gone a fruit out of the form of kitchen garden And we're now Into the water gardens And just behind us here There's a maze That was because as I should have mentioned already and the estate is where the astas lived Of course Lady Astor was the first female member of Parliament now Here the astas had a maze And it all kind of got overgrown in 2011 it was decided to restore the maze I'm not going to go in it today because it'll be a bit of a You'll literally just see hedges if I try and find the middle. I will point out If you look up over there you can see behind the wall. There's a what looks like a tree It's actually a concrete tree made disguising a chimney So we'll now go down The water gardens So you've got lots of different plants in here some more sort of exotic plants and a lot of the plants were The idea was that they were plants that would flower during the spring. So that's why you've got the terry trees and various other plants So we go down here down this rock You may have seen talking of gardens from other countries a while back We went to Bidolf Grange where we saw some really exciting gardens from different places. There's a beach tree here That's not particularly exotic. That's quite British Actually Across here. This is what's most fascinating. You've got the lake with an island in the middle and you've got these stepping stones across to the islands As I always remember as a child there was always some really big fish Big koi carps in here. It's not quite as big as that woodland one But still quite big We go over here. That's the main bulk of the lake there That Pagoda is quite big. It actually came from Chateau de Bagatelle in Paris and then it was brought here to Clifton by the Asters Got a lovely lake, we've got a bridge. We'll go to that bridge in a minute We'll walk around there come back across that bridge and we'll go over that So this is the behind me That's the Pagoda, so it's a Japanese style Pagoda that actually came from France We're gonna go back Go around this state And we'll go back come back onto the island So there's four ways on to the island. We're gonna do all four on and off the island It's always been one of my favorite views of any national cross property looking across the Beppin stone to the Pagoda So we're about where we were a moment ago. That's the main over there They've got some really Really lovely gardens, a lot of variety of plants. You've got a Retractive Indian bean tree that tree in front of us. That's called the Indian Bean tree. I don't know if it's the right time of year, but you do sometimes see The beans that grow on these trees You can't actually see any Not sure what time they come out, but this Yeah, here we are That is dead now, but And the seeds have all come out with that. It's come off now. That is the beans that grow on the Indian bean trees Let me have a look over here. You get another nice view. We won't see the Pagoda There's a little stream Starting just up here. This plant we've got here, this is called Butcher's Broom It's, you see it in woodland. It's an indication that the woodland is late from woodland, but now that I've got over to that bridge So I've said there's a lot of cherry trees here So they've kind of grown them in. You've got the ones over in the kitchen garden They were growing in a slightly ornamental way, but more to provide cherries. Yet these have grown to be more ornamental Cross tough enough to get the Pagoda and the fountain and everything. I'm just going to go around here And we're going to cross back on to that island There's another fountain And different vistas cross to the Pagoda. So we're now going to cross This rock bridge and take this back on to the island As a child, I used to love coming here. I used to particularly like that bit Just feel the spray. It's quite refreshing. The wind just blew the water off the fountain towards me Felt a bit like it was raining lightly Now we're going to make the final crossing. It's almost jumping, so small There's loads of them. It's now nice too So there's the view of the lake. Now this is actually an overflow The water would come off up here. There's a huge fish They've got some very big koi tart Coming through here, lots of bamboo Now my plan is, as I said, we're sort of We're going to come here as and when I can And each visit can be a sort of different theme. So this one we're looking at more of the water But at River Thames, it's the border of the estate. We're not going to go down there today. It's a bit too far We've got an oak tree there, another Indian bean tree What I'm thinking we could do So we finish on water. As I said, the water garden has like an overflow So a stream runs off down there If we go up to here, there's a gate out of the water gardens The water gardens have a deer-proof fence all the way round them So if we go out of that deer-proof fence There's one more set of lakes that we can go and have a look at before we finish this video There's a kit to here We've got big deer-proof anti-deer gates Through we go That's closed properly That is known as the long walk. It's about a mile and a quarter So if you follow it down there you come down to the other end of the estate We go down here Come to part of the estate Known as the Rushy Valley Which is that valley going off down there, the road you can see When you come by car, or when you come by any form of transport And this is Helicopter Which some people do, some hotel guests do You come up this road So we're now going down below the water gardens The water gardens are up here The overflow stream flows down here There's not a lot of water in it And I suppose it eventually makes its way down the Rushy Valley If you go down there you'll eventually come to the Thames So as I said, perhaps we'll visit the Thames part of the estate in a future video So we're now crossing down into the Rushy Valley It's a lovely place, I've always enjoyed coming here Ever since I was a child I've probably been here more than anywhere else Probably here in Beckinscott model village at the two places in my life I have been to the most So I've just never actually made a video here Because last time I came it was so busy I just thought now we'll leave it for another time So we're now coming up to some lakes Now it's interesting because these lakes A bit like the Maze weren't here Haven't always been here I think they were once and they've been restored So they're gradually bringing parts to the estate back That have been long lost for years They've started to It's a bit bumpy, they've reopened things Which I think is really nice So here we are, this is the Rushy Valley Lakes So as I said, we started with water And we've finished With lovely calm, still water So I hope you enjoyed this video from The National Trust place The National Trust estate called Clifton Thank you very much for watching We're going to come back here We'll do other videos in the future And goodbye