Lost Gardens

Their first project in a neglected corner of a Capability Brown landscape, is the Japanese garden at Gatton Park, Surrey. It was created in 1910 by orchid grower Sir Jeremiah Colman, of the mustard family.

This week they unearth the oldest garden in the series, at Shelley Hall, Suffolk. It is a moated Tudor garden created in 1519 by Sir Philip Tilney. He was a member of an ancient knightly family and he became by marriage, a first cousin of Elizabeth I.

The gardening team work on uncovering the lost world of a 19th-century Warwick grocer's detached pleasure garden in Warwick.

When Frances and Jim Philbrook moved into their Victorian country house in the heart of the Lake District, they never suspected the plot they'd inherited was once a much admired and extraordinary garden. Why would they? Apart from some neatly trimmed lawns, most of their grounds were hidden beneath decades' worth of bramble and rhododendrons, which had knitted together so densely that they allowed little light to penetrate the space.

The lost garden on the estate of Dunira, Near Comrie, Perthshire was owned by a wealthy laird, and the decayed estate now holds a tragic family secret. The team makes a start on restoring this 1920s Thomas Mawson-designed garden. The Dunira Estate, about 3 miles from Comrie and 3 miles from lovely Loch Earn in Perthshire, is a place of great beauty and tranquillity. It also has a most interesting history. The father of William Macbeth bought it in 1919 as a wedding present for his son. Macbeth's father had made his fortune as a ship building magnate on the Clyde during the First World War, and in the period of high unemployment during the 1920s he arranged for a train load of unemployed shipyard workers to be decanted at the local station every day to transform the Estate. The 9-hole golf course, putting green and a cricket pitch which they created have all gone now, but the Lost Gardens and the magnificent Arboretum remain, just a couple of minutes walk from East Turret.

A lock-keeper's garden blooms as Monty Don and his channel 4 team recreate a scene from the forgotten past of Coventry's waterways. Excavation of a garden near Coventry draws a frustrating blank, but a lucky find in a record office plunges the team right into the heart of the life, and garden, of lock keeper Richard Sutton's residence in 1807-1876. Sutton became famous in the area for selling his produce to passing barges and the road leading to the lock was named Sutton Stop in his honour. Richard's garden was well-known to 19th-century travellers, but over the years became neglected and overgrown.

Research and restoration on a Georgian officer's terrace in Chatham Historical Dockyard. By piecing together evidence from the ground, archives and from a detailed model of the Chatham Historical Dockyard dated 1774, the team is able to attempt one of the only accurate Georgian town garden restorations.

Lost Gardens - Presenter Monty Don, garden historian Dr Toby Musgrave and landscaper Ann-Marie Powell discover a tropical paradise near Falmouth in Cornwall. The lower garden at Penjerrick was created at a time when intrepid botanists were bringing home exotic flora from around the world. Besides the explosions of rhododendrons, there are minor forests of bamboo and rhubarb overgrown to resemble a series of Seventies parasols. Somewhere amid the kitsch chaos is an impressive line of tree ferns, long since threatened by asphyxiation. The tangled mass must be hacked aside, sensitively, in a bid to recreate the odd splendour of the original Penjerrick.