Countryfile

Hampshire (28x24)

Uitzenddatum: Jun 15, 2016

To celebrate British Flowers Week, Charlotte Smith and Anita Rani are looking at the resurgence of British flowers. Charlotte meets Rosebie Morton, a Hampshire farmer who has diversified into British blooms in a big way. On her farm there are as many acres given over to flowers as there is food. For Rosebie it is all about the scent. Charlotte is intoxicated by their fragrance and finds out from scientist Dr Lorenzo Stafford what it is about the smell of flowers we find so bewitching. Anita is up bright and early at Covent Garden Flower Market, where she meets the traders doing a roaring trade in homegrown roses, including Rosebie's. She also meets up with two floral artists who have turned their hands to creating fantastic floral headdresses. Matt Baker takes to the old pack horse trails through the New Forest with Gale Gould and her trusty pack horse Josh. Josh is all done up in period livery, and Matt hears how these ponies were used by smugglers to ply their illicit trade. He also hears that the forest was used for bombing practice by the RAF. Where the bombs fell, the craters filled with water to become ponds rich in wildlife. Matt also visits a farm where water buffalo are the main livestock. He helps farmer Dagan James round them up and learns that their meat is reckoned to be better for us. To put this to the test, he tries buffalo carpaccio at a riverside restaurant. Adam Henson gets stuck in with the sheep shearing and hears from different farmers about the prices they are getting for their wool. Tom Heap investigates why areas set up by the government to protect our seas are being branded by some scientists as worse than useless.