Join Sky Arts and the National Trust as we take a journey around the country and across the centuries to discover Britain's most beautiful landscape and pleasure gardens. With unprecedented access to the Trust's properties and exclusive insights into the gardens' original designs and plans, this five-part series brings to life the stories behind each remarkable garden and the people who designed and built them.

Kingston Lacy is the Trust's impressive 17th Century mansion famed for its extensive grounds that include a Japanese garden, a sunken garden, a Victorian fernery and 8,000 acres of wooded parkland. Nestled in the heart of rural Dorset, its most famous features include the formal parterre, 'the greatest Japanese garden in Britain' and the large Egyptian obelisk, recovered during the extensive Oriental travels of explorer, Egyptologist and adventurer, William John Bankes.

The grounds were largely the vision of William John Bankes, who, having inherited the house and grounds in 1835, called upon his good friend Sir Charles Barry, architect of the Houses of Parliament to do some extensive remodelling. Bankes himself however, was exiled from Britain for homosexual indiscretions and was to see little of his masterpiece, although he continued to collect from abroad and send his collections home for display.


Inspired to get out into the garden?
The Sky Arts Music Service has a garden-inspired playlist, featuring classical tracks such as Rimsky-KorsakovThe Flight of the Bumble-Bee and Vaughan Williams' The Lark Ascending all ready for you to jump on your ride-on mower or prune your window box with. Just click here to listen.