From Venice to Plumstead, remarkable stories lurk behind ivy-covered walls.

This episode of the Garden Log leaps the wall of an abandoned garden on the island of Giudecca to tell of gout, roses, princesses, pills, Gertrude Jekyll's sister and tioletless Austrian.

It also visits South London where behind closed doors a secret slice of Mesoamerica is growing.

Here are some remarkable picture of The Garden of Eden in Venice to look at while you listen.

Can the English Cottage Garden survive in the new world of scorching summers and blasted borders?

Is there still a place for higgledy beauty and perennial favourites in our strange new world? Find out in this 500 year history of the nation's most beloved garden style.

https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/463428/green-kingdom-by-dark-ben/9781847928337

Celebrating the beauty and strangeness of plants.

This week we lope into the half-shade with graceful Magnolia kobus, elegant Abutilon 'Patrick Synge' and the monstrous Hydrangea aspera 'Bellevue', before bursting into the light with golden Acacia pravissima (the sawtooth wattle), duskyVitis vinifera 'Incana', and the tiny-leaved Myrtus communis subsp. tarentina.

Also featuring one of the finest accounts of plant hunting The Mountains of the Moon and a recommendation of what to read in gardening this this week.

https://www.thegardencollective.uk/ben-dark/

https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/463428/green-kingdom-by-dark-ben/9781847928337