First seen in 1987 on BBC2 The Victorian Kitchen Garden is a real gem, tracing over a period of 12 months the rebuilding of a traditional 19th century kitchen garden at Chilton Foliat in the heart of Berkshire .

Lecturer in Horticulture Peter Thoday presents the series along side Harry Dodson former head gardener at Chilton before his retirement. Beginning with a 30 minute introduction to the series before continuing for 12 episodes with each episode marking one calendar month this enables us to see the true growth of the garden and see how Dodson (who actually does most of the organising of the garden) turns it from a barren waste ground with broken down green houses into a thriving concern growing exotic to England plants such as Pineapple and Melons and a huge array of different types of fruit and vegetables.

A truly beautiful looking series, handsomely photographed by Paul Morris using natural light and a mixture of film and videotape. The month by month format is excellent as we see the cycle of seasons from the cold hard frost of the winter to high summer’s lush fruits.

A wonderful release then from Acorn with a very high re-watchability factor.

Extras: Main extra is a new interview with Peter Thoday where he explains the genesis of the series and so on, there is also an excellent History File on the garden and the usual scene indexing.