PLANTS THROUGH A LENS

The groundbreaking BBC documentary The Green Planet invited us on a time travelling journey into the world of plants. We caught up with Executive Producer Mike Gunton to find out what it was like to make the series, and how it changed the way we see plants forever.

As plant lovers, we’ve all spent time appreciating their unique beauty, and marvelling as we watch them grow. But the BBC’s The Green Planet series allowed us to see them in a whole new light. With Mike Gunton at the helm of the production, plants were no longer just supporting roles in the dramas of the natural world, they were centre stage.

Mike began his television career working on human-focused and observational documentaries. This, combined with his background in biology, and a decent stroke of good luck, gave him his big break in wildlife documentaries: he was offered the chance to be an assistant producer on The Trials of Life series with Sir David Attenborough. And the rest, as they say, is natural history.

That was over thirty years ago, and Mike is now Creative Director of the BBC Natural History Unit and has been an Executive Producer on wildlife documentaries including Dynasties, Planet Earth II, and Life.

Making a natural history series is a lengthy process, so work starts with a bit of fortune telling: looking at the zeitgeist and working out what will be interesting in a few years’ time when the series is complete. And once he has landed an idea, Mike has to make it a reality. When filming is in progress, he gets involved in the practical aspects too, like going on location and working in the cutting rooms with producers to help them write the stories. “I think my job is to keep the flame of the original idea alive. Make sure that over these three, four or five years that all the storytelling and the final shows deliver on that promise of the original idea.”

It takes a lot of work and a huge leap of faith to make a wildlife series. So how did Mike end up pitching for a programme about plants, which, at that time, didn’t capture the public imagination like the dynamic and colourful lives of animals and birds? The genesis of the series was sparked by a combination of factors. At that time, public discourse around the climate crisis was bringing a more holistic way of thinking, and a renewed interest in plants: “People were beginning to see it's not just about dealing with fossil fuels, but it's about the nature-based solutions. And actually, increased biodiversity will help us fight the problems of climate change” says Mike. He also recognised that, since The Private Life of Plants in 1995, there had been little else televised that focused on the plant kingdom. It was still a relatively unexplored area of the natural world.

Mike loves filmmaking for “being able to show people things that their eyes can't see, that only the camera can see”. But he wanted to go even further and “take them into a world that the camera can't normally see”. The timing was fortuitous. In a “lovely alignment of stars”, new technology was becoming available that could make this happen when filming the world of plants, and so making The Green Planet became possible.

New robotic motion-controlled cameras meant that time-lapse photography was no longer static. “Rather than just a single almost like a theatrical image of just looking at a stage”, Mike explained, “suddenly you could do filmmaking. Now you could see the action from not only multiple perspectives of the plant, but also you could see the perspective of its antagonists.” The Green Planet doesn’t tell generic stories about plants, it tells stories about specific ones. And that meant Mike could now apply the observational documentary style that shaped his early career to plants too: “For the first time ever we could observe not just plants, but plant behaviour” he says.

Mike describes The Green Planet as “a kind of time travelling journey through the portal into a parallel universe”. And who better to take us on that voyage than series presenter Sir David Attenborough: “It was really helpful having him guide us through the portal, so to speak.”

The innovative technology used to make The Green Planet has transformed the way we see plants forever. Filming provided surprises not just for the production team and viewers, but for the academic and scientific communities too: “Almost every sequence was a revelation…effectively a discovery in its own right.” But from the tropical rainforests of Borneo to the Sonoran Desert, it was filming a particular relationship between two plants found in our back gardens that Mike found most fascinating: discovering that the parasitic dodder plant actually helps the nettle too. By effectively forming telecommunication cables between nettle plants, the dodder enables them to pass messages about predators. “I thought that was just astonishing”, Mike says.

The Green Planet tells such a compelling narrative of inter-plant relationships, it’s hard not to see certain species as ‘goodies’ and others as ‘baddies’. But did Mike think of them like this too? “I think the trick is to let the audience make their own mind up…we try to be quite careful about not imposing kinds of morality. But one of the joys of storytelling is that audiences see their lives reflected in these things. Fundamentally, we all look at life through the prism of our own lives”. Remarkably, filming The Green Planet has meant that we can now do this with plants too.

Discussion about the natural world invariably leads back to the climate emergency. Mike spoke of the balance wildlife filmmakers have long had to find in accurately conveying the magnitude of the climate and ecological crisis without making viewers lose hope. The Green Planet does have some stark messages, but there is optimism too. When it comes to fixing the climate crisis, Mike believes wholeheartedly that plants are optimism: “Plants will do it for you. They're our greatest allies. You don't even have to do much. Just let them be and they will do the hard work for us.”

We asked Mike if he has any advice for readers on what we can all do at home to help promote biodiversity and mitigate the effects of the climate crisis. Appreciative that things like No Mow May and planting for pollinators may well already be at the forefront of our minds, he suggested something we can do in parallel with our growing efforts: “Be a disciple. If you have any opportunity, any influence at home, work and school to encourage everybody to do just something...if they have plants to protect them, if they have opportunities to grow plants, grow them…put pressure on those in power who don't necessarily share those views.” The key role plants play in helping solve the climate and ecological emergency is not lost on Mike: “Plants are our saviours in this way. They’re the fundamental bedrock for biodiversity”, he concludes.

What’s clear from talking to Mike, and across all five episodes of The Green Planet, is the importance of our intricate, intimate, and innate connection with plants. He finishes by discussing how profoundly moving it was to film the giant sequoias in California: “There's a spiritual side of plants, which I think when you're in a forest, when you are among plants, you're among trees, there's something that subliminally you connect with. And I hoped that would come out in the series.” Mission accomplished. Our gardens may not contain giant sequoias, but The Green Planet has shown us there are always new ways we can connect with, and appreciate, the plants that do grow there.