SPEAKING to Tom Hart Dyke you want him to succeed. Tom Hart Dyke also wants to succeed and he is doing everything within his power to make his vision come alive.

The subject of BBC2's Return to Lullingstone Castle (Monday's at 8.30pm), Tom has already accomplished a great deal, good and bad. Sometimes described as a modern day plant hunter' Tom has already undergone a terrifying experience when he was captured in 2000 by FARC guerrillas in Panama - while hunting for rare orchids - and held hostage for a mind numbing nine months.

But Tom held on to his sanity by thinking about the idea he had for a World Garden of Plants - a garden laid out in the shape of a world map containing plants collected from his trips around the globe. Not only was this project to save Tom's sanity, but the plan is that it will also save his ancestral home, the beautiful and historic Lullingstone Castle in Kent.

Tom's family have lived at Lullingstone Castle since the days of the Domesday. They already open to the public and have done so since 1950 but visitor numbers had tumbled to the all time low of 2000 in 2002 and it was feared they might lose the family home. They needed a unique attraction as well as the beauty of the house, to draw in visitors. Tom's idea of a global garden might, just be the solution. Last year BBC2 followed Tom in his hugely ambitious project and saw the World Garden have 20,000 visitors with the family as hands on' owners. But there is still much to do and maintenance is on its own, a huge undertaking. What to do with a large number of valuable plants who can't stand cold weather for a start.

In his book, An Englishman's Home' recently published by Transworld, Tom gives a no holds barred account of everything that occurs in his efforts to realise his dream. Really quite huge logistical problems are overcome and Smallholder picked up on his use of pigs to clear a mass of vegetation around the Ice House and Bath House. The pigs were female but as they were destined for slaughter, Tom named them Woolly and Red Spider after two horrid orchard pests. This was a not entirely successful ploy as Tom developed a great fondness for these creatures and they actually stayed at Lullingstone longer than initially planned.

We caught up with Tom to ask him about his experiences as pig man and plantsman. His enthusiasm comes over in everything he says, even in his voice, and he is intensely likeable. Talking to Tom is like being carried away on a stream of positive thoughts, you cannot believe that he would not fulfil his ambitions. But we had some very special questions. Why Pigs?' we asked.

They cleared an entire area and were just brilliant. We called them the snoutivaters. They also pruned better than a pair of Wilkinson Sword Secateurs. They were even able to help shift some of the bigger shrubs by my trickling a circle of sticky oats and bran around the plant that I wanted to move. The pigs ate round the plant in a circle, snoutavating downwards and so the rootballs were exposed and could be moved.' In the book Tom talks about their mangement, Although my porkers needed no encouragement to feats on the tangle of ivy, hawthorn and bramble and then defecate wildly, they still needed a lot of attention; pellet feeding twice a day with the occasional cabbage or tomato thrown in); a constantly full water trough; a working electric fence to keep them in one place; and quite a lot of chatting up to make them feel relaxed and at home. Judging by their amiable snorts and snuffles, coupled with the amount of vegetation that was disappearing, I reckoned they were in pig heaven.'

Bucket of beer

So fond of the pigs did Tom become that they outstayed the original few months that was planned but eventually their total disregard for electric fencing and the ensuing damage that two now large, fat pigs could do where they are not wanted, meant that they finally had to say their goodbyes. But not before Tom sat pondering what to give the pig that has everything through the Christmas morning service. The solution? A bucket of beer - given complete with crackers and hats.

Tom has nothing but praise for them. He gleefully proclaimed Not one single piece of ground elder or couch grass has returned since they snoutivated! They can clear a whole acre over three and a half to four weeks. And they also provide manure!' What sort of problems stick in Tom's mind?' Well there was planning permission for the rocks' For the rocks?

Yes, apparently you need planning permission for rocks over a certain size and this is difficult and takes 6-8 weeks.' That's the sort of thing you definitely don't think about when you first plan a garden like this I would have thought.

But,' cut in Tom, it's been great fun doing this although the work is endless.' When was he first interested in plants?' I asked.

They have always fascinated me since I was 3 when Gran gave me a packet of carrot seeds.' I remarked that he obviously has great affection for his grandmother and he readily agrees.

She's wonderful, she's 93 and that's her out in the garden now with a pickaxe.' Turning to the new series on BBC2, we discussed the focus of the programme.

It's looking at the garden's ups and downs', said Tom, and I think they are going to concentrate a bit more on the financial side.' Indeed in the first of the series, money was mentioned several times and the £150,000 borrowed to fund the garden was brought to the fore. I particularly liked the view of Tom's office, remarkably similar to the organised chaos of Smallholder's editorial office!

There is no doubt Tom takes and usually gets away with, horticultural risks. His fascination for plants in the book, on the television, and fortunately for me, in person, has the effect of inspiring confidence in gardeners. He breezily persuades all manner of strange plants to live in an environment that must be equally strange for them. He makes light of this ability but I feel that it must take a great level of knowledge, huge intuition and a bit of genius to achieve this. That's also where visiting the countries and seeing plants thriving in their natural environment suddenly all makes perfect sense. But luckily for us we now only have to drive to Kent and there, in the space of one acre, growing in their own countries', we have the world quite literally at our feet. And this is partly thanks to a pair of pigs!

Lullingstone Castle is open from 1 April 2007 until end of September 2007.

Lullingstone Castle, Eynsford, Kent, DA4 0JA, Tel: +44 (0) 1322 862 114, Fax: +44 (0) 1322 862 115, www.lullingstonecastle.co.uk