Dame Judi Dench lets us into her special woodland in new documentary

Beyond the diamond-paned windows of her beautiful Surrey home lies Dame Judi Dench’s refuge, a place where she can laugh and cry, find solace and inspiration.

This is the secret woodland she has nurtured for 30 years and kept hidden from all but her closest circle.

Now she opens it up to the cameras in a joyous and gorgeously filmed new documentary titled Judi Dench: My Passion For Trees, to be shown on BBC One later this month.

She began developing the wood in her six-acre grounds with her late husband, actor Michael Williams, soon after they moved there in 1985.

It might have remained a covert project but for a chance meeting with producer Anthony Geffen, one of the world’s foremost documentary film-makers who has worked with Sir David Attenborough. 

“Judi told me about her love for trees,” says Geffen and when he suggested the idea of filming her enjoying the woodland and investigating its mysteries over the four seasons he was surprised by her reaction.

“She was reluctant. She didn’t know if she could play herself.”

In fact Oscar-winning Dame Judi, who celebrates her 83rd birthday today, is captivating, squealing with joy as she builds up her knowledge of all things arboreal with the help of scientists and botanists.

As Geffen says: “Audiences will experience a side of Judi they won’t have seen before, her love for trees, her passion for learning and her wonderful sense of humour.”

Dame Judi’s wit and impeccable comic timing is on view even when she reveals that her woodland is a living memorial to those she has loved and lost.

Wooden plaques attached to various trees are dedicated to family members and to a number of often famous friends who have passed away.

“This is Stephen Hanley,” she says pointing to a slim, white tree.

“He was a lovely, lovely actor and singer in A Little Night Music at the National. He died and we put it in and it’s just like him. He was tall and kind of pale and it’s lovely.”

There is also a tree for Shakespearean actor Alan Rickman who reached a wider audience as the evil Hans Gruber in the 1988 film Die Hard. Dame Judi lovingly pats another tree.

“This is Jeff, one of my brothers.” Jeffery Dench, an actor with the Royal Shakespeare Company, died in 2014 aged 86. 

She lost her eldest brother Peter, a former GP, in January this year. “Since I was a little girl and was taken to see my brothers in Shakespeare at St Peter’s School in York all I wanted was to be in those plays. In 60 years I’ve been involved with more than 30 of his plays.”

She moves on through the wood. “We’ve got Ian Richardson [the original House Of Cards actor] and Natasha Richardson, no relation. Ian and I were at Stratford together. Natasha [who died after a skiing accident in 2009 aged 45] – well, I was at Central drama school with her mother Vanessa Redgrave. And this,” she pauses for breath, “is Michael.”

The plaque says Mike and is for her husband who died in 2001 of lung cancer at 65. They had been married since 1971.

She didn’t plant a new tree for Michael. “This one was here already so it’s not a 16-year old tree but it was a young tree at the time.

Planting trees is about remembering and something that is living that goes on. “So you don’t just remember loved ones and stop, you remember them and the memory goes on and it gets more wonderful. Whenever I can, whatever the season, this is where I escape to.” 

Since 2010 Dame Judi’s closest companion has been conservationist David Mills, 74, who runs the British Wildlife Centre in Lingfield, Surrey, not far from her home.

She likes to call him her “chap” avoiding the terms partner or boyfriend. They met when he asked her to open a new badger enclosure and their slow-growing romance took her by surprise.

They live four miles apart but spend much of their time together. Although Dame Judi finds winter the “most magical time” in her woodland – “my trees are like sleeping giants” – she and David love to be cosy inside her home with its comfortable chairs, family photos and books.

“When it’s freezing outside there’s nothing I like more than to sit in the warmth with my chap David.”

He helps Dame Judi look after her woodland. “He shares my passion for trees,” she says. “My life’s just trees now. Trees and champagne,” she giggles. 

Tony Kirkham, head of arboretum, gardens and horticulture services at the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew, arrives and tells her Surrey is the most wooded county in England.

Poignantly she links arms with him to prevent herself tripping – Dame Judi suffers from macular degeneration in both eyes. Kirkham measures the girth of a large oak in her wood with every inch equivalent to a year in age.

He takes a piece of string. “I’ll be back,” he says disappearing round the tree. “In about a week,” laughs Dame Judi. T hey calculate the oak is almost 200 years old.

“Good for him,” she cries, giving her oak the personal pronoun. “He would have started getting going around the time of the Battle of Waterloo.”

She claps her hands on learning it has 260,000 leaves and 12km (7.5miles) worth of branches. “I’m so proud. Over 200 years it must have breathed in a lot of carbon dioxide so my oak must be helping the planet.”

Dame Judi uses a special listening device to hear the popping sound of trees drinking in water – a large specimen needs the equivalent of two bathfuls a day.

Intriguingly she learns about the miles-long underground networks of threads emanating from fungi which break down old wooden matter to turn it into nutrients for trees.

They also connect trees with each other so they can share water and food and warn each other of attacks. “I’ll never walk nonchalantly through my wood again without thinking of all the incredible work that goes on there.

We think we live in a society but it’s no comparison to how these chaps [her trees] live. I shall give up acting and lecture on trees… probably.” She laughs.

She plants a yew tree in her sandy-soiled wood for her friend actor Robert Hardy who died in August aged 91, an appropriate tree as he was the country’s leading expert on longbows and conserved all of those rescued from Henry VIII’s warship the Mary Rose.

She gently tips in the last of the soil and reflects: “It’s been wonderful to discover that trees aren’t just amazing individuals but part of an extended family.

When I planted trees in memory of my friends I always hoped they would feel part of a community with each other and it’s so reassuring to find out it’s true.”

Judi Dench: My Passion For Trees is on BBC One on Wednesday, December 20 at 8pm.