Jimmy Doherty, scientist, farmer and presenter of Jimmy’s Farm, recreates some of Darwin’s groundbreaking experiments to reveal the untold story of Darwin – the ingenious experimentalist.

Filmed largely in Darwin’s gardens at Down House in Kent, Jimmy uses his hero’s notebooks to carry out the “hands-on” experiments that Darwin undertook following his expedition on The Beagle.

In the film, Jimmy describes the importance of the experiments: “Darwin turns his house, his gardens and his greenhouse into a laboratory and embarks on what I think is one of the most exciting series of experiments and observations in scientific history. Piece by piece Darwin builds up his picture of evolution. This journey is as full of adventures and unexpected challenges as the one he made around the world.”

Many of these experiments have never been done since Darwin first designed them 150 years ago, and they help Jimmy gain a truly original insight into the theory of evolution.

Jimmy recreates one of Darwin’s first experiments by soaking a range of seeds in salt water for a month. The smelly results would help Darwin try to solve the puzzle of how the same plants could be found on opposite sides of the oceans.

In the garden at Down House, Jimmy digs up a piece of turf. He wants to recreate Darwin’s experiment to demonstrate the struggle for existence between plant seedlings and their natural predators – using nothing more than a patch of bare ground and a handful of sticks.

It was these and other investigations that helped give Darwin the confidence to first publish his seminal work, On The Origin Of Species, in 1859, which set out his controversial theory of evolution by natural selection.

Thursday 5 March
8.00-9.00pm BBC TWO