Already a subscriber? Log in
When Monty Don left the programme last autumn, I, like many others, assumed that the new chief presenter would be Carol Klein, since she was both a good communicator and a very experienced gardener and nurserywoman. Moreover, her appointment would be recognition by the BBC of the horticultural preoccupations of women, who make up 70 per cent of gardeners. The BBC passed up that opportunity, obviously, but I was not sorry when Toby Buckland was chosen instead: partly because he has an engaging, friendly, low-key manner but more because he is a trained professional and would, I thought, be allowed to do things properly.
I was too sanguine. The first few programmes, salami-sliced into small segments, seemed slapdash and hurried, so that I sometimes watched in a state of frozen dismay. Toby splashed water around from a can without a rose, risking ejecting compost out of pots in the process. He started to plant up a white ‘twilight’ garden, only to discover that the foxgloves, which his co-presenter Alys Fowler (billed as ‘the thrifty gardener’) had sown the year before ‘to save money’, were probably anything but white. If it is thrifty not to label each pot, then give me reckless extravagance any day.
The breakneck approach was exemplified when Toby and his co-presenter, Joe Swift, who is a garden designer, planted a tree each. They turned it into a race. Joe told us how important it was for us all to grow a tree in our gardens, then didn’t do the job very well. He dug a round hole, although it is now generally accepted that a square one is preferable, since the roots can quest out more easily into the surrounding soil. He put masses of organic matter in the hole, so that the plant would sink as the matter degraded, risking root suffocation. He never so much as mentioned applying beneficial mycorrhizal fungi, even though the site had been thoroughly disrupted by heavy machinery only weeks before. He did not put a mulch on top of the soil, to help prevent moisture evaporation in the dangerous first summer. Toby, instead of doing the job very carefully, in deference to the fact that the tree might be there for a hundred years, seemed cast down that he hadn’t beaten Joe to finish. Frankly, all the joshing blokishness reminds me of a cut-price Top Gear, without even that degree of wit and chutzpah. Cars are destructive, manic and fun, while gardening is constructive, contemplative and fun. Why doesn’t Gardeners’ World take its own line?
Another segment which would benefit from more thoughtful preparation is entitled ‘What’s hot, what’s not’, and consists of the presenters sitting around in the shed, nattering about trends and reading out friendly emails. It manages to be both stagey and trite.
One wonders whether the blame for all this should be placed at the door of the series producer, Andy Vernon, and his production team, which, on the tree-planting programme, included four researchers. Even really experienced presenters are not usually a match for the director on a frolic of his own. One thing is certain, we viewers won’t be told if those trees die in their first summer.
The mistake is to think that you can only catch the interest of new gardeners by doing things quickly. But novices are just people who haven’t had much experience yet; they are not fools with short attention spans who can be palmed off with old hat or incomplete explanations. If you want to encourage people to garden, talk knowledgeably about what you are doing. And why. Good communication is about making difficult or complex subjects intelligible, after all. Gardening, at whatever level it is done, deserves nothing less.
By programme five, everyone had calmed down quite a lot, and the watering can had acquired a rose. But there is still far too much thoughtless gush, rather than well-expressed lyricism, the result of no one troubling to write a decent script. And there is not enough of interest for the millions of gardeners who do know a fair bit about gardening and garden making. That said, when Toby Buckland is able to demonstrate his formidable expertise, Joe Swift shows people how to design their gardens (which he is very good at), and Carol Klein talks knowledgeably about plants, all is well. When they don’t, it isn’t.
Also in Arts Reviews
Also by Ursula Buchan
Latest
Comments
Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just $5 for 3 monthsAlready a subscriber? Log in