Are some gardening programmes a pain in the neck?


Watching some of the gardening programmes in the past couple of weeks, one must ask the question, are the gardening programme producers and the gardening fraternity living on the same planet? These shows would seem to be getting more outlandish and ridiculous by the season. Some of them would appear to be designed for the beginner or someone who has no interest in gardening. Do these people really watch the programmes? I think not. After all a person with no interest in politics will not sit glued to Today in Parliament, or someone with no interest in football get all excited when the big match comes on the telly. So what makes the producers think that people with no interest in gardening will watch some of the rubbish that is passed of as gardening. Anyway if the did watch it they sure would not learn anything from it. This whole makeover trend is a farce, and I should know as I have been landscaping for over 35 years.

In all that time I have never managed to build a garden pool, put up a fence, put down a new lawn, lay paving and plant shrubs all in one day. Who do they think they are fooling, or did I go to the wrong school? It takes almost a week to build a reasonable sized garden pool, (weather permitting) to do it properly. Here are some pictures before and after of a pool and waterfall that took almost two weeks of hard work, and thirty ton of stone. You can see why I get annoyed when someone obviously with no experience comes on the telly and tidies the whole thing up in a day. The logistics usually do not allow you to do it all in one day even if you were capable.

So what of the people with some experience of gardening, and there are lots of them. Where is their gardening programme? Why do we have to be treated like morons and shown how to hammer in a stake when a tree is planted? Or how to sow a packet of seed, and be treated to the same procedure year after year. The producers obviously think that we do not watch the program for more than one season, so they repeat the same thing year after year.

The copyright of the article Are some gardening programmes a pain in the neck? in Gardening in Ireland is owned by Michael Campbell. Permission to republish Are some gardening programmes a pain in the neck? in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

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