Re: GWL - gardening on TV

**K* M* <k*@iol.ie>**

On 5 Jul 2010, at 18:52, Judy Lowe wrote:

> I, too, would love to have more gardening on TV, but I have to agree with much of what Miriam says. I was recently helping someone at work who wanted to landscape his backyard. Gave him lots of advice and a number of general-interest books to read. His comment: I don't understand a lot of what they're talking about. (They were written for the general public, not a specialized audience.) Most of us -- me included -- rarely start at the most basic level, where readers/viewers are.

the problem is not the starting at the basic level - it wasn't for me but Alan Titchmarsh did a great job with his How To Be a Gardener Series which really was aimed at absolute beginners. The problem is that the BBC is making programmes on "How to Drape a Celebrity Over the Exterior Decorating" and this sort of thing leads to dead plants and discouraged gardeners. I don't care how kids learn to read so long as they do, I don't care how they learn to garden so long as they do. But for many years the joy of Gardeners World under successive presenters was that viewers were gently led by the hand from absolute beginners into committed gardeners. Geoff Hamilton was perhaps the greatest exponent of this - I still have clients coming to my more advanced courses who said they learned all their basics from his programmes. But I've found they learned a lot more than the basics. Currently the programme, and even more so their Chelsea coverage, "talks down" to their audience rather than
  raising it up with the presenters. 

You yourself have done a wonderful job of  turning someone who bought a plant as an interior decoration into a plantsperson without them ever noticing - I get really angry when those in the trade refer to orchids, or any other plants for that matter, as "disposables" as they often do here. And the BBC used to do this - but not any more to my mind

kathryn

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