Gardeners World.

I've re-read my earlier postings in this topic and they appear to come over as hostile, that was not my intention...I'll try to explain now.

GW has viewing figures of around 2.13 million people (april 5th show), if out of these millions a handful complain about the show it will be deemed as not representative of the viewing audience as a percentage. If however the "Beeb" had complaints in the hundreds of thousands, thats a different story altogether.Only something like a carefully written petition could possibly make the programmes controllers sit up and take notice.

But how can an hours programme possibly satisfy every gardener at every level? ( I did ask this on another topic a while back...zero replies to that) there are beginners, and experts, weekend gardeners and pros, specialists and amateurs. Between all of these (and more) they cover everything and anything garden related from allotments to single species to just general all round prettiness in our back gardens.

So how could you possibly format an hours show to keep all gardeners enthralled for an hour? I ask this to those people who dislike the current format, what would you show?

I have partially thought that in an hours show there should be three slots, 20 mins apiece. First 20 mins for beginners, next 20 mins for enthusiastic amatuers/itermediates and the last 20 mins for the experts/pros.

Steve...

 

I have tried to think about this question and have so many different things I wanted to see.


A missed opportunity was that there was very little given to us about how working that field relates to a domestic garden, they were using diggers and a new gardener needs to see the tools to use-ones that are actually available to an average new gardener. The technique involved etc.

Soil testing, and maybe a slot showing a trip to a local garden centre to prevent new gardeners from making the same mistakes again and again-buying the wrong plant for the site.

I would like a realistic and frank look at the money involved, a bespoke greenhouse, large magnolias and raised beds that would take years to pay for themselves is just not realistic. Show people that gardening is within the reach of people who don't have a handy £20,000 in the bank-as is the case with the majority of gardeners-experienced or not. You can't recoup those costs in one season of using tin cans as seed cells, I'm sorry, but you just can't.

I would definitely like to see more Carol Klein-if she is doing the propagation tuition slot on a regular basis that will certainly help, and I like how Joe Swift makes garden design look easy and cheap (because it is easy ) and therefore within reach-perhaps if he went round domestic gardens showing different techniques people can relate to it, see how it would work in their garden.

An intense look at why certain plants were chosen, why they will do well, what problems or issues do we need to watch out for-go into detail please.


And please, can we get them to show how to cut a growbag correctly, they just sort of chuckled and left the mess they made.

 

Whats your views on the new version of Gardeners World?

 

5 threads down:

http://www.gardenerscorner.co.uk/forum/showthread.php/gardeners-world-20843.html

and there's a few more:
http://www.gardenerscorner.co.uk/fo...-17640.html?t=17640&highlight=gardeners+world

http://www.gardenerscorner.co.uk/fo...-17480.html?t=17480&highlight=gardeners+world

http://www.gardenerscorner.co.uk/fo...ld-2828.html?t=2828&highlight=gardeners+world

My personal feelings are that it's far to dumbed down:thmb:

 

Lollipop is spot-on. Descending on a new garden and throwing (effectively) infinite resources at it is very far removed from the vast majority of gardener's experiences.
I really want to love this show; as a (relative) neophyte I'm sure that a great deal of the information contained would be useful to me and yet I can hardly bear watch the patronising, smug presentation.
Carol Klein weirds me out - I'm always expecting her to start sticking pins into a funny shaped turnip - but at least she has some authority, which is entirely lacking in the other presenters.
Nailing together a few oddly shaped boxes in not my idea of garden design and I would rather see a few "dull" rectangular beds filled with luscious produce which make best use of available space (in my humble experience another major concern for gardeners) than some conceptual nonsense. The beauty is in the *plants*, not the containers.

 

Well this is an oft repeated rant of mine about BBC "lifestyle" programmes in general. The first time I noticed it was with the Food show which went from a very good informative prog on all aspects of food and drink to a bunch of idiots running around a garden between shots of somebody rushing through a recipe with the camera waving all over the shop so that you could never tell what was being done. Now Gardeners world is heading the same way and if it wasn't for the opening credits the two would be indistinguishable. My two main gripes are:-
1) The dumbing down of content to junior school level or lower. What was all that about using old draws (the wooden variety) to make a risible plant holder? I thought I had switched onto Blue Peter by accident!
2) When they actually get onto something interesting (ie. a visit to a garden or specialist plants with the ecstatic Carol Klein) They seem to get some second year art student behind the camera. So instead of a lingering shot of the plant so that you can identify it you get a rapid fire cascade of out of focus shots and extreme close ups lasting milliseconds. Maybe it is meant to be subliminal messaging but it just gives me a headache. I once decided to count the length of each shot taken (that's how riveting it was). The longest was about 5 seconds with the majority lasting less than a second.

 

If you want something semi interesting then as mentioned earlier Beechgrove gardens can be quite good, scant dumbing down by comparison and some interesting vegetables trialled.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00jty7q/Beechgrove_Garden_2009_Episode_2/

 

Id never heard of that before I will give it a try cheers Paul

 

Got "IT"

Thanks

 

Great programme Paul.

 

I find this season's GW is all about 'what to buy at the garden centre' rather than practical gardening advice for the novice or super gardener. I miss Monty Don.

 

I too miss Monty...I find myself watching most of this years GW on fast forward (sky +)...very boring.

 

You are not alone in your opinions of GW. Have a read of what a former presenter thinks!

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...-BBC-dumbed-irrelevant-says-ex-presenter.html

I've not watched GW for years, so I may just tune in to see what the fuss is about!