Trade condemns (some) TV gardeners

 In a recent edition of a trade magazine Peter Seabrook has spoken out quite
strongly about TV gardeners and the poor advice they give at times. In
particular, he writes of one such suggesting that people plant tulips
bulb-to-bulb along a wall and then saying a while later that it's better to
space them to avoid tulip fire! He wonders whether these people ever
actually  trial the advice they give.  His rather depressing comment is that
the gap between real gardeners and garden presenting is now so great that he
doubts it can ever be bridged - sad thought for new gardeners particularly,
I think.
--
Sacha
www.hillhousenursery.co.uk
South Devon
(remove the weeds to email me)

 

My favourite hate is Garden Makeover shows, where nothing is actually grown,
but all suck in to the ground to produce an instant effect. Very superficial
and not really in tune with nature I think.

 

times. In

comment is

great that

actually grown,

superficial

Too true.  I often wish they would go back to a made-over garden about
one or two years later to show us how it thrived.

Franz

 

Which Ground Force did, of course, and to be fair most of their gardens had
settled down pretty well.

The problem I have with most of these shows is that they don't actually give
any advice! They create a ready-made garden with ready-made plants but don't
give any tips on how the plants they use need to be looked after. For those
of us with a good knowledge of gardening, and a small library of books, this
is not such a problem but for a newcomer it may lead to disappointment as
they would be relying on the often sketchy advice on the 'care label' on the
plants.

--
Neil

Visit my Peak District walking website - www.peakwalking.co.uk

 Neil Tonks wrote:

I've written here before about the impractical advice given.  Also they
seem to think we have an inexhaustible supply of money.  The Gardeners
show on Friday showed them planting up a paved area for Christmas, not
the whole year.  I hate to think how much money was spent, they glibly
mentioned the pots being so cheap at £45, then went on to use quite a
number, that was not mentioning the mature plants.  Cloud cuckoo land,
me thinks!