Garden Rescue : BBC TV

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Taking a cynical view, this is an afternoon TV programme where the BBC throw £4,000 of viewers' money, plus probably a couple of thousand more in labour, and then there's production costs on top of that.

Some are worthwhile projects for deserving causes.
All start with an uncared for back garden, for whatever reason. They want to end with a spectaculatr "reveal!" So they end up putting in far too much stuff, in too small a garden for it, which you know in many cases is going to get neglected and die.
Then there's the ridiculous.
Two examples in recent days, where one family with two teenage girls who played in local football teams, amongst the planting was an area of lawn, probabably 12ft x 9ft, with a goal net at one end, so they could practice playing football.
In another, a couple with no kids who were into 50's music, (and a bin of a garden) wanted a water feature and a flagged area floor amongst the planting for them to dance on. The water feature as soon as it was turned on started chucking water all over the dance floor!
 
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Today, they found a couple who obviously had no interest in a garden despite what they said and threw £5000 at it.
As usual far too much in a small garden. They chose a Moroccan theme, with a tiled water feature I thought was an eyesore and a tiled area which would be like skating rink in the wet.
 

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I take it as favorable that you have enough folks interested in gardening to make a TV show considered worthwhile.
 
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I take it as favorable that you have enough folks interested in gardening to make a TV show considered worthwhile.

It's the BBC, so no daytime schedule filler programme has to be "worthwhile," there's no advertisers to please.

The BBC get given £4B a year and can't budget on that as they are always whingeing about being short of cash.

Too many fingers in too many pies and too many highly paid staff, compared with the commercial networks.

They do make a lot of good programmes, but they fill most of the schedules with dross or comparatively cheap (compared with drama) to make programmes, like this. (35 of 'em).
There's even cheaper to make programmes like lots of stupid quiz programes and no end of cookery programmes.
 
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Today's episode

Elderly couple living in Wales. "She misses Cornwall," left there over fifty years ago.

So wanted a Cornwall "theme"

Originally a nice tidy garden, but all clay and lots of small weeds and clover in a big wet lawn, so they had made an effort.

But for the new garden, they needed a digger to get rid of a lot of it.

Had to mute the sound and use the subtitles as I got sick of the non-stop "hillbilly banjo music" throughout. Strange choice.

Veg and flowers in big wooden planters, lots of paving, small "meadow lawn." Dry stone wall and water feature. Didn't look bad (given how much it must have cost). But Cornwall? ...Well there was a stone sign in the dry stone wall that said "Polperro."

Unfortunately, they couldn't include the big rotary clothes drier she had before. Dunno what she's going to do with her washing now. But then "It's just telly innit?"
 
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I appreciate that some of these "rescues" are for people with disabilities, but most are not.

They are for people who obviously, by the state of the original, are not interested in gardening, but are happy for the BBC to throw £4000 at it. Of course the owners are delighted with the end result, who wouldn't be? But whether they will make the effort to maintain it, we'll never know.
Yesterday's was the garden of a "new build," left by the developer as entirely lawn with a few paving slabs as a tiny patio.

This one took the best part of £6,000 to fill.

I only start watching these shows half way through, as I like to see what they do and I fast forward through Charlie Dimmock's "clowning around" that helps fill the programme.
Much of it is a "quick fix," gravel paths that meet either the lawn or a border with no containment, how's that going to work out?
In another episode we got a view of a small paved,"chillout area" where they position an existing double wooden seat with a table inbetween, but the paved area was too small, so one end had two legs hanging over a flower bed. But there you go, it's just telly innit?

The "in thing" apparently, are pergolas, in the middle of the garden, made entirely from tanalised four by four or whatever. The idea is that "climbers" will grow up over them. In reality many won't, so they are left with an eyesore that might as well have been made with scaffold poles.

"In things" are common to gardening from time to time.

Back in the day, when building gardens for the Chelsea Flower Show, over a couple of years, a few were built by Diamuid Gavin, whose favourite and most used garden tool was apparently, by what we saw, a concrete mixer.
 

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