Post by davidjp on Feb 8, 2015 18:33:44 GMT -5
Thought you might be interested in this BBC TV show which has just finished its second season.
A group of gardeners are assigned individual plots and through each episode have to firstly grow a particular vegetable, then a flower variety which they use in an arrangement and finally make a preserve/chutney/pickle/drink from their produce. This all happens over a growing season in the walled garden of a Elizabethan manor house in Oxfordshire. Each week someone gets eliminated until finally theres a winner at the end. There's usually about 6 episodes in each season, each an hour long. Its very much in the genre of the "The great british bakeoff" which I see has started to be shown on our local PBS station here.
I've watched both seasons now and have quite enjoyed it, the vegetable growing section is headed by Jim Buttress who's quite old school but is very knowledgeable, he used to be head gardener for the Queen. He 's also the holder of one of the RHS's Victoria medals for horticulture, which is very prestigous, only 63 are issued at any one time, someone has to die off before they can issue another. I think he probably deserves a show of his own, but the others are good as well especially the cut flower section.
Here's the website for it
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04wlw4w
You won't be able to watch the episodes directly unless you have a VPN proxy server or other of the commercial products that allow you to view UK broadcasts but I see that someone has posted them on Youtube recently which you should be able to watch.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bI4qZzCRr4
Also the grow your own clips from the program seem to work fine as well, and there are recipes etc on the site that you should be able to view Ok as well.
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01y5xq3
Much of it obviously is from a UK perspective, (for instance tomatoes are recommended only be grown indoors, mainly due to blight in wet summers) but also some good general growing advice and an absolutely fabulous location in an old manor house with lovely walled garden. I've especially learned a fair bit from the flower growing and arranging section, basically cutting garden flowers most of which I've never grown before and a few I've never even heard of.
Anyway I know not everyone will be into the competition aspect of it but its all done in a very friendly way, theres no prizes or anything and I thought it might be something you might be interested in.
David
A group of gardeners are assigned individual plots and through each episode have to firstly grow a particular vegetable, then a flower variety which they use in an arrangement and finally make a preserve/chutney/pickle/drink from their produce. This all happens over a growing season in the walled garden of a Elizabethan manor house in Oxfordshire. Each week someone gets eliminated until finally theres a winner at the end. There's usually about 6 episodes in each season, each an hour long. Its very much in the genre of the "The great british bakeoff" which I see has started to be shown on our local PBS station here.
I've watched both seasons now and have quite enjoyed it, the vegetable growing section is headed by Jim Buttress who's quite old school but is very knowledgeable, he used to be head gardener for the Queen. He 's also the holder of one of the RHS's Victoria medals for horticulture, which is very prestigous, only 63 are issued at any one time, someone has to die off before they can issue another. I think he probably deserves a show of his own, but the others are good as well especially the cut flower section.
Here's the website for it
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04wlw4w
You won't be able to watch the episodes directly unless you have a VPN proxy server or other of the commercial products that allow you to view UK broadcasts but I see that someone has posted them on Youtube recently which you should be able to watch.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bI4qZzCRr4
Also the grow your own clips from the program seem to work fine as well, and there are recipes etc on the site that you should be able to view Ok as well.
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01y5xq3
Much of it obviously is from a UK perspective, (for instance tomatoes are recommended only be grown indoors, mainly due to blight in wet summers) but also some good general growing advice and an absolutely fabulous location in an old manor house with lovely walled garden. I've especially learned a fair bit from the flower growing and arranging section, basically cutting garden flowers most of which I've never grown before and a few I've never even heard of.
Anyway I know not everyone will be into the competition aspect of it but its all done in a very friendly way, theres no prizes or anything and I thought it might be something you might be interested in.
David