Grow Your Own Magazine

I hate Joe Swift, what a pretentious tosser.

GW is very naff tonight.

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Manda.

"Wouldn't it be nice
For maybe an hour
To not have a care."

oooooooh! get you!

What's up?

Specifics, please.

nah, nothing - I was just looking forward to watching GW, not seen an 'ordinary' episode for ages, have they stopped doing them?

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Manda.

"Wouldn't it be nice
For maybe an hour
To not have a care."

I'm sure I cannot be alone amongst the older GW viewers who have just 'given up' because the programme is no longer relevant to us mouldy oldies.

What Geoff Hamilton used to do was the cheap/cheerful make your own, at very little expense.

What today's GW is about is throwing hundreds/nay thousands of pounds at something the average gardener wouldn't give you a thank you for. It's all flowers!!

There is precious little attention paid to fruit/veg gardening, which most of us are more interested in.

BBC dumbing down ++++++++++++++++++

valmarg

But it's costing soo much more!
Actually I enjoyed the programme but I am pseudo 'garden designer'
ie I work as a gardener and 'designing' pays the bills much better but really I want to just dig the veggie patch!
For me the more people that think they need their garden 'designed' the better...but it's so much simpler than Joe made it out to be ...shhh don't tell the clients!

I saw a trailer at the start of the series about Joe S taking on an allotment - have I missed it?

About the programme generally though - nothing is as good as it used to be in the olden days!

Can't stand the "enthusiastic" presenters in their trade mark clothes.

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Digger-07

"If you think you can, or think you can't, you're right" Henry Ford.

Thats another thing I hate about him, he's a cr@p communicator. How the **** did he get the GW job?

I'm watching GW on UKTV Gardens, much better but I've seen it loads of times. Monty is doing his too chit or not to chit bit, and now a piece by SR is on about asters....don't think she's wearing her famous coat. This ones a wax number.

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Manda.

"Wouldn't it be nice
For maybe an hour
To not have a care."

You obviously haven't been watching UKTV Gardens - all the old episodes, and they're as good as ever. All Geoff Hamilitons old shows too.

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Manda.

"Wouldn't it be nice
For maybe an hour
To not have a care."

I too have given up on GW.
Not relevant to my everyday gardening.

How often do we replant entire borders?

Any helpful tips? Well if there are, I'm not watching a whole load of irrelevant junk for 1 minute's worth...if there are any..

Grumpy old man:-)

I've given up on it too - it's B&Q gardening quite often, walk in, spend loads (often at the wrong time of year), get in designers, plants die and you buy them again, faddy gardening driven by 'experts'.

And Joe Swift is the son of the actor, Clive Swift, he from the Hyacynth Bucket programme!

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TonyF, Dordogne 24220

I fell asleep!

I just watched the Joe Swift episode just now - well, it was on the TV, but I can't recall what it was about. Obviously not holding my interest as much as the Vine.
I'm looking forward to the allotment episodes though.

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~ What do I think of Western civilisation? I think it would be a very good idea ~ Gandhi

As I like all sorts of Gardening, I thoroughly enjoyed it. I thought the design of the large House and its Gardens was excellent I would love to wake up every morning to that view and to walk to a Kitchen Garden like that. A Lottery win is needed for me I think!

Furthermore, I thought he put the design aspects really well and I understand a lot better now about form and shape. I would love to have the wedge shaped hedges, but I would have nowhere for my veggies.

The thing about Gardeners World is exactly that, it has to have everything and I personally think it is achieving that this series. We have certainly had some diversity, probably what we would like to see is the normal bits (What to do now etc) wrapped around these bits of programming.

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I didn't think they were 'real' gardens. Obviously they are because they exist but they don't reflect the average garden in the street. That is most definitely not what I want to know about. And to Valmarg - the gardens had hardly any flowers in!

Bring back the veg growers of old - after all, the seed companies are telling us that veg seeds outsold flower seeds the last season or two - so can't they keep up with the trends in real life?

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Earth laughs in flowers. Ralph Waldo Emerson

www.vegheaven.blogspot.com

Updated November 30th - Mr Stinky's Excellent Adventure (and a Christmas Cake)

They do, we had a whole series on 'Grow your own veg!' last year and this year we have Joe and his allotment and Monty did Fruit in the first episode.

Yes the gardens were big but they were Gardens and he had a very productive Kitchen Garden. Joe Swifts garden was not huge (15m x 5m) mine is 8 X 10 so not far off (and I live in a standard 3 bedroom semi-detached, in fact the Terrace houses around my area are ex ICI houses and they have full allotment sized rear gardens) but he made the most out of it for the kids benefit as I did when they were younger. I know he did not have a Veg patch but he will be starting an allotment which GW will be following soon and all of my friends who have allotments, use their back gardens for leisure. So maybe he is the norm and you are not...only a thought. In fact I am just looking out at my window upstairs out of the 50+ houses in my small area only one person does veggies and that is me!

As for plants in GW last night, I have just done a rerun, there is loads just that they concentrated on the design aspect as that was the name of the program.

Roll on to more 'Gardening' whether it Flowers, Design or even 'Veggies'. I do not care as I understand that there is a lot of pressure to get rid of programmes like GW and its ilk!

Seed sales are down on flowers, but my local Plantsman says that Plug and plant sales are through the roof, so possibly that is how people are buying their flowers. It must be getting more 'popular' as I now get an extra catalogue from most suppliers now and it just for plant plugs.

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You don't mean Geoff Hamilton and his Check 'Chum' shirts or scruffy 'Wrangler' Jeans or even his Wax Jacket when they were all the rage and the over enthusiastic term 'Organic' and his Blue Peter enthusiam when he came up with his own way of making stone using peat and concrete etc...

Am I in for it now, I have degraded the God of gardening

also I am sure someone wore a dickie sometimes, I think it was Stefan.

Alas I still have a Titchmarsh 'Rugby Top' Oh and I remember the 'Barley Blue' everywhere ah! those were the memories...

In fact in the UKTV GW's they are repeating, you can gauge the years by the fashions...

I remember dear old Percy on Blue Peter and that is how I got my Gardening fix when younger...

Personally I think nothing has changed except us!

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I do a different border every other year as there is always something new! My front garden this year has been changed into a Hellborus and Hosta bed after being a Rose Garden for a couple of years. Where do all the old stuff go, simply to my neighbours and family. I have made loads of friends through the front patch changing as people stop and talk when you are pottering and I swapped loads of stuff.

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Don't subscribe to UKTV gardens or any other channels. But if the're old ones I've made my point.

Seriously trying to consider getting rid of the box altogether. What's the point of all the "extra" channels if all they show are repeats. e.g. shown on BBC 1 then on BBC 3 and then back to BBC 2 all in a couple of weeks!!!

Getting a bit of a grumpy old sod but it's getting easier and easier to be grumpy these days.

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Digger-07

"If you think you can, or think you can't, you're right" Henry Ford.

Ah misunderstood you, I thought you were suggesting that they weren't any good, it was just looking 'back' that made them seem so.

I can't see why GW can't be a useful, informative gardening programme, it used to be. It is not now. Still apparently according to daleclark its us thats wrong, not the programmers! Lol! I have no problem with garden programmes and their presenters following 'fashion', still GW seems to have lost touch with 'ordinary' gardeners.

All that rubbish spouted by Joe Swift last night, what did he 'actually' say? Did he tell you how to do what he was saying? Nah just a load of precious pontificating. I'd rather have watched him put down more hard landscape (not!).

I don't want to get rid of the box or my extra channels though.

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Manda.

"Wouldn't it be nice
For maybe an hour
To not have a care."

i thought it was rubbish last night. no relevance to me at all. i would like more veggie stuff from gw.im new to gardening but i loved the geoff hamilton stuff on uktv gardens.

Wot you two said. I rarely watch TV anyway, but when I do it's likely to be a gardening programme. Of late though it's all been such lowest common denominator stuff that I just haven't bothered. I did watch one episode of a repeat of the Carol Klein series last week, but even that was irrelevant. Growing brassicas in huge individual pots? The compost alone must cost far more than the eventual produce is worth, what's wrong with a good old fashioned seed bed? I gave up on TV gardeners, and TV in general, round about the time that Ground Force appeared, a series which told people how to cover green spaces in concrete was just the final straw.