Sex and the Shrubbery
A short essay on the sensuality of gardening, the excitement of gardening shows, and the length of Tommy Walsh's short-shorts.
It is no longer the New Year, but it is the new year. No longer exciting, no longer fizzing with champagne Aldi own-brand cava, no longer the rosy-cheeked youngster of the calendar family shouting about how marvellous and different things will be now that he has a gym membership/ Instantpot/ Collagen supplement regime. It is the sensible, if slightly miserable, middle sibling: the one who makes smaller scale but more achievable plans, and generally grumbles about being skint and cold and damp.
In the spirit of new year, I have been thinking about my garden. As ever, my perennial daydreams about keeping chickens come and go, and it is unlikely I will commit myself to it this year. Thankfully, my son is excellent at chicken impressions, right down to that slow-building ‘bwwwWWWAAWK bwak bwak bwak buh”. I plan to cover him in orange feathers and encourage him to cluck his way around the garden, perhaps hiding some eggs around the foliage for him to retrieve.
Apart from this, I have started pencilling out some ideas for produce that I can grow. I’ve given up on flowers. Nothing I try to grow for prettiness’ sake ever survives past a seedling, but I’m not bad with vegetables. Plus, it’s about the only way I can comfortably afford organic produce. It might not be much, but I take the Tesco approach to life: “Every little helps”.
Thinking Practically
In pots I can fit: tomatoes, potatoes, beans, as well as some cucumbers, peppers and chillis in the greenhouse. Fond as I am of brassicas, I’ll attempt some cabbage, cauliflower and purple broccoli again in my big planters, but only if I get netting to go over them first. Last year, I bore witness to the Caterpocalypse, in which hordes of ravenous caterpillars swarmed my cruciferous darlings and left me with little more than a set of soggy, holey stems to show for it. The netting would also be useful for my strawberries, which each time I grow them present me with delightful and verdant leaves, and next to no blooming fruit. I hope this is just down to the handsome toad that lives in a little hole next to the strawberry bed, as well as the myriad birds that live in the trees. Essentially, I need to net off about half the garden, although I’m happy to leave a few sacrificial plants outside the cover of nylon. My garden may end up looking like Nora Batty’s legs, but hopefully I’ll have something to feed my family with by the end of summer.
The theatre of gardening
In my view, it’s almost as much fun to think about and talk about gardening as it is to actually get on with it, hence, I suspect, why gardening television and radio shows are such a mainstay of British popular culture. Each year my mother and I look forward to the beginning of “Gardener’s World”, the arrival of which onto our screens heralds the coming spring long before the cuckoo’s call.
We watch it together, happily discussing what we’d like to plant this year and passing much comment on each presenter. We both enjoy watching the presenters who appear less like presenters and more like people who just really love gardening. The ones who don’t put the…pause.. for effect, along with a forward-moving wave of the hand, and a patronising smile into camera while they talk about the latest community initiative manned by slightly dirty people they don’t want to get too close to.
The King of Gardener’s World, and of our hearts, is the ever-understated Monty Don. Replete in well-worn flannels, his sleeves casually rolled up to better show a tantalising glimpse of sinewy forearm as he plunges spade-like hands into freshly turned compost. Gripping the soil with both meaty paws, even the worms appear to cavort in ecstasy as he discusses the benefits of adding your own leaf mold. And why shouldn’t they?
The Big Daddy of gardening TV
The gentle romance of Monty’s tender potting stands in stark contrast to the first gardening show I ever watched with any interest: Groundforce. Has anything ever managed to match its frantic devotion to a stranger’s plot of green? Can anything compete with the fear of discovering a gas main at the exact spot that so deserves a gently trickling water feature? More importantly, will any show ever be able to serve us such raw erotic power? The show with Charlie Dimmock’s well-stuffed hanging baskets and Tommy Walsh’s short-shorts? Walsh’s loveable cheeky chappy persona provided the perfect foil to the often quiet and sombre Alan Titchmarsh, while the earthily pretty and likeable Charlie Dimmock acted as an excellent female balance to the two. Walsh, the builder of the trio whose perfectly erected gazebo would put any man to shame always paired well with Titchmarsh’s brooding anxiety (“We’ve only got half an hour before the husband comes back!”), and the whole weekend affair was carried along with the frantic horn-based theme tune in a sensational tour de force.
Nothing about the team’s secret endeavours could be described as tawdry or cheap, however tight the budgets may have been. The premise of the show was that the eager trio (along with a small army of assistants of varying and no trades) would secretly turn up to an unsuspecting person’s garden and give it a staggeringly beautiful make-over through the course of a weekend. The unsuspecting person would be kept in the dark by the family or friends who had nominated them for the treat, usually by taking them away on a spa trip or a visit to a less popular relative, and their return journey would inevitably involve frantic pleas from the team to keep them away for just a bit longer! while they desperately tried to repair the hole in the front fence their delivery van had left.
Upon arriving home, the beneficiary/victim would find him or herself embraced roughly by three sweaty horticultural presenters, all nervously keen to take the returning champion on a triumphal promenade around their unrecognisable patch of land. Tears, champagne, hugs and overly wet kisses, and a speech in which the speaker could only profess to be speechless: then, the end of the show for those of us at home. We, sat on our couches, would be treated once more to delightful brassy music while the garden’s owner, presenters, and their muscular minions all presumably partied the night away on a hastily stained pergola.
Love and lawns
Despite it being a spectacle with one episode churned out after another, I was always left with an impression of true joy and even love – a sturdy and collegial friendship despite the ongoing bickering, passion for each member’s area of particular interest (woe betide the man who got in the way of Dimmick’s water feature), and so often a tearful eye when the grateful homeowner surveyed their spruced-up kingdom in speechless gratitude. Frankly, nothing that has been shown on television since can come close for me. Groundforce was an early lesson in the sincere love and pleasure found in creation and growth, and all the promise those activities can bring.
Gardening is a beautiful thing as it allows us to nurture life from the decaying leftovers of death. Spring, the time for us to really pick up our spades and forks in earnest is surely the season of excitement and anticipation; the cold barrenness of Winter is incrementally beaten back by the first creeping flush of warmth and yellow light. Growing plants, especially your own food, is a feast for the senses, particular for the sense of touch, if you are willing to forgo your gloves and get your hands dirty. It is sensual, raw, and invigorating. It is good for your health and happiness. It is, quite literally, grounding.
I know that not all of my plans for the garden will come off this year. For one thing, it may prove quite difficult to glue feathers onto my toddler and have him stalk around the bushes like a sweet little dinosaur. All I can do is my best, which may end up being a few pots of beans and the odd soggy potato. I can but try. I sincerely hope that whatever plans you make, you manage to fulfil them and get to enjoy the bounty of your harvest when the time is right. Good luck, and happy gardening!
ALL the halfway decent gardening shows are British shows. There isn't even an American substitute. Hence there is no escaping the pure love of Monty Don. Now that he's retired, they still put his image in the thumbnail to make you click!
I don't regret getting chickens! But if space or city ordinances are a concern, try quail. They don't need to come out of their cages. Obviously there isn't much meat on the little guys, but they're great egg layers.
Im a big gardener. What do you have to say about Huge Fernlea???