(courtesy IMDb)
As someone who has become unaccountably addicted to watching Gardening Australia every Friday night – no, I’m not a gardener and have no garden but yes, I love the soothing balm of enthusiasts talking about much they love the act of gardening and its many fascinating aspects – it’s obvious that conjuring plants in multitudinous productive profusion is not necessarily the most compelling of things for younger demographics to watch.
That’s not say younger people don’t love gardening; as any number of highly successful gardening initiatives at schools across Australia demonstrate, kids love getting their hands dirty and understanding where their food comes from.
But gardening is, rightly or wrongly, seen as an older person’s hobby, which is why its fun, charming, sweet, garrulously unpredictable fun, to have gardening presented as something hugely interesting and relatable by enthusiastic gardening hobbyist, actor Zach Galifianakis (The Hangover I-to-III, Dinner for Schmucks) who attacks a pursuit near and dear to his heart with chaotically delightful joy.
Each of the six, approx. 16-minutes episodes of This is a Gardening Show feature the host travelling to various organic farms on his home island of British Columbia (though he also has homes in L.A. and in North Carolina, where there’s also a much-loved farm) to talk about either approaches to gardening or particular plants themselves, his enthusiasm palpable and his experts more than up to the task of talking about why what they do matters and how to do it well.
So, we get to find out more about corn and tomatoes, and foraging and compost with the ever-present message being that the “future is agrarian” and that we have become so divorced from our natural and agrarian roots as a species that we’re sucking a planet dry that could otherwise be endlessly productive and fecund.
That’s a very serious piece of messaging, and Galifianakis doesn’t shy away from the more sober aspects of what he’s trying to say with This is a Gardening Show, but what leavens it all, and makes you pay attention to all the seriousness is the huge amount of amusing whimsicality injected into proceedings.
While it does come close occasionally to derailing the very important information the host is trying to impart, by and large the veering between hilariously offbeat and studiously serious actually, giving This is a Gardening Show a sort of irreverent steampunk Sesame Street vibe, thanks in part to the deftly engaging way Galifianakis talks to the children from Brooklyn Elementary School (which is on the B.C. island where the show is filmed) whose begin each and every program.
Never once talking to them but always meeting this collection of 5-7-year-olds exactly where they are at – at one point he asks one about which apple species are real with one of the candidates being “Diarrhoea town” and suggests that as well as bobbing for apples, they could bob for turds which is met with giggling incredulity by the kids – Galifianakis does a wonderful job of stoking curiosity and interest from these potential budding gardeners while imparting key information about the topic at hand.
Sweetly fun though it is, this reviewer did have his doubts about the show in the first episode.
Enjoyable though it was, and yes, laughing happened more than once, the first episode felt a little too chaotic, zipping between the anarchically silly and the soberly informational (though always with humour laced through it) but This is a Gardening Show hits its stride really quickly, anchored by the host’s ineffable charm, garrulousness and clear love of the topics at hand.
Whether you are an active gardener, an occasional dabbler or someone yet to plunge your hands into compost heaps and fertile loams, This is a Gardening Show is the show of delightful show that drags you in and demands you not only laugh but pay attention to where corn comes from, how to tell when an apple is ripe and the joys and dangers of foraging and why it’s a great way to get your food.
Whether you have a garden or not, This is a Gardening Show is going to stoke the fires of creativity within you, as well as possibly inspiring you to find some spare land somewhere and grow your own food.
Galifianakis is infectiously excited about gardening, not simply because it gives you stuff to eat and it soothes the digital age-ravaged soul with connection to the natural world, even if it is a curated version of it, but because it is, he believes, the future for a species which has consumed too much and needs to give something back while re-establishing itself as part of the natural world.
This message comes through again and again, but it’s never heavy-handed and in fact, you walk away form each episode – although, let’s be honest, the show is such a surfeit of charming lovability and enthusiastic information sharing that you’ll binge the full six episodes and feel mighty glad you did – feel energised to do what you can with your own plot of land (assuming you have or can find one).
With a host who breaks the fourth wall over and over, who loves whimsically-delivered, giggling-suffused dad jokes and silly but intentionally thoughtful musing, and who clearly knows stuff but is happy to admit when he doesn’t, This is a Gardening Show is a huge arm hug of a show that doesn’t simply entertain (but oh, how it does!) but leaves you feeling armed with the knowledge you need to break the suffocating connection to your local supermarket and take some power back over the food you consume and the kind of life you lead.
While that might make This is a Gardening Show sound like some sort of cult pamphlet sprung to life, it’s anything but, a joyously fun, silly & serious show that loves what it’s talking about, which takes some seriously, easily-heedable messaging and wraps it in whimsy, humour and highly relatable humanity, and which leaves you convinced that you can regain some connection to the world around you, control over what you eat and what you do and which softens the harsh edges of the current digital age with some very much necessary ideas about how find your inner gardener and likely transform your life in the process.