TVScope: Digging Deep BBC2, Tuesdays, 8.30pm
When BBC2 described how in this new eight-part series we would not have the usual garden designers but rather horticultural therapists, André and Amanda, with a holistic approach, my hopes were raised.
Horticultural therapy is based on the benefits to body, mind and spirit of the combination of the physical exercise and the engagement of all the senses in gardening.
The breathless voice-over introduction to this first programme promised much. Each week, we were told, one garden and its owners would be "analysed and transformed as layers of both their lives and lawns are revealed".
There would be "life-transforming changes" after the therapists, who believe that "a garden reveals many hidden truths about the person who cares for it", had made their diagnosis.
The lovely young couple, Mike and Vicky, who owned the garden, said their neglect of their garden coincided with Vicky having been diagnosed with breast cancer two years previously. It was Vicky who was most insightful as to how the chaos of the garden mirrored her experience that everything had been out of control during the two years of her cancer treatment.
Now, with her recovery, she wanted her garden to be "a neat, ordered space, exactly what I want my life to be". The closest we came to seeing horticultural therapy in action was Vicky's description when pruning of how this represented her desire "to cleanse deadwood out of my life, to bring order back".
Unfortunately, Vicky and Mike were then banished and the theatrical designers took centre stage as they decided on the garden which they believed would meet Vicky and Mike's emotional needs.
After much gushing, the transformed garden was revealed to its owners. Granted it was beautiful, and Vicky rather poignantly wished she could have had it during her cancer treatment. It was in the end, however, André and Amanda's garden, and the programme failed to deliver the horticultural therapy message that we all have our own key to stress management and relaxation in our own back gardens.