"IN the old days, Victorian head gardeners never planted a vinery without putting a dead donkey in the ground underneath." This handy tip came to me from Sue Phillips on Channel 4's Garden Party, a programme full of good ideas and helpful information. During a recent programme, in just one half hour, we learned about pruning and training grape vines, sowing and growing sweetcorn, inter cropping quick salads with slower growing produce, how to build a brick and gravel path and how to treat raw sewage with reed beds (yes! - and it works).
But I'm not convinced by the programme's format: a (notably unfestive) "garden party" in a different gorgeous garden each week where local folk, togged out in their very English Sunday best, intermingle self consciously with the presenter, Tom Barber, and a couple of garden experts. Slices of party talk drift across the screen:
... keep a little bit of the garden fenced off and grassed down where the dog can `go' ... " and "ooh, I don't like that one ... " And, instead of sticking to a handful of advice giving experts (because you can't invite the same guests to every party), Garden Party has the disturbing habit of reeling out entirely different characters each week. Like many viewers, I want the company of the same old friends on the box, time after time after time.
Which is why I love Gardeners World, across the way on BBC 2. For years and years this programme was Geoff Hamilton and his death last year dealt a terrible blow to all his adoring fans, myself included. And what an awful thing for poor Alan Titchmarsh to have to step into his big hearted, common sensical, warm wellies. In the beginning, Geoffs devotees would line up in front of the television, myself included, and settle down for a good old bitch about Alan. "Just look at the cut of him in that jumper!" and "Geoff would never have done it that way."
But, with admirable grace and good humour, Alan has deftly shown us how to take pelargonium cuttings, how to fill and maintain a hanging basket and how to do any number of other chores, proving that he is completely familiar with the nuts and bolts of horticulture. They're glossier nuts and bolts than Geoffs but they make the machine which is the garden trundle along just as smoothly.
And talk about glossy and smooth: Gardeners' World's Bob Flowerdew, he of the exquisite, flaxen plait - has got to be the most stylish organic person in television world. To boot, he knows his onions - and his spuds, carrots and cabbages - and even his bananas and pineapples, these last growing in his heated "double glazed" polytunnel. To my mind, Gardeners' World has definitely got the classiest presenters, the most beautiful gardens and the most interesting items, all lusciously portrayed in deep, rich colour.
How utterly different is the next garden show to fill the screen at the weekend: Gardeners' Diary on UTV and RTE, appears to be shot on an especially dreary, washed out type of videotape and its presentation is decidedly plodding. Oh. dear! Only if you are a committed watcher of gardening TV should you include this in your weekly dose - for trustworthy tomatoes, angst-free annuals and strangely dull garden visits - otherwise, save yourself for our own home grown The Garden Show.
Just as the best Irish gardens are top-notch, so is The Garden Show, most of the time. Its regular presenters, Dermot O'Neill and Helen Dillon, are a perfectly balanced duo, with the affable and approachable solidity of the one counterweighting the other's off. beat and virtuosic flights of fancy. One presenter tells us what plants. grow best, in what kind of window box and which house plants thrive on neglect (aspidistra, asparagus fern and peace lily) and how to lay ornate cobble paving.
The other, meanwhile, teaches us how to distinguish the seedlings of the posh white foxglove from those of the common pinky purple variety and shows us what plants are perfect for filling the "May gap in the garden, when the spring flowers are over and the roses have yet to perform.
Eager to plug my own gap, I asked two local garden centres - one of which specialises in rare plants - to supply the recommended plants. Alas, of the seven gappluggers, only one was available, the other six may not even exist in commerce in this country. And that brings me to the problem with The Garden Show: while it usually glides along in the most informative, interesting, inspiring and elegant manner, just occasionally it tries to impress with too fancy footwork and trips up embarrassingly.
But that's enough of that. I'm off donkey hunting for my new vinery.