I wonder what other folks thought about the much hyped BBC gardener of the decade? I was majorly dissapointed by it, no criticism of the 'contestants' intended as they were a good bunch and deserving of their place in the programme. The let-down was from the content and the production of the 1 hour special.
It all semed a bit rushed (despite there being time for tedious reminders of the path to the BBCGOTD) and excessively edenocentric.
Both the P&D and tropical crops tests glossed over too quickly for viewer to participate in and that's part of the fun, seeing how you measure up to the contestants.
The border tidying test was weird as it was assessing the gardeners skill at doing something that was against their normal way of working - ie. making a rushed job look good - that's not the way that a top flight domestic gardener works.
Grafting......what a strange test, it might have been different if they had been shown the technique first, but clearly some of them had no idea what they were doing.
Then finally those tiddly little borders, not much chance to show design skills in what was not much more than a window box. If it was intended to test knowledge of plants suitable for 2040 then that could have been assessed from their plant choice for a theoretical site as a paper exercise....but the right one came out on top.
I felt sorry for Diana Guy, a very competant maker of gardens. I'm looking forward to hearing her take on the programme and the assessement tests. She was a favourite to win but with tests like that I'm not surprised she fell at the first hurdle.
Congrats though to the winner Katherine Crouch well deserved as she performed with a cheery smile despite the odd tasks and unfamilar territory.
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