Back to nature

As Gardening Australia returns, presenter Costa Georgiadis tells Danielle McGrane why this might be the most important season yet.

G ardening Australia host Costa Georgiadis has always known that nature is powerful.

He’s happy that more people are also realising that, now that the world has gone through a bit of a reset during this pandemic.

“The power of horticulture and the therapeutic aspects of being in a park or spending time in your garden, or going for a walk in bushland, its power has had a chance to expose itself to the people who have had time,” Georgiadis said.

“Regardless of the fact that this has been a difficult time, horticultural therapy – the joy of nature and plants and growing – has had a chance to really touch people because they’ve slowed down enough to let it in.”

It’s been a definite silver lining over a really strange and traumatic year.

Garden centres have been inundated, house plants are the latest must-have accessory and going for a walk is the new ‘going out’. Nature, it seems, is winning us over.

“It’s been a wonderful time for gardening,” Georgiadis said.

“I’ve been stoked and really, really excited and happy to see people taking an angle on it, because they’ve had time. They’ve seen that there’s been some hiccups and questions around our resilience and our supply chains. And that all began when people actually saw the consequence of panic, and what panic did to these systems that we’ve been continually told are fine. But when there’s a wobble, that’s the best time to find out how they’re faring.”

This pandemic has not only changed how people view the world, but also how they exist within it. People are suddenly taking an interest in growing their own food, with sustainability looking less and less like a pipe dream for many households.

This is where Georgiadis realises his work and advice has never been more vital.

“People went out and they bought seedlings and bought potting mix and pots and they went out and bought every young pullet chicken they could find. I just think ‘What an opportunity’. But we also have a very important responsibility at the moment to make sure that these people get the right advice,” he said.

“There’s a really wonderful chance for these things to shape the future.”

It’s not new to Georgiadis. Sustainability and resilience has always been his raison d’être, but he sees that this is a chance to implement real change on many levels, from families, to the community and for society at large.

“I think everyone realises that normal has taken a totally new shape. It’s been panel beaten, and with a lot of these things that came about as a result of this change in lifestyle, there’s a really wonderful chance for these things to shape the future,” he said.

For Georgiadis and the Gardening Australia team, there’s going to be more people looking to them for advice than ever before. In response to that, there will be even more episodes this year.

“It’s an important period for us over the next couple of months to keep bringing out some new stories and we’ve