ANNIVERSARY OF SHOW WHICH HAS BECOME UNLIKELY HIT
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in the same year as other iconic shows including Grange Hill, Scotch and Wry and Top Gear, was inspired by Boston TV company WGBH’s green space.
Former Beechgrove producer John Macpherson, said: “The Beechgrove Garden came to be from a variety of people who had seeds of ideas.
“But what really kicked it into life was a visit by a BBC Scotland executive to Boston. They saw an equivalent of their Beechgrove Garden called the Victory Garden, set in the back yard of public radio station WGBH Boston.”
The presenters were chosen for their experience. Jim came from an academic background. He taught at West of S c ot l a nd College of A g r icul - ture and North Col lege and working as a hort icultural advisor in England. George had just retired as head gardener at Pitmedden, where he had spent 30 years creating a formal French garden in the midst of rural Aberdeenshire.
Jim said: “In the early days, one of the funny things was people would say, ‘ What makes you think you know all of this, you can present it and you’re doing the right thing?’
“My answer to that was, Mr George Barron, standing next to me, has got 60 years’ experience and I’ve got 40 years’ experience in horticulture. That’s 100 years between us. If we can’t talk for three minutes about how to grow tatties, it’s a poor do.”
There were already gardening programmes on TV including Gardeners’ World, presented by Percy Thrower, but he wasn’t dealing with growing conditions in Scotland.
Jim said: “The seasons are different, the conditions are different and the starting times for sowing etc. Percy Thrower sowed his beetroot in the middle of March down in the south. We wouldn’t even think about it until perhaps the beginning of May.”
The i r natura l banter made them a TV dream team and their accents and use of Doric dialect made them stand out for all sorts of reasons.
He said: “We did have little phrases that would come in but we slipped into a little bit of Doric – ‘I’m just awa’ tae dae a wee jobby in the puttin’ shed’. Now, to millions of other people that meant going to the toilet, didn’t it? But that was the way.”
Jim and George’s banter made them unlikely celebrities. They appeared on talk shows such as Russell Harty and were parodied on TV by Rikki Fulton and Gregor Fisher in BBC comedy show Scotch and Wry.
The docu menta r y is introduced and narrated by Elaine C Smith, who received a home visit from the Beechgrove in 1991 when she didn’t know the difference between weeds and plants. She wasn’t alone. The show started at a time when people were moving out of multistorey tenements and flats and getting access to their own gardens for the first time. She said: “My first experience of having a garden was when we moved to a council house with a garden when I was about four or five.
“We’d been in a tenement with a shared back court before that, so no gardening required really. It was quite a new thing for my dad to be presented with a garden and what to do with it.
“If you wanted advice on where to start, well, you had to go to the Beechgrove Garden.”
BBC Scotland had unearthed a treasure, a gardening programme attracting a huge audience made, literally, in their own back yard.
George left the show in 1984 and was replaced by Dick Gardiner who stayed for two years. Then, in 1986, a revolution took place in the Beechgrove as Carole Baxter became the first woman to co-present a gardening show in the entire UK.
Jim said: “It came at a time when more domestic gardening was being done by the lady of the house. I said, ‘Give the lassie a chance’.”
The Beechgrove has continued to
In one episode, Carole invited Jim behind the sheds for what sounded like something dodgy...
“Why have you brought me round here?,” asked Jim. “For a wee smoke,” replied Carole. “These are tobacco plants.”
Not everything thrived in Beechgrove either. Archive footage shows Jim in a greenhouse having an absolute ’mare.
He said: “The cucumbers died which we planted in there,
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evolve and in 1990, the show caused a national outcry when part of it was redeveloped for the new decade.
Carole said: “Some people thought, ‘ This is awful, why are we doing this?’ But I think you have to think about the fact that if you’re moving into a new house or a garden, you sometimes completely revamp it.”
In 1996, they went further, with the Beechgrove being uprooted and rebuilt on an exposed, rural hillside on the outskirts of Aberdeen. What was once a quarter of an acre is now three.
Presenters have come and gone including, inexplicably, Jim for four years. Those who have stepped up include Bill Torrance, Sid Robertson, Carolyn Spray and Lesley Watson.
The current team is made up of Carole, George Anderson, Chris Beardshaw, Brian Cunningham and, of course, Jim. Forty years on, he hasn’t done a bad wee jobby.
The Beechgrove Garden Story is on BBC1 Scotland on Sunday, August 19, at 5.35pm. we planted another lot and they died so we cut our losses and planted lettuce... and lo and behold, they died too.”
There have also been turnip roots with no root, thunder claps, falling hanging baskets and disaster in a tattie barrel where fungus has got hold.
Jim said: “In every disaster, there’s a lesson. That’s at the back of the whole thing. It happens to us just as much as it will happen to you. Even with the knowledge and experience we’re supposed to have.”