Beechgrove’s back and braver than me (well I wouldn’t let you into my garden)
As TV’s top horticultural show spotlights its presenters’ own gardens, Agnes Stevenson reveals why she won’t be inviting any cameras into her home any time soon
It was good to welcome Beechgrove back to our TV screens last week. It has returned at just the right time with the down-to-earth advice that’s made it a favourite, not just here, but with viewers around the world who tune in on BBC iPlayer to find out what’s unfurling, blossoming and ripening in one expertlycultivated corner of the Aberdeenshire countryside.
For the time being the programme is not coming from Beechgrove but from the presenters’ gardens.
In the first episode we were treated to a glimpse of Carole Baxter planting potatoes at her home; George Anderson growing show bulbs in his greenhouse; Brian Cunningham deciding whether or not to cut the grass at Scone Palace, where he is head gardener and Kirsty Wilson growing indoors in her Edinburgh flat.
In this Thursday’s episode Kirsty will take viewers behind the locked gates of the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (RBGE), where she is herbaceous supervisor.
Its one thing showing off public gardens such as the RBGE and Scone, but allowing visitors into your own garden is something else entirely.
I have great admiration for those gardeners who, if this year hadn’t been thrown into turmoil, would now be starting to welcome visitors in order to raise money for charity.
I could never open my garden, mostly because it is so steep that there would inevitably be an accident, but also because I’m not sure I could handle the criticism!
Not long after we moved here, a photographer turned up to photograph my plot for a magazine, but he spent most of his time shaking his head.
What didn’t he like? Well, everything it seemed.Where was my vegetable plot, my potting shed, my greenhouse?
I ran around, trying to show him where those features appeared on the plans and trying to explain there were
difficult decisions to be made about ground works and earth removal before we could get round to the basics.
We’ve still not got around to the ground works or the earth removal and I’m still using the garage as a temporary tool shed.
But I’d like to think that if that photographer came back now he’d find more to his liking, or at least the basket of home-grown veg I could now give him to take home would quieten some of his criticism.
Even when you’ve dug, planted, pruned and mowed every blade of grass there will always be someone whose tastes are different.
I spend a lot of my time writing about private gardens and the ones I remember are not those without weeds or where the borders are filled with unusual plants.They are the ones where the owners find great joy in the work of creating and tending them and where they have a deep connection to everything they grow.
Perfection comes in many guises.