Baring it all to raise funds for gardening
Listen up Mark Cullen, Frankie Flowers and Paul Zammit. It’s time to take your clothes off. A bunch of male gardening celebs in the U.K. did just that recently — and whoo hoo. All those bare butts and discreetly concealed male appendages are currently raising thousands of pounds for a British gardening charity.
The guys who agreed to do the full Monty are all professional horticulturists from gardens in Britain.
They’re the stars of the latest in a string of nude calendars — a fundraising gimmick that began a decade ago with a group of rural middle-aged English women (and was made into a movie called The Calendar Girls) and has since spread to many countries, including Canada.
Already, our buff Toronto firemen have stripped off for a good cause. So have plucky female activists (some well into their 60s) protesting clear-cut logging in British Columbia.
But gardeners? We’ve been slow to jump on the “dare to bare” bandwagon.
That was the case in the U.K. until gung-ho gardening presenter Michael Perry came along. Eager to raise funds for Perennial, a charity which helps people working in the horticultural industry who have fallen on hard times, he’s come up with this 2015 calendar.
“We’ve had the Calendar Girls, firemen, marines, even rowers, but no gardeners,” he explains.
“So I looked for horticulturists who might be up for it.”
The results are hilarious. His volunteer “dirty dozen” include Neil Miller, head gardener at Hever Castle in Kent and Perry himself.
They’re pictured, with strategically placed watering cans and baskets of apples, in a Kensington rooftop garden — and men wearing nothing but gardening boots and socks look — it has to be said — ridiculously funny, especially, I think, to women. (Hats off to the volunteers for having the balls to pose in this
Perhaps the female factor is the reason this calendar is now selling like hot cakes in the U.K.
way — and for not being shy about stripping off in front of a female photographer.)
Perhaps the female factor is the reason this calendar is now selling like hot cakes in the U.K.
Most gardeners are, after all, women — and what a refreshing change the Grub- by Gardeners are from pretty, but predictable, pictures of plants in most calendars aimed at us.
To get a calendar, go to perennial.org.uk. It costs £9.99 ($18.15 Canadian). Until recently, their website wasn’t set up to take overseas orders, but marketing manager Jamie Hill assures me that they’ve fixed this omission. (If you have problems, email him at jhill@perennial.org.uk.)
So now, Mark, Frankie and Paul. Plus all the other studs working in horticulture on our side of the Atlantic. (I can think of plenty.) The cash-strapped Toronto Botanical Garden could use your help. How about it? But if naked males cavorting on your wall throughout 2015 doesn’t appeal, here are two locally produced efforts of interest to gardeners:
Toronto Gardener’s Journal. Talk about plucky. Margaret Benneft Allder, now in her late eighties, has been producing this day-to-day calendar for three decades and is still going strong.
It’s useful as ever, too. Costs $25. From torontogardenbook.com
Toronto Tree Portraits Calendar: Raises funds to keep our city green with beautiful photographs and snippets about the value of trees. $19.95 including shipping and taxes. From: lovetorontoparks.org soniaday.com