Garden Rant

Does DIY Rock?

Normally I would delete an email with the words "New Gardening Shows on DIY Network" in the subject line. And even if I did open the email, I would be highly suspicious of an opening line like:  "Being a Northern Californian, I'm not sure you're as excited as I am for the warm weather and sunshine -- but here in NY, this week definitely marks the beginning of Spring and we've got our sights all set on Summer. And of course, that means getting our yards ready. As a gardening afficionado yourself, I thought you'd be interested to hear about..."

Because of course, the intern at the Search Engine Optimization firm that DIY hired to send this email is probably not actually getting his/her yard ready for anything.

And here at GardenRant, we go all year long, baby.  Even if that means pounding our fists on the block of ice that is our front yard in the middle of January. Get ready? We're always ready.

And besides, I just hate the idea of someone's viral marketing campaign actually working.

But I gotta say, Ahmed Hassan's kind of hot. And he hangs around garden centers and asks if he can go home with you. 

Yeah.

Check out this guy who questions his gardening cred:

one more for your Monday morning:

My favorite gardening movies

This is the lane to Montacute, which was used as a Sense and Sensibility location, and which we visited in 04.

Actually, I don’t have any, not movies that are actually about gardening, that is. I don’t choose movies for gardening subject matter but I do pay attention—quite intently, as you’d expect from someone who sees the world through their obsession—to how nature and gardens are used on the large and small screens.

British mini-series and costume dramas nearly always feature gardens prominently, and sometimes they have significance. I was re-watching the entire Brideshead Revisited recently, and in the early part, the halcyon days of Charles Ryder’s (Jeremy Irons) and Sebastian Flyte’s (Anthony Andrews) friendship, gardens and flowers are prominent. Early on, Ryder says he loves his Oxford rooms because of the gillyflowers (Dianthus? Some kind of wallflower? Sources disagree.) that grow under the window. And then, almost all the Jane Austen adaptations are replete with shrubberies, woods, and formal gardens. Author Phillippa Gregory, known for her Tudor books (great bodice-rippers!),discusses this, a bit, in an article in yesterday’s Guardian:

Why do we like to watch historical drama?
For many, I am sure, it is the visual delight of a pre-industrial landscape. Rural poverty is always pretty, and the loving shots of unsprayed cornfields and ragged haymeadows, little villages with wandering geese and charming urchins, have all the joy of gardening programmes without the implied requirement that you learn something and then put it into practice.

Many of the Masterpiece Theater productions are great for this. I’m watching, via Netflix, The Pallisers now, and even though budgets were low by today’s standards, the locations have beautiful plantings (big advantage of shooting in England—castles, mansions, and their extensive gardens all over the damn place).

While the historical drama Gregory refers to is not an especially tranquil story (The Other Boleyn Girl), most of the PBS stuff I watch is pretty mild-mannered, as well as having lovely garden settings. It’s that association that is most comforting in these movies and miniseries. In many of these shows, really bad things don’t happen; they’re a soothing escape, much as we try to create when we garden.

And thanks to Netflix, I’ll have plenty of these to watch, easily enough to last me into warm weather. Though they’re more filled with tragic matter than I would prefer, I do think Gregory’s two botany novels would make for interesting movies.

Send a Chicken to Washington

I've never owned rabbits, but I can tell you that hens do have a surprisingly strong moral compass.  Think they could teach our fearless leader a thing or two about how to put an end to the fighting?

The secret sex life of plants

Here's a compilation of appropriated footage we (my friend Cheryl Jackson and I) put together for a plant sex installation last night (a fundraiser). The video projection was just one part of it. Enjoy (you'll want your sound on).

What Happens When You Put a Garden Hose in a Blender?

Answers to these and other burning questions.  Just one of the many ways we aim to serve our readership here at GardenRant.

Oudolf's New Wave Planting in the NY Times

You know how we've complained about the mainly absent gardening coverage in the paper of record?  Well, there's a new name in today's Home and Garden section - a Sally McGrane, unfamiliar to me - and she's covering someone and something worth writing about.  That's Piet Oudolf, the star of Europe's so-called New Wave Planting movement, where ecology meets design.  To Oudolf, a plant's form and structure are more important than its color.  He says the real test of a garden isn't "how nicely it blooms but how beautifully it decomposes." Nice change from the "Make it Bloom!" school of gardening, huh?

Here's the article and check out the slide show if you're unfamiliar with his work.  I just have one question.  Oudolf is also sometimes called a founder of the sustainable gardening movement, but take a look at those perfectly sheared shrubs.  Looks more like the Full Employment for Professional Gardeners Movement.

Blast from the Past: Secret Life of Plants

Did you watch it when it came out?  Did it trip you out?

This is just the Stevie Wonder video, but the entire film is  available online here as well.

Do plants have feelings? Discuss among yourselves.

Time-Waster for the Office? No, Go Home!

BBC garden expert Alan Titchmarsh devotes nearly four hours (yes, I said four hours!) to the question of HOW to be a gardener--now what to do, but how to do it.  He starts by telling you to get out of the garden center and GO HOME.  Next up, sex.  Shameless sexual activity, in fact.  Watch it in your cube or call in sick.  Just don't get any work done today.  It is a federal holiday, isn't it?

TV Update: Gardeners Joyous about Global Warming

by Susan

"WIRED SCIENCE"
Have you seen this PBS show about science and technology?  It's one of those fast-paced, Gen-X-friendly news magazines and its October 10 episode covered the effects of climate change on gardeners.  The narrator introduced us to two VERY pleased-looking gardeners somewhere in Minnesota, who told us about "the joys of global warming" - all those southern plants they can now grow.  Is this attitude - "What, me worry?  As long as I can grow crape myrtles in Toronto I'm happy!" really typical?  I'd sure like to have heard from gardeners who see the bigger picture, like the vast majority of gardenbloggers.  (Note to MSM:  we're easy to find and love being asked for our opinions.)

Then there was another gardening item in the very same episode, in a regular segment called "What's Inside?"  The host rattled off a long list of ingredients and asked readers to guess what the product was.  The ingredients were salt, boric acid, urine, rust remover, fire retardant, and so on.  Can you guess?

Well, the punch line (and indeed it's played like a big joke) is: Miracle Gro! The narrator then chatted away about Miracle Gro having been invented in 1950 by a New York adman and the (scary) fact that the product has now garnered 85 percent of the home fertilizer market. Then what do you suppose viewers were told about Miracle Gro?  Nothing.  No mention of the consequences of all that synthetic fertilization.  I call that a wasted opportunity.

Based on this and other recent episodes, I have to conclude that "Wired Science" works so hard to make science news fun that it simply blows it.  It's too jazzy to educate.  It may be the very nature of its short-short segments.  (Are we all presumed to have ADD?)  Their website asks for feedback and while there are plenty of fans, I agree with this comment: "Quit treating every segment as if it needs to fit on a morning happy gab fest show.  More information."  Right.  And a chemist wrote to complain specifically about the "What's Inside" segments.

"THE GREEN"
Now if you're lucky enough to have the Sundance Channel on your TV, you're probably already a fan of this new show.  I don't get the channel myself, but I went to their DC launch party and screening and have watched the CDs they kindly sent me of several episodes.  Their show about waste was SO edifying I had to turn it off because I happened to be eating dinner while watching it, which I strongly advise against doing.  Total ick! It's called "Crapshoot: the Gamble with our Waste."  Another episode on Cities was very good, as was their segment about guerilla gardeners - thank you!  It's no coincidence that "The Green" gives plenty of time to the subjects it covers.

Gardening with Ciscoe

Ciscoe Morris, Seattle's resident garden expert, can be a bit of an acquired taste. I'll admit that at first I wasn't sure what to make of him.  He doesn't have that slick HGTV, "Hi, I'm Bob, and I'm here with Jane to talk about easy tips for fall color" vibe--which is a good thing--and decades in Seattle have done nothing to tame his Wisconsin accent.  But Seattlites love him.  He walks through the Seattle Garden Show and he's treated like a rock star.  So what's the appeal?

I was in Seattle recently and I caught this episode of 'Gardening with Ciscoe' on the local news. (Sorry, no way to embed it.) This, I think, shows what makes Ciscoe such a great local garden personality.  First of all, he's insanely excited about the accidental discoveries he makes in his garden--giddy, almost.  Now, "giddy" wouldn't work for everybody, but you can't help but giggle when Ciscoe gets a little nuts over a red twig dogwood.

What I loved the most about this video clip was the moment, about 2 minutes in, when the host asks him what plants can be rooted by simply sticking the twigs in the ground in fall.  He shrugs, kind of amazed by the possibilities, and says, "Go around the garden, chop off a bunch, and see what roots!  What the heck, you got billions!"  In other words, "Don't ask me!  We're talking about putting sticks in the ground!  Just go outside and give it a try!"  This is someone who actually gardens.  He's not afraid of looking foolish, and he's the exact opposite of intimidating, but he doesn't dumb it down, either.  He's a master gardener, a certified arborist, and he spent 24 years as the grounds manager at Seattle University.

You can catch Ciscoe on the local news, read his column in the Seattle P-I, tune in to his radio show, or read his book. He's everywhere.

YouTube does offer up one video we can embed, and it happens to be a cool idea for composting food scraps in a small space, so here you go: