Behind the Scenes Expose - Gardener of the Year 2005

As promised here are some more detailed pictures of the 'show' garden. According to my camera's highly accurate built in clock the six pictures below were all taken between 11:57 and 12:01 on the last day. So how come they showed Elaine hurriedly filling pots to the soundtrack of 'look for the hero inside' after Monty announced that everyone could have an extra hour? Well mainly because they edited in film from 10:00 that morning. The truth was that our garden was completed at 11:30 and they had to ask us to go back in and look busy for the extra hour announcement. But the camera never lies so I must be mistaken. There is also a closeup of our water feature below that I was dissapointed they never really gave more than a passing glance on camera.



This next batch were taken after the judging, about 4:30pm.
The first picture shows Jeannette who I personally felt was treated unfairly by the finished program.
The second picture is Geoff's garden and although I thought Geoff was never going to win his presence added imensely to the whole experience and we probably spent more of our free time with him and his helper Ben than any of the other contestants.
Picture 3 is of Dean and Mandy our 'clients' who seemed to be quite geniunely pleased with their finished garden. When we returned to the site about 9:00pm to pick up our van for the drive home they were still sat outside enjoying the garden with friends.
Pictures 4 and 5, I have included, at Elaines request, to try and dispell the myth that our garden was mostly gravel!
Picture 6 is of Shirley's garden. I think she was lucky in that the householders taste was closer to her own than any of the other contestants. Shirley distingished herself by persuading the BBC driver to find an off-licence on the journey between the set and the hotel, thereby saving me a great deal of money.

Nearly Famous

Well we finally got to see the show tonight (actually we watched at 2:30pm on BBC2 Northern Ireland to check just HOW embrassing it was before sitting down with all the family). The children were naturally enough very embarrassed, the second eldest had to suffer the indignity of all her freinds ringing to see if it was really her mum. She started off by trying to convince them it was her aunt but later resorted to just screaming "turn it off NOW".

We both felt that the editing was very confusing, we had been there in person and still didn't feel as though we got a clear picture of each garden. Judging by the comments on the BBC Gardening discussion group other people felt this way too.

We will try and get as many photos of the garden as we can up on the site tomorrow, and now the result has been announced we will post our detailed diary of the event.

Thanks for all the positive comments and we are not too modest to say that we should have won.

Elaine & Dave

At last The Gardener of the Year show - well almost.

You may have noticed that we were not on the telly tonight as advertised in the January issue of Gardeners World, the show has in fact been rescheduled to appear on Thursday December the 29th at 8:00pm on BBC2 analogue (thats plain old BBC2 as far as most of you are concerned). Once we have dealt with the embarrasment of everyone watching us I will post a more detailed behind the scenes expose of our time with Monty.