J Kolenovsky wrote in news:3FA452C7.FCE7042@hal-
pc.org:

I have never heard of this show. How long has it been around and what
does/did it encompass?

J. Kolenovsky


good lord, where have you been, under a rock?? I take that back. This
gardening show is one of the first (I speak loosely, because I'm sure
there was an earlier show I'm unaware of....) and possibly the longest
running gardening programs there has been, even if it has changed hosts
and had another name. Originally, it has been a Public Broadcast Service
show. (that I am aware of so no flaming if I'm wrong, just correct me
nicely and I will take it kindly) PBS started it out with Crockett
hosting a really good hands on show about gardening in the city to teach
people how easy it was given the right information. From there it
transformed but stayed relatively informative when Jim Wilson took the
reins and hosted it and they expanded the gardening concept to outside
the area's to other regions trying to encompass gardening as a whole.
They had the producer's wife, Marion Morass to cook at the tail end of
the shows and eventually about the time I really started noticing this
regular PBS program on in my home town, Saturday mornings, a young,
passionate gardener by the name of Roger Swain came on board to host the
show. They have had various horticultural folks to pass thru, Tovah
Martin, Holly Schimizu (sp?) Barbara Damrosche, a woman who along with
her husband, Elliot Coleman has taken gardening in Maine to a whole new
level in their own short lived but cram packed show Gardening Naturally
was there at her early moments, names that elude me at the moment, but
all very knowledgable in their own wright. Bob Seamaus on the west
coast, I can't remember the woman who hosted with Jim who left when she
had her son, was incredible..(brain fart here, help me out people)
Peter Seabrooks was English and was a hoot, going about in different
places showcasing gardens from the world during the winter seasons for
us here in the States. I always looked forward to seeing where they'd
go because I was always curious how people gardened in other parts of
the world. I wasn't so much interested in the wealthy aspect of it as
much as how other folks gardened, what they grew, and different plants
and such. This show has run if I am not mistaken for well over 25 years
now on PBS and despite that it has a new host and new format, it still
is trying to cover some of the gardening ideals. I think that it's time
has come that it should get back to basics like Mother Earth News
Magazine had to do in the early 90's.

People want to know how to grow gardens of all sorts. Flowers,food
stuffs like berries and some vegetable gardens. Ornamental as well as
satisfying the inner need. That the new Victory Garden was going to show
how to have chickens was lost to me because they sent off for an
expensive coop that I wouldn't have been able to afford. I would have
rather liked better that they had showed you could order a variety of
good poultry from Murry MacMurry Hatcheries thru the mails, build a
simple but effective coop and have chickens for gardens, eggs and what
not instead of this over priced lark they covered in a half hour. I
haven't had the pleasure of catching the show hardly at all this season
because I've missed it simply from having to work at Lowe's. I'd love to
see what they featured this season and then give an opinion But I have
to argue that the years they had Jim Wilson and Roger Swain were I think
some of their finest ones. They inspired me visually when I was just
awakening to the gardening bug. I originally started gardening after
reading Mother Earth Magazine and consuming Organic Gardening Magazine
when Mike McGrath was editor. Add to that having Victory Garden on PBS
every week, with decent reruns during the winter when they had their
down time, I usually didn't miss an episode unless there was a problem
and I just couldn't see it. I even watched when I was in Denver and
Michigan.

The Victory Garden has the potential to be as good if not better for
gardeners of all walks of life if they did it right and took their
successes and ran with them. Even with competition with HGTV,

Does this help? I can't tell you how to see these past episodes unless
you can contact PBS and see if they have archival shows on VCR tape for
sale. They're offering quite a few things for fund raising and you might
get lucky. At the least go to PBS.org and look under Victory Garden and
see if they give a good description. This is the best I can give you
since I am a good fan despite my lack of seeing it much this year.

madgardener who watched it first in Nashville on WDCN on Saturday
mornings, then in Denver on Saturday afternoon, later at 10:30 a.m.,
then Nashville at noon, caught it early morning in MIchigan, Sunday's in
a few other cities on the way to Colorado or up to Michigan, and finally
Saturday's at 12:30 on WETS in Knoxville, Tennessee, and I can safely
say that I have seen it for at least 25 years if not longer if I could
remember what year Crockett was hosting it originally as I first saw it
with him on it.