VX wrote:
snip
I must be a bit naive, or maybe I just like to think these people are for
real.

So, what this implies is- (correct me if I'm wrong)-

when I watch Gardener's World and I see these various tv gardeners apparently
all working quite hard to maintain the Berryfields garden and explaining what
they are doing for the benefit of the viewers, and the camera neatly moves
from one gardener doing one thing to another gardener doing another, it is
not only stage managed so that it all dovetails together fairlly neatly in
order to make it into a tv programme, BUT ALSO they are not really
maintaining the garden as they appear to be but are in fact PRETENDING and it
is really being done by others! It's all contrived and they are in fact
acting. Sorry, I need to say it in order to comprehend and believe it.....


But of course they don't all do all the work! They probably know how
to do the work, they probably have quite a bit of input on the design -
or some of them do - but how CAN all of them work full time at
maintaining the Berryfields garden and be paid by the BBC, a
notoriously ungenerous employer? All of them have other jobs or
businesses, Carol Klein has a nursery in Devon and a small garden open
to the public, for example. Joe Swift is a garden designer and he won't
make a living out of doing that for the Beeb alone! They write books
and make personal appearances. Charlie Dimmock has a page in one of
the nationals every week but I don't suppose for a second that she
actually constructs every water feature she advises upon. But to call
it acting is, I think, a bit strong. They ARE gardening people, they
do make their living through gardening and plants. If you mean they
don't dig over every border and bed, no of course they don't. They're
not jobbing gardeners. They've been given their jobs because they are
considered to be good at presenting garden information to a widely
differing-in-experience audience. Interior designers may make a
beautiful job of designing someone's home but they don't slap the
paint on the wall themselves.
--
Sacha
www.hillhousenursery.co.uk
South Devon