4 reasons watching Gardeners World is stopping you from creating your dream garden
4 minute read
Personally I’m not a fan of Gardeners World. I find the presenters and their gardens really hard to relate to. The show is crying out for someone to show what is actually achievable within the small pockets of time that busy women have available to them to tend to their green space. Now that I could get on board with!
If you find yourself tuning in on the regular but actually struggling to create your dream garden. Here’s 4 reasons why that might be.
It creates information overload for your brain
Too much information can actually be a bad thing. Between advice given out on Gardeners World, YouTube videos you’ve watched and your endless research on the internet you’re confusing the hell out of your poor brain. You’re wrapping it up so much in what you ‘should’ be doing that you never actually manage to do it.
This constant need to learn and research just one more thing before getting going is a form of procrastination. Watching yet another episode of Gardeners World is not going to give you the self belief you need to grow in yourself to allow you to just give it a go.
The advice is not specific to your garden
The vast majority of the advice given on Gardeners World is generic advice. The plants that grow amazingly in the Jewel Garden at Longmeadow might struggle to ever pack a punch in your garden.
If you’re new to gardening it can be easy to blame yourself and presume that it was something you did wrong.
When in fact there is a really simple way to know exactly what plants will do well in your garden. That is getting to know your garden intimately.
What is your soil type? How does it hold water and nutrients?
How many hours of sun do each of your borders or raised beds get each day?
Only when you know this can you know whether the plants you see on TV will thrive or barely survive in your garden.
It encourages unrealistic expectations
As a busy woman chances are you struggle to find time to drink a hot cup of tea in peace let alone have hours to spend tending to your garden.
Many of the gardens on Gardeners World are created and kept up by multiple people who have significantly less time pressures than you.
Because I have no other option, I am the queen of fitting gardening activities that increase your wellbeing, into small pockets of time (some of my mindful gardening activities can be done in just 5 minutes).
So it is possible to garden in a way that helps you to feel calmer in short periods of time, you just need to be realistic about what you can achieve in the time you have available.
Otherwise you will always be beating yourself up about not getting stuff in the garden done.
The other thing we need to talk about is money. I’m pretty sure the Gardeners World production team have a healthy budget for plants and other equipment and you can bet your bottom dollar that brands are sending through supplies to the presenters to try each week.
So remind yourself of this when you feel that urge to go and spend next month's mortgage payment at the garden centre.
It allows comparison to creep in
And not the good kind. Let’s be real here. The gardens on Gardeners World are inspirational undoubtedly but they are not designed to be aspirational.
Let me explain. There’s no way I could recreate Carol Klein’s Glebe Cottage Garden in my average sized back garden and neither is it the show’s intention for me to aspire to do so.
But the human mind is complex and it can be easy to slip into ‘compare and despair’ to quote the wonderful Lucy Sheridan, The world’s first and only comparison coach. Which can make you feel bad. Not something you ever want your garden to do.
So by all means take your inspiration from gardening shows on the TV but when you feel that familiar tug of comparison, pass the plant or project through these filtering questions first.
Do I have the right conditions available for the plant?
Do I have space for it?
Will it enhance my life?
Does it fit into my vision of my dream garden?
If the answer is no to any of these questions then you can let that niggling comparison feeling drift away and stay in your own lane.