Gardener's Question Time

Fern_Merkin

Does anybody else listen to this radio show on Sundays at 2pm, radio 4?

I find it informative and funny. It's suprising how much you pick up about general good gardening practise. All the presenters are experts in their field(!) and fun to listen to. Especially when the weathers awful but the urge to garden is still there.

Im posting this because I have not seen it mentioned and it's information for free:T

A._Badger

Absolutely! I've listened to it for years. I hugely prefer it to the TV equivalents, in fact.

I do think, though, that it has been dumbed-down (like all BBC gardening coverage), compared with 'the good old days', before the previous panelists, not liking the way it was heading, stumped off to Classic FM.

Sadly, that didn't work out for them.

nodwah

I've been listening to GQT for years too.
I like Bob Flowerdew and I miss Stephan Buczaski (sp?) anyone remember Clay Jones (I think it was), not that fond of Anne Swithinbank but I admit she knows her stuff and I actively dislike John Cushnie.

Don't forget it's also on Weds at 3pm

A._Badger

I remember Clay Jones - but he was on BBC TV's Gardener's World, I think, just before the late Geoff Hamilton took over (to my mind, the last good presenter of that programme, before 'pretty' became more important than 'knowledgeable').

If it's radio you're thinking of, maybe it was Fred Loads? He was another treasure - an absolute mine of information and a great character.

Dr Buczacki, meanwhile, is my favourite of all the contemporary gardening experts. He talks and writes more plain common sense about gardening than anyone I have listened to, or read. In fact, he was one of the GQT refuseniks I referred to earlier, who left Radio 4 when they tried to make the programme trendy and it seems the BBC has never forgiven him - he's been absent from our screens for years, which is a tragedy as he is both a gardener and a respected scientist.

It's instructive to see how many really good gardening brains the BBC has shunted off TV because they weren't deemed televisual. Quite a few have ended up on GQT. Some others have vanished from the broadcast media altogether. It's a shame.