The secret language of gardening REVIEW

0 Comments | Sunday Herald, The, May 27, 2007 | by Graeme Virtue

LAST WEEK

RHS CHELSEA FLOWER SHOW 2007

VARIOUS TIMES, BBC

"YOU just want to grab all this lavender and shove it in your drawers!" If the double entendre was intended, Carol Klein the indefatigable roving reporter for the BBC's marathon coverage of the RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2007 didn't stop to raise a knowing eyebrow. She just powered onwards, yomping through the meticulous displays of greenery, all sculpted and secateured to look its best.

Like an inquisitive bee, she instinctively alighted on the prettiest blooms, before turning to the cameraman huffing to keep up with her to unstopper another semi-improvised torrent of praise to the kaleidoscopic wonders of nature.

Klein's skill is to take something that a blinkered urbanite like me might dismiss as merely "fancy grass" and then focus so intently on its uniqueness and beauty, often enunciating its Latin name like an incantation. After a while, you start to see these plants through her eyes: everyday miracles, nurtured with love, that casually improve the quality of life for all of us on this planet. Forget Springwatch: this was sprigwatch.

Even better, if the BBC Two highlights show every evening wasn't enough for you, clicking the magical red button transported viewers to rolling/repeated coverage of the event. This 24-hour naturecast, hidden on digital channel 301, had something of the heightened reality of QVC.

So impassioned were Klein's sales pitches for all the flora that the BBC should have had the foresight to run an ordering hotline along the bottom of the screen so viewers could phone up and buy the featured Tradescantia fluminensis right then.

Compare this to Alan Titchmarsh, who seemed in a curiously grumpy mood for most of the week. Was it because of all these technological innovations suddenly invading his usually quiet broadcasting patch? Email this, red button that? Get with the times, Titchmarsh! You can't hide in your shed any more. Times surely change, like the turning of the seasons. Surely a supposedly consummate gardener like him can understand that?