Garden designers have accused the BBC of 'dumbing down' their profession with its new reality talent contest where amateurs compete to win a coveted plot at next week's Chelsea Flower Show.
One of six budding designers battling it out on BBC 2's The Great Chelsea Garden Challenge will scoop the prime site on Main Avenue occupied by Alan Titchmarsh's garden last year.
The Royal Horticultural Society says that the aim of the MasterChef-style knockout competition is to nurture exciting new talent and gain a wider TV audience for gardening.
"Designer Janine Pattison said: 'I definitely don't agree with the competition.
'I think it trivialises garden design and reduces it to entertainment. The concern is that by dumbing down garden design, the public perception is that anyone can do it.
'You are dealing with serious responsibility when you take on a commission to design someone's garden and the Main Avenue designers are under huge pressure to deliver good results for their sponsors.
The RHS has used MasterChef as its model and I really don't think it can work with garden design.
'It is one thing cooking a plate of food under time pressure but creating a living, breathing garden which is respectful to horticulture and design is quite another.
'Places on Main Avenue are precious and should be showcases for professional talent.'
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3079017/Gardeners-fury-BBC-s-dumbing-Designers-say-competition-allow-amateurs-win-plot-Chelsea-Flower-demeans-industry.html
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Paul Hervey-Brookes appears to imply that it's only professional designers that can give a lifetime guarantee on a design.
That's entertainment for you!! Who can forget 'Groundfarce', with their garden 'make-overs'? Shingle, shingle, everywhere. Paving laid on a couple of inches of muck and decks slapped down on bare earth..........I watched through my fingers!
Still, it kick-started a boom in garden landscaping that filtered down to us all, but more than once I was asked "but why will the deck take you nearly a week? Tommy does it all in a couple of hours!"
Maybe another boom is coming.
Shows like Masterchef and Ready Steady Cook didn't make Michellin Star restaurants look trivial - it all appeals to different types of people which is vital to build interest! :)
Seems like a good thing to get people interested as when they have a go and fail it will be the pros who get a call, but I guess with such an important event there will inevitably be some who apply for a garden design space and don't get it - they may well hold a grudge against someone who is an amateur as it really would impact their business getting a slot on the show, or winning the prize!
Do I sense panic at the curtain being drawn back to reveal the "wizard" of Oz? The implication isn't that anyone can do garden design but, just like Bake Off, Masterchef and Sewing Bee, that there are plenty of talented amateurs. There always are in any branch of art or design. It wouldn't the garden design world to acknowledge that.
Well said Helen. Even after 40 years in the trade, I still have a couple of customers who 'know their shrubs/plants' as much(if not better) than I do...............but they wouldn't be able to build a wall, lay a patio or construct a deck!!