Garden designer Joe Swift has been part of the BBC Gardeners’ World team since 1998 and has worked on the Chelsea Flower Show for more than 20 years. But despite his years of experience he still found himself receiving a warning from his co-star
Garden designer Joe Swift has shared an amusing anecdote about Gardeners’ World icon Alan Titchmarsh, who once cautioned him not to tread on his flowerbed while filming in his garden.
Alan Titchmarsh’s garden is undoubtedly a daunting place for any gardener to work. For over four decades, Alan has established himself as the nation’s favourite gardener, hosting Gardeners’ World from his own garden.
So, it must have been with some apprehension that Joe ventured into Alan’s garden to film for the show. Speaking on the BBC Gardeners’ World podcast, he told host Monty Don that Alan insists on visitors leaving no trace behind.
He revealed: “Alan did say if you’d trodden on a flower-bed, you had to flick it over with fork and leave it nice and tidy, or you get a bit of a telling off. So there weren’t footprints or compacted soil and all that sort of thing.”
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Joe is no stranger to working under pressure. He likens the Chelsea Flower Show more to a sporting event than typical gardening.
He elaborated: “If it’s a three minute interview it takes three minutes and then you move on to the next thing.”
“So you have to take in a huge amount of information very quickly. You know, the name of the garden, what the garden is all about, the plants, then the name of the designer…and they let you go.”
Unlike other shows, Joe notes that Gardener’s World has a more relaxed pace and requires repetition. With only one camera, as opposed to the four or five used for the Chelsea Flower Show, he often has to ask the same question multiple times to capture different shots.
“You have to repeat everything 3 or 4 times,” he explains. “So if I’m interviewing you, you’d be so bored of question by the end of it because I have to get close up again. Mid shot. They get why they all these different shots. We’ve got one camera so we have to keep repeating it.”
“Whereas a Chelsea there’s four cameras sometimes five cameras. And so it’s very quick.”
