Your Garden Made Perfect
Ken Burns: Here and There
Rating: 
Step away from the patio doors! According to the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, 87,000 people need hospital treatment every year for injuries sustained while gardening.
Cuts and falls are the most common disasters, but more than 3,000 accidents involve — yikes! — electric hedgetrimmers.
Even the humble flowerpot can be a menace — 5,300 people hurt themselves with pots in 2019. What did they do, get their fingers stuck in the little holes at the bottom?
Presenter Angela Scanlon should have issued a hazard warning at the start of Your Garden Made Perfect (BBC2). But she seemed oblivious to the perils herself. Helping out by planting a shrub in a flowerbed, she tried to dig with a spade in open-toed sandals.
Presenter Angela Scanlon should have issued a hazard warning at the start of Your Garden Made Perfect (BBC2). But she seemed oblivious to the perils herself
For heaven’s sake, be careful, Angela. Don’t you realise that 3,600 people a year are seriously hurt in spade-related mishaps?
Your Garden Made Perfect is a spin-off from Angela’s indoor show, Your Home Made Perfect, and it uses the same gimmick. Instead of studying artists’ impressions before picking a design, the homeowners don virtual-reality goggles and see the visions projected before their eyes.
It’s effective and visually dramatic, though it nearly added a whole new category of accident to the Royal Society’s list. Sociable couple Demi and Laura wanted to transform their L-shaped garden into a space for entertaining friends, but their back door opened onto a raised platform and a sheer drop of 3ft onto the lawn.
Garden landscaper Helen handed them the goggles, and they watched open-mouthed as the computer animation made the patio vanish beneath their feet. Demi almost fell over in surprise.
That wasn’t the only danger. In the garden was a monkey puzzle tree, as high as the house. As Helen pointed out, its lower branches could have your eye out.
Her ambitious plans included split-level lawns and a pagoda big enough to shelter a tennis court. Luckily, Demi and Laura had £33,000 to spend. For that price, I’d expect my own Sissinghurst.
Watching it all take shape, and seeing the final result, was thoroughly satisfying, though the dog looked bereft when that tree was felled. Evidently, it had been good for something.
There seems to be nothing but trees in the gardens of New England. The town of Walpole in New Hampshire, seen from the skies, looks like a forest with hidden gingerbread houses.
Walpole is home to U.S. documentary-maker Ken Burns, a fact he found so fascinating that he repeated it constantly for an hour in a portrait called Here & There (PBS, Freeview). I was looking forward to this short biography.
Walpole is home to U.S. documentary-maker Ken Burns, a fact he found so fascinating that he repeated it constantly for an hour in a portrait called Here & There (PBS, Freeview)
Burns is an extraordinary TV craftsman, a perfectionist who spends years on landmark series about immense American subjects — the U.S. Civil War, prohibition, the Vietnam War and, most recently, country music.
But we learned next to nothing about how those were made: just a glimpse of him in the editing suite, horsing around.
Mostly, we got a paean to his small town, in a cascade of words delivered without any pause for breath. It began with him giving a speech to diners in his local restaurant.
Ken’s no public speaker — he got bogged down trying to describe a funny cartoon, which is always a mistake.
Listening to him felt like being trapped at a party with someone’s uncle: ‘I moved to Walpole in the third week of August, I think it was, in 1979 . . .’ It turns out Ken Burns is a bit of a bore, and I didn’t want to know that.