Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
have difficulty being creative, whereas if you stick a plant in and it goes there's a great
deal of satisfaction in it.
Anne and Phoebe recognised that while creativity held therapeutic value and could
be used as a coping mechanism for the travails of everyday life, ordinary people
need some kind of reassurance for its release. Lifestyle programming could help to
get people started:
Anne
: Most people, if they had a completely blank canvas it would be like a clean sheet of
paper, they wouldn't know where to start, they'd be frightened. So in a way them talking
about, you know, just draw your garden and measure around it, just outlining ways of
doing, it is sort of increasing their confidence.
Phoebe
: I think that they help people to see what's possible as far as their gardens go.
And even those who bemoaned the 'gimmicky' feel of the lifestyle makeover
programme tended to concede that the aims of the lifestyle garden media were
positively laudable. Despite James' reservations, for example, he told me that garden
lifestyle programmes were serving to democratise gardening as an activity: 'I like
some of the developments they're making,' he said, 'They're opening up avenues
for anybody.'
Moreover, the wider 'social good' of garden lifestyle was linked, for some of
my respondents, to the idea of urging people to keep their gardens from falling into
dilapidation. In chapter 2 and 6, I argue that working-class gardeners have historically
been urged, either by the council estate regulatory handbook or through an invidious
self-regulation, to monitor their gardens in a bid to maintain respectability. For
some of the working-class gardeners I spoke to, the garden lifestyle media served
a function in continuing the project of local councils by urging other working-class
people to take 'responsibility' for the space outside their homes.
Keith
: These programmes help get people interested in gardening again basically.
Because I think people will ignore gardening for as long as they can, but if they have a
responsibility to look after something then they tend to go and look after it ... and then
they start looking at garden centres. I suppose at end at t'day, I just want 'em to realise
what they've got.
For others, the media was already playing a central role in promoting gardening
as citizenship into the working-class societal enclaves that need it most. Stephanie
and John believed that garden lifestyle television made some gardeners sufficiently
self-conscious to keep their gardens tidy. 'If it wasn't for telly,' Stephanie told me,
'people wouldn't do owt with their gardens.' Her husband John backed her up -
demonstrating even less trust in his working-class counterparts:
John
: Yeah telly's doing some folk good 'cos whereas some might 'ave a shit 'ole for a
garden, they've actually got some flowers and they're taking a bit more pride in it.
In these ways, my data demonstrates that some of my respondents recognised that
lifestyle programming was socially beneficial for the nation, for generating creativity
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