Frances confessed that the Love Your Garden makeovers don’t always go to plan (Image: PA)
Every week, ‘s Love Your Garden team perform a miraculous garden transformation and, despite a tight schedule, the results are always stunning.
But there’s often drama behind the scenes, confesses presenter Frances Tophill, and more than once, the garden wizards have been faced with disaster.
On the Gardeners’ World Magazine Podcast, she revealed how there’s a surprising amount of waiting around before the actual gardening starts: “The landscaping team are there for 2 or 3 days on their own, taking everything out.
“All the old structures, old concrete things we don’t want.”
The landscaping team have to finish their jobs before the cameras roll, Frances adds, because otherwise, camera crews tend to knock things over.
Alan takes the lead when it comes down to the actual planting, Frances says (Image: ITV)
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After that, Frances explains, the actual show is made, sharing: “Basically what happens is work grinds to a complete halt because they can’t make any noise.… they can’t drill, they can’t hammer, they can’t mix cement in the cement mixer.
“Just nothing can happen. And everyone just stands there and they watch it. And if you do it wrong, you have to do another take or, you know, another five takes!
“So we have one and a half days of this, as the landscapers would just call it – nonsense. With us making a TV programme, doing our sequences, chatting about the plants we are going to do, chatting about the project we’ve got. And then, the second afternoon, the nonsense stops and we have to just get the garden built”
At that point, Frances says, Alan Titchmarsh tends to take the lead, keeping everyone on schedule and making sure all the work is up to scratch. But, as every gardener knows, sometimes the weather is not on your side.
Frances says the team spend a surprising amount of time waiting for the landscapers to finish thei (Image: ITV)
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Frances told how a garden build at Blackpool Zoo was nearly a washout (Image: ITV)
Frances recalled: “On this one occasion in Blackpool Zoo, it got to lunchtime on that second day when the big push starts and the heavens opened. Not only that, but thunder and lightning.
“So nobody was able to stand outside with all their boom poles and their electric kit because it was really dangerous. We all had to go inside and stop the gardening for about two hours, and everyone was just thinking, ‘Well, there’s no way, there’s no way we can finish it’.
“They were looking at extending hotels. Alan was away filming something else the next, so there was nowhere we could go. It was turning into a complete disaster.
“And then suddenly, the rain stopped. The sun came out and it was just all hands on deck. Get the garden finished!”
And, against all the odds, they did get it finished. After the show aired, the zoo’s Assistant Head Keeper, Johnpaul commented: “It was the talk of the zoo. Everyone wondered what the team were going to do with the area of grassland that had a few old picnic benches on it for us keepers to eat lunch at…..but in my wildest dreams I wouldn’t have imagined how amazing it actually is!”