Look after gardens and they look after you: Cultivating wellbeing in a pandemic through a popular TV gardening programme

Abstract

Over the past few years there has been intense policy interest in the idea that nature-related activities such as gardening are good for wellbeing. Several studies have indeed found links between such activities and self-reported wellbeing. However, there are also sympathetic critiques of the limited conceptions of what kinds of activities are considered beneficial. Therefore, more attention should be paid to the social and cultural roots of the assumption that nature is good for us rather than treating connection to nature as an innate need. This article contributes to this task by showing how commonly held ideas about gardening and wellbeing were reproduced in the long-running and popular UK TV gardening programme Gardeners’ World ( GW) during 2020. As an exemplar of lifestyle programming, GW provides both information and entertainment and appeals to viewers to try out the techniques they observe on screen in their own gardens. Within the programme there is an emphasis on gardens as secluded havens from the outside world and on the attractive characteristics of individual plants. However, in many cases it is the work involved and the challenge that interests gardeners, as much as the qualities of the plants. Gardeners design a space and use it to express their identity. But the results of their actions are not guaranteed. Gardening can therefore be understood through a political ecology lens as a process whereby the social and nature constitute each other.