There’s nothing like a fit, rugged, dirt-under-the-fingernails Australian to vamp up a 31-year-old (albeit consistently popular) public television show about gardening. Landscape designer and author Jamie Durie, the new host of PBS’ The Victory Garden, is just what the doctor ordered. If his chiseled jawbone and Aussie accent don’t inspire you plant your own garden, better throw in the trowel, because nothing ever will.

The really fantastic thing about Durie though, is that he’s not just some hot, landscaping Australian, who says “cheers,” “mate,” and “good on ya.” He’s a hot, landscaping Australian who really knows his stuff, and is invested in teaching green thumbs nationwide how to conserve resources and treat the planet right.

Victory Garden has always covered environmentally friendly gardening techniques like composting and low-waste soil renewal, but producer Hilary Finkel Buxton says that with Durie at the helm, green coverage is going to move closer to center stage. From here on out, the show will cover an environmental topic in almost every episode. Viewers can tune in to learn about rainwater recycling, “city plants” that filter pollution out of the air, and the value of gardening your way to a closer relationship with the earth.

“We really want to teach people how they can be more environmentally friendly, and that being in the garden and living outdoors is one of the best ways to do it,” says Buxton.

The term “victory garden” was coined in the World War II era, when canned food was rationed and growing your own vegetable garden was one of the most effective ways people on the home front could contribute to the war effort. The more carrots and potatoes grown in backyards back home, the less stress put on commercial agriculture in America, and the less the War Department would have to pay to feed American soldiers. That in turn meant more money left over to spend on artillery. Posters with slogans like “Our Food is Fighting,” and “Plant More in ‘44,” began to spring up as part of a campaign to encourage everyone to grow produce right at home. One such poster, under the rallying slogan “Every Garden a Munition Plant,” even invited victory gardeners to write to the National War Garden Commission for free books on gardening, canning, and drying.

Buxton says it was this “back to the earth” theme that inspired Victory Garden’s conception in 1975. Even today, a main objective of the show is to demonstrate how important it is to know where your food comes from; co-host Sissy Biggers and renowned chef/author Michel Nischon will be regular fixtures in the show’s “garden to table” cooking segments. But over the years, Garden has branched out from just vegetables to include pieces on all things horticultural, from flower to cacti gardening. “We want people, no matter what kind of garden they have, to consider it their victory garden” says Buxton.

The show is geared towards green thumbs and novices alike, and Durie will hop around from California to New England, making sure that viewers in hot, cold, arid, and verdant regions all get their fair share of practical and aesthetic gardening advice. (He’ll also disperse universally applicable and somewhat saucy tips on, for example, the many ways garden screens and fences can be used to provide “privacy or intimacy” and “cover up a multitude of sins.”)

“We’re a national program,” says Buxton. “We want to appeal to gardeners in all different types of zones. We’re thrilled to be able to teach good gardening practice. That’s what makes the show different from a lot of other gardening shows out there. We’re not all about an instant makeover.”

The inaugural episode of The Victory Garden, season 32, will air on PBS, September 1.

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Posted on Aug 31, 2007 at 3:00 PM
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