Ashley Spurgeon is a lifelong TV fan — nay, expert — and with her recurring television and pop-culture column "And Another Thing," she'll tell you what to watch, what to skip, and what's worth thinking more about.
In the midst of Tennessee high summer, gardeners rejoice. Amateurs and experts alike fill buckets and bellies with gorgeous tomatoes, squash, strawberries. I am not a gardener — not yet. Last year, in my East Nashville backyard, I was overenthusiastic, so I overplanted and was quickly overwhelmed — I decided to just let ‘er run wild. This spring, I took (and am continuing to take) Metro Nashville's “Safer at Home" pandemic guidelines seriously, so no quick runs to garden centers, or asking delivery people to risk their lives so I could have some cute li'l herbies to brighten up my back deck and salad plates. Also, it’s become abundantly clear I have no idea what I’m doing.
Enter Volunteer Gardener. The long-running WNPT series is about as perfect as public television gets: local folks talking to other local folks about how to make gardens grow. Can’t say I anticipated 2020 being the year basic soil chemistry became one of my top concerns (have you guys heard about nitrogen?), but here we are. I did grow up among Volunteer Gardeners (Western Highland Rim kinda bitch over here) — my parents have a vegetable garden, all sets of grandparents had small to large veggie patches or flower beds — so I’m not starting from nothing. I know how to can. I know what aphids look like, and I know I hate them.
But I am also a person who writes a column about television shows, and I can’t honestly say I was much help to the gardeners in my family. The first time I was asked to mow the lawn, I intentionally made the pattern so wonky that I was never tasked to “help” again. But watching Volunteer Gardner visit blackberry farms and give tips on how to get the most of your blueberry bushes makes me want to own a blackberry farm, or at the very least, a small blueberry bush I can easily grow in a container, perhaps acquired from a local nursery.
I’ve been watching the past several seasons on the NPT app, but if you’re not local, there are plenty of clips on YouTube. It’s gotten to the point now when I recognize some favorite hosts, and make up backstories about their personalities based on nothing other than how they talk about gardening: There’s frequently vested Southern gent Troy Marden; Julie Berbiglia, of the hardcore Earth Mom vibes; Annette Shrader, whose vibes are more aunt-like (I can’t and won’t explain the difference). There's also eager outdoor youth Matt Kerske, and of course, eager outdoor elder and bio-dynamic farmer Jeff Poppen, who has in his segments phrases like, “After World War I, the weapons industry …”
Still from a recent episode of Volunteer Gardener
So many quotes from Volunteer Gardener trigger a delightful frisson, especially those delivered with self-evident authority: “Everybody has to have dill in the garden.” You know, I never thought of it that way before. “Some people make the mistake of utilizing just one herb in their butter.” That does sound like a pretty big mistake — how can I avoid it? There is also a wide and diverse array of Tennessee accents across the show, from high and nasal to even more high and nasal — you ever heard a slow-talking Tennessean say “legume"? Good shit. I like how everyone calls everyone else “ma’am” or “sir.” Also fun? The names of various plant and flower varieties, any of which could put the most pretentious garage band to shame. “Troll Under the Bridge.” “Dances With Giraffes.” “Radiator Charlie’s Mortgage Lifter.” How do they come up with these names, the gardeners ask amongst themselves? “Well, they have to have fun with it.”
My favorite segments are when they visit the home gardens. I watch partly with admiration, and partly with covetous awe. I love it when tasteful, sprawling mansions make good use of their land — spending unknown thousands on gardens doesn’t trigger my class rage the same way spending that money on ... basically anything else would. Competing with, and often outclassing the stately piles, are the the typical Tennessee small-town ranch houses owned by nature-lovers, who have put in decades of work to create quarter-acre oases across the state. Most of all, I love the “knowledge is power” ethos in every segment. “It’s our job as humans to figure out how to manage this,” says a farmer of the earth.
Volunteer Gardner also taught me that, apparently, I have a “garden philosophy.” Everyone does! You may not know it until you start to garden, though. Other things Volunteer Gardener is teaching me, I am now sharing with you: In a teaspoon of healthy soil, there are a billion microbes. You easily can grow edible mushrooms out of a hay bale. If you want to plant lavender, try the “Phenomenal” variety. Don’t deadhead your echinacea. “Determinate” tomatoes bear at all once and stop, “indeterminate” tomatoes bear all summer. And most importantly, for myself, if I never see another hydrangea again, that’s totally fine with me.
