A very different type of gardening series has just launched on Netflix narrated by the irreverent and slightly shambolic comedian Zach Galifianakis. Besides its unlikely horticultural host, This Is a Gardening Show has another surprise – it is shot on Vancouver Island and the surrounding Gulf Islands.
It turns out that Galifianakis, famous for The Hangover movies and his awkwardly funny Between Two Ferns talk show, is actually a local living on nearby Denman Island, with his Canadian wife Quinn Lundberg and their two children. “I’ve been coming to the Vancouver Island area for 30 years, so I was happy to do it in this area, which has a tradition of fantastic gardeners,” he told the CBC.
Galifianakis has been a passionate gardener ever since he was 19 and, while riding a Vespa in Greece, came across an elderly man in his garden and was struck by how happy he looked. He asked to take the man’s picture, which he still has, and decided that if he was lucky enough to get that old, he wanted to be spending his time in a garden.
Galifianakis, now 56, has realized his dream, growing fruits and vegetables at his home in B.C. and harbouring aspirations to be a beekeeper. He has a passion for pumpkins telling The New York Times, “I love pumpkins because I love the reward of seeing how big they get. You can feed pumpkins to your dog; you can smash pumpkins; you can do anything. Also pumpkins are pretty hardy, so they kind of care for themselves. My ultimate goal is to grow everything you find in a Greek salad.”
In the show, he softens, but doesn’t entirely shed, his sardonic humour. Each episode starts with him chatting to children from Brooklyn Elementary School in Comox, lobbing the odd dead-pan question, “How many children do you have?” he asks a seven-year-old. The answer? “11!”!
Galifianakis blends his humour with education, interviewing local farmers and gardeners for their expertise, admitting that the show is partly selfish, as he wants to learn more for his own farm and garden, and partly educational, stating at the beginning of the series:“For human beings and the world itself the only future is agrarian.”
The combination of the serene scenery of B.C., amused and bemused locals, and Galifianakis’s restless energy in these short episodes are a delightful counterpoint to the heavy news cycle and pumped-up reality-TV culture we are often bombarded by. Galifianakis is at his happiest in the dirt, saying, “For me, it’s about the small miracles that are in the garden and the pleasure you get from producing a carrot out of basically nothing. It’s fascinating. To take a small seed and then it becomes a 25-pound pumpkin, there’s a lot of reward in that.”
