Charlie Dimmock - Garden Rescue - your opinions

[SarfEast1cated]

I watched 3 in rapid succession today and wanted to see if any of you have seen it and what your thoughts were...
Mine are:

1. the Rich brothers are obsessed with box hedges and big trees
2. out of 3 gardens two had rills - crikey they looked dull - dead water. Throw in some water plants fgs
3. I thought i detected some tetchiness between Charlie and the boy What do you think? the planting is ok, but the boys designs are very similar each week...

I have just caught the back end of 2 designs, but I was really surprised at the half job they appeared to do, the tatty fence wasn't painted or mended so was all different colours, even the shed they made out of the old one also appeared to be half painted, the very corner looked like they'd missed it.

The second one it had clearly been raining and the grass was battered - they were interviewing the couple who thought it was 'fantastic' and yet it clearly wasn't, it was a wet mud mess. They then proceeded to show the garden on a sunny day once the grass had recovered. I get that it looks better in the sun but surely the key to a great garden is looking nice in all weather, even rain!

I have watched several episodes, they vary a lot in quality and interest.. Some are very similar. The continuity is not very good, some shots obviously taken on different days or put in the final edit in the wrong order. Sometimes they are planting tender plants in early spring/ winter when they will obviously not survive.
CD seems to be falsely jolly, is she hiding her annoyance with the brothers!
But it is daytime TV ( watched later on I player! ) so I expect cheaply made.

I'm about ten episodes in and I'm liking Charlie's designs the boys not so much. Dh has been hankering after a rill, we have a great spot for one but after watching this it's off the wish list. Just watched one where they made a potting area/kids play out of an old sink and that's now top of the project list. I've learnt that we need some height. Some of the gardens are transformed by the pergola.

I agree about CD being overly nice to the lads. I have visions of her tearing her hair out when she gets home. Talking of hair, I wished she'd tie it back, it seems to be in the way all the time, she brushes it out of the way with her muddy hands.

I agree about the hair buttered maybe we could club together and knit her a hair elastic!

I'm not sure about pergolas, do you just wait for the plants to grow over it before it becomes useful as a screen?

I lived in a house once with a grape vine canopy - it was awful to sit under because of the wasps it attracted...

Love this programme for ideas. As a more traditionalist I was surprised to often prefer the Rich designs. Charlie seems increasingly obsessed with water features (wasn't that her role in the AT series) and homes in on one request rather too literally. I hope they do some revisits to see what actually survives longer term and how they homeowners change it. Any of them would be most welcome to makeover our garden , anytime! Are they taking applications ?!

We applied to go on this programme. You had to send in pics of all areas of your garden and pics of all those who live in the house, plus a bit of info about yourselves and your budget. All those shortlisted had to then go up for screen shots.
Our garden was an absolute tip following 18 months of building work and the pics I sent I suppose showed that. Surprise, surprise we didn't make the short list.
Having seen the show I'm glad really. We'd have had to borrow money for the make over and I haven't been over impressed with what I've seen. We've cracked on and sort of sorted it ourselves, it was only my lack of knowledge and confidence which prompted me to apply in the 1st place.

Just watched one with an Italian Pizza oven, garden looked amazing but cost over £6,000

I've been watching and like charlies designs much better. they look much more like gardens that will stay nicer for longer.
wrt muddy lawn, what do you expect after a couple of very muddy days?

I've just seen the Faversham one which was good, sans rill, sans box - just the way I like it! I actually don't see why they can't take their time a bit more rather than trying to cram it all into one day - or is that meant to keep it within budget perhaps.

I wonder if that willow screen would become invasive?

I liked the way they wove the wisteria through the willow(?)

I watched one episode and thought the brothers were trying hard to get on with her- dd remarked on it-

It is such a shame that the BBC and ITV have such different budgets and staffing for their gardening makeover programmes. Comparing the Love your Garden budget and labour with the bbc ones (big dreams, dimmock, instant gardener) makes me feel bad because of the inequality and I like to think of gardening as an equaliser but perhaps thats me being naiive.

I prefer it to Love Your Garden because the budgets are realistic - and they are actually spending real peoples' money on their gardens - so it gives you a much better idea of what can be done. I know LYG is about helping people who have suffered tragedies etc and the gardens look amazing, but every little feature is often so spendy it's completely out of most peoples' leagues. They would spend more on one water feature/pergola than Garden Rescue would have for the whole garden. Garden Rescue will put affordable, younger trees in, LYG will spend huge sums on mature specimens. All our gardens would be amazing if we had £50k+ to spend on it!

I think that the program tries to make more out of any competitiveness between the brothers and Charlie than there actually is, after all they're all professionals, this is their job. The faux annoyance etc is just a lame attempt at 'entertainment'.

I also actually appreciated seeing the muddy immediate aftermath in that one that someone mentioned - when you don't have funds to just whack new turf down then existing grass will look pretty battered immediately after all that! Fair enough to show it a week later when it's dried out.

I bet there will be a 'revisited' series.

I've really liked watching this, and, surprisingly, so has DH.

It has spurred us on to actually hire a landscape designer (only for a little bit of help at the design stage, not the whole hog) to try and find the best layout for our garden, rather than go for the classic washing machine design, which would be standard for a garden the size of ours.
Hated most of Charlie's designs and liked most of the brothers' ones...
Hated the use of cheap materials alongside more premium ones sometimes (they need to be more consistent) and the lack of tidying of the fences in general...
All in all, it gave us lots of ideas and things to consider.
Charlie's fake annoyance at 'the little boys' is a tad overplayed... And she's always complaining about the amount of work to do! Come on lady...

They're already asking for new people to volunteer their gardens: www.bbc.co.uk/showsandtours/takepart/garden_rescue
I guess it's a pretty good deal as you don't pay for the design fee nor the labour!

Oh I wish we had the money aside, would love them to come here!

Thought I'd resurrect this thread , honestly I wouldn't let the Rich brothers near my garden they are absolutely awful - every single time it's meadow turf and bonded gravel instead of proper slabs / deck . The woman today had given them £6k and frankly it looked like they'd spent about 1-2k max .

I must admit that their designs this season aren't really keeping up with those of season 1. My theory is that the Rich brothers consistently went over budget on season 1, but had to reign themselves in this season. Charlie's designs almost never hit home to me.

I was tempted to apply at some point, if they were to do season 3, but this has now thoroughly lost its appeal. Still quite funny to watch though!

Just to lower the tone completely - I had the FILTHIEST dream about the blasted Rich brothers the other night.... they weren't complaining about the amount of work they had to do then.... 😉

Did they gravel the bedroom when you'd finished with them ?

Haha no flora - my budget was insufficient, but they sorted my bush RIGHT out 🙈

😬

The Rich brothers seem to be living on the fact they got a Chelsea gold and this shows in their designs which always seem to be composed of horribly expensive trees and ludicrous features such as specially made steel edging . And why do they insist on putting nice little trees near to the house , trees which are going to get really big and drop leaves everywhere and drip on people sitting on the patio .I especially hated the tree ferns one where they were planted right outside the bloody door so they blocked all the light and were in full sun ,totally wrong for tree ferns (and I LOVE tree ferns) Much prefer Charlie's more realistic designs and practical skills ,a complete turnaround for me as I couldn't stand her when she was on Ground Force . Overall though I much prefer the programme to Love Your Garden which seems to have a budget of around £50000 per episode and so is not remotely near most peoples garden budget .

But where are they supposed to put things like the washing line!

Have been watching Garden Rescue with my husband who is a landscaper and builder. There seems to be lots of shoddy work and poor quality materials used -I.e really thin timber for raised beds that's not been staggered so joins all lined up which looks so amateur. It just all seems rushed and like they have used the cheapest materials where poss. Bit like changing rooms used to be! (If anyone remembers that!)