Did any one see the edition this Friday? I was looking forward to the part where Sarah Raven demonstrated Christmas decorations made from plant material.I can't tell you how upset I was to see that she took a range of beautiful plants and at least half of them she sprayed with silver paint!Even the miniature pumpkins got the paint treatment. Surely the beauty of the decorations should be the wonderful array of natural colours. Sorry for having a moan,but I get really cross when people in general try to force nature to be or do something it isn't intended to ! We should know by now that nature cannot be tamed.

Linda

I was sitting in the kitchen on Friday night trying to sort out my Christmas cards. The TV was playing up so Chris put it onto Gardener's world for me, thinking it would keep me happy and calm.

I, too, was looking forward to seeing what Sarah Raven was going to make given all the plugs and hype it was given during the programme. When it came it was something and nothing, with more of the latter rather than the former. I was also shocked by the amount of silver paint she used, not only because she was destroying the natural colours of the plants she used, but also because of the lung damage caused by the spray. I could see her leaning back and trying not to breath in the fumes when she started to spray, which didn't seem terribly healthy. It really looked as if she should have warn a mask.

There was no concept of how long the entire table decoration would take to make - she muttered something about an hour to wire everything together which was probably a gross underestimate (especially if I were attempting it!). The camera work was also dreadful, hardly showing any views of things you needed to see for any length of time and too many closeups of pretty berries.

I also wondered about the practicalities of what she showed. Not many of us have a long table which can be set up for the entirety of Christmas and just left with a beautiful decoration in the middle for several days. I can seat 10 people comfortably and 15 at a pinch for one meal, but we have to clear away in between as the table is used all the time. Granted I don't have small fingers into everything any more, but my adult children aren't any better at not fiddling with things! Such a decoration wouldn't survive very long!

So, all in all, I was not impressed by Sarah Raven and I'm not really happy with the new happy clappy bite sized segments and recaps of the new Gardener's World either.

Maybe I should borrow Chris' Bah humbug hat!

Sarah