fleurs

I spent about five hours lying on the couch at my Dad's house yesterday, watching Food TV. I discovered that my taste in cooking shows runs distinctly to country style UK shows, like the ones hosted by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall or Nigel Slater. The Edible Garden, presented by Alys Fowler is my new favourite. Alys says: 


I garden because I am hungry. Or more precisely because I have a hunger, one that can only be satisfied through soil and satiated through fresh growth. I garden because I have to, it is how I define who I am, it is one of the ways I make sense of this world and it is how I pay back my place in it.


The show is so twee and so very British; yet my natural instinct to mock was quashed by my intense envy of Alys' lifestyle and talents.  Alys is a very pretty (not that it matters, really) red-headed gardener with a Keira Knightly accent, vintage clothes and lovely big gumboots. Her show is about avoiding supermarkets and growing everything you eat. Or, as Alys puts it:


Making The Edible Garden has been about finding a way to garden that is as gentle as possible upon the world. A garden that will please and feed me and still be a home for all others that visit it. By choosing to grow my vegetables alongside my flowers in a perfectly pleasing muddle that is polyculture, I have found a way that allows the best of all worlds.


The show follows Alys and she tends her garden, makes lavender biscuits, feeds caterpillars to her chickens and drops off herb bouquets to her friends. She goes camping, makes Elderflower champagne and hangs out with an adorable puppy.* Ye Gods, I wish I could live like Alys. I wish I had the time, the smarts, the space, and above all, I wish I had the giant red hair. 


*I have decided to call my future dog Feckless.


The Edible Garden and its matching book.