Gardening Australia visited us

A couple of days back, the film crew from that venerable Australian TV institution, Gardening Australia came by to Ligaya Garden to film for segment.

After dabbling in a few videos for our Youtube and Instagram accounts, I thought I had the filming thing pretty down pat. Wrong! The filming went from 8 am until about 4 pm and was tiring. Of course, we all had lots of fun and Sophie Thompson, who is presenting the segment was a delight. Actually, the whole crew were great to work with!

We’d brushed shoulders with Sophie at several events, namely the Joe’s Connected Gardens Open Garden Days, but had never had the time for a decent chat, she was always swamped with fans with questions. The filming day certainly changed that!

I’ll admit to a deep dark secret here…are you ready? We aren’t regular viewers of Gardening Australia! Shocking news, I know, but it’s true! We just don’t get much time for consumer TV unless its Malcolm’s Korean horror shows or Jelina’s Period Chinese romances.

Athena was remarkably well behaved, leaving only two messages on the driveway and allowing herself to be wrangled by Neil, the producer. She didn’t jump on folks often and was so well behaved at lunch time that we thought the crew had smuggled in a different dog.

In true Filipino style, Jelina and Marlon prepared and cooked a lunch based on produce from our garden and Filipino staples like spring rolls. We had a delicious soy sauce from our new friend John the Mould Farmer who had come to visit recently with lots of drool inducing samples and some cultures for us to try. The Soy sauce is outstanding in our opinion. Mushrooms were the key ingredient in the lunch and we had plenty of those thanks to our new friendship with Danny of Barossa Gourmet Mushrooms. We now have them in the fridge, in the kitchen and in the garden! Oh yeah…in our bellies too!

I’m not sure what will appear in the final segment or when it will air but the crew covered the general garden design, Jelina’s use of tropical and sub tropical plants, some cooking, our composting methods and the aquaponics. They were particularly interested in how Jelina and I met. I think all of that will be s-q-u-e-e-z-e-d into about minutes If I remember rightly.

Filming consists of car noises, kids, motorbikes driving past, planes overhead and the occasional noisy bird, all interspersed with moments of lucid dialogue. Neil the producer didn’t wave around the traditional clapper board, nor, sadly, did he yell ‘CUT’ every few seconds (I was looking forward to that) but he guided us through long shots, close ups, wide shots, repeats and repeats of dialogues.

Being ‘miked up’ was kind of exciting and the most exciting part of that was, ironically, trying to keep quiet while the sound guy did ‘atmospheric’ bits with the ambient neighbourhood noise. One of the joys of living in Ligaya Garden is that neighbourhood noise. We can never forget that we are in suburbia, on a local thoroughfare and part of a wider community of good folks.

Would we do it again? You betcha!

We’ll let you know when we find out when the segment will air. Hopefully it won’t be too long!