Garden Rant: HGTV

I can't take it anymore. I swear if HGTV takes one more old garden and rips out everything to replace it with products from their sponsors, I will boycott every single one of their sponsors. That is, I would, if I didn't already, which I do.

I just saw the show where they go to a lovely midcentury Eichler home fronted by a band of old junipers. I don't know if the junipers were original but they could have been. It's what Garrett Eckbo would've put in. In any case, they were old, mature specimens, flowing along and together in a way that actually made me think of planting some, even though I hate junipers. They certainly needed some tending and some pruning, a little water and fertilizer might have helped too. But they didn't deserve to be murdered.

But murdered they were, chopped down, ripped out and dug up until every last vestige was gone; replaced by cheap fountain grass that will grow like a weed until the owners long for the slow-growing mature landscape they lost to the vandals of HGTV. And then the fountain grass will seed and spread obliterating native vegetation wherever it can.

Of course that was a good show. It was just junipers after all. Often they choose to chop, cut and dig out mature trees. And sometimes they just pave the whole thing and put out a few pots of annuals.

Wait until they discover the joys of plastic plants like the L.A. Times did a few weeks ago in their gardening section.