ABSTRACT
Garden lifestyle television, with its formal ability to hook into the rhythms, practices and sites of everyday life, invites the viewer to realize their aesthetic garden dreams via retail consumption. It does so using strategies of ‘ordinari-ization’: experts have been levelled down, lifestyle programmes include a diverse range of ordinary people and lifestyle projects are presented in accessible and achievable ways.1 Such strategies must be set within the more popular tone of public service broadcasting.2 Yet the question of how lifestyle is consumed by viewers has barely been addressed. How do ordinary viewers interact with and consume lifestyle programmes such as Ground Force3 or Homefront: Inside Out?4 Drawing on an ethnographic study conducted in a small semi-industrial town in the North of England,5 this chapter explores the relationship between lifestyle television, garden retailing and gardeners.
