Rufus, canine star of German television
My gardens (my old garden in London and the new one in the Cotswolds) have been featured on two television programmes, and I'm always intrigued by what the director wants to show, and what they don't show. Unfortunately, the BBC Gardeners' World episode is no longer available, but it featured garden designer and television presenter Joe Swift, talking about exotic, or sub-tropical gardens. Filming was great fun, partly because Joe (seen here in my London garden with the BBC film crew) is very friendly and funny. The latest programme, MDR Garten, which is like a German version of the BBC's Gardeners' World, hardly showed anything of my garden in the Cotswolds, precisely because they had used long lingering shots of the Oxford gardens, and wanted something a bit more hands-on and active by the time they came to me. So there are lots of shots of me supposedly planting and/or weeding, or pottering around with the dog. You can't actually hear much of what I