大象传媒 Scotland - 大象传媒 Scotland - Breaking new ground: how Carole Baxter became the UK鈥檚 first female gardening presenter on The Beechgrove Garden

Breaking new ground: how Carole Baxter became the UK鈥檚 first female gardening presenter on The Beechgrove Garden

16 August 2018

Carole Baxter had always been interested in gardening.

As a child, she earned pocket money for picking out stones from her parents’ garden.

Later, she studied geography and amenity horticulture while building up her practical experience around Aberdeen.

But when the advert for a behind-the-scenes gardener on a television programme came along, young Carole didn’t even own a TV.

She joined The Beechgrove Garden anyway, first as an assistant, before then working her way up to head gardener. In 1986, she took the plunge and made her debut on screen.

In 1986, Carole Baxter became the first woman to co-present a gardening programme in the UK

The world was a changing place and the boys didn't keep dominating the garden for long!

Carole was initially hesitant about moving into presenting: “You’ve got to be joking; I’m a female!”

Carole and Jim (a long time ago)

And her gender was certainly the newspapers’ focus at the time of her promotion: ‘Garden job goes to a woman’ exclaimed one headline.

Co-presenter Jim McColl’s analysis, however, was more thoughtful.

“It came at a time, I think, when more and more of the gardening in the domestic scene was being done by the lady of the house.”

Not even her English roots have held Carole back.

“For a girl who came from Kent,” says co-presenter George Anderson, “she fit in remarkably well: to Aberdeen; to the Doric; and everything else. If you listen carefully, she sometimes lapses into it and it’s just wonderful.”

(beechgrove.co.uk)
Gardening tips

Carole鈥檚 contributions to 大象传媒 Radio Scotland鈥檚 MacAulay and Co
Problem Corner

Carole tackles an area round the back of an old ice house (from 2011)

Come rain or shine – and everything in between – The Beechgrove Garden has been a perennial fixture on the mantlepiece of Scottish life since 1978.

It began life humbly, out the back of 大象传媒 Aberdeen. The garden was a small, difficult-to-manage patch of land, which reflected the scenario facing many first-time gardeners in the 1970s as they moved out of multi-storey tenements and flats.

The down-to-earth knowledge and banter of Beechgrove’s first presenters, and George Barron, helped make the programme a success.

Jim and George’s use of their own dialects particularly endeared them to a huge Scottish audience, attracting one million viewers in those early days.

The classic Scottish comedy sketch show Scotch and Wry parodied the iconic gardening programme in 1983.

George reflected on the sketch: “What other gardening programme has been parodied? Mimickry is the sincerest form of flattery. That was one of the magic moments.”