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The famous line is that one should never work with animals or children. Seems like good advice, so what made Costa Georgiadis recklessly ignore it on the new series Gardening Australia Junior? As tends to be the case with the hirsute gardening guru, he’s got a lot to say on the matter.
“I ignore that advice on a daily basis,” he twinkles, “because I find that the most inspiring thing in my life is to work with children: their outlook, their positivity, their creativity. They look at the world differently, they push us to take things from new angles. So for that reason, the opportunity to do this show, where we put the kids upfront and in a leadership position where they’re being pro-active and not just standing there as extras – for me that’s my happy place.”
Molly Moriarty is one of the presenters of the spin-off show, Gardening Australia Junior.Credit: Steven Siewert
In a way it’s surprising this show took so long to come into being. Gardening Australia is all about teaching people the marvels of nature – specifically those bits of nature to be found in our own backyards – and if you’re going to teach people, best to get ’em young. So this show, where the GA team makes its pitch to the primary school set to get to grips with various aspects of making things grow, is an obvious angle. And even more obviously, if you’re going to reach the kids, you need some kids on board, which is where GA Junior’s gaggle of pint-sized gardeners come in. With their grown-up co-stars acting as guides, the junior gardeners are the engine of the show, radiating youthful exuberance and bringing that quality that is to be so admired in the youth: an eagerness to get one’s hands dirty. For junior gardener Molly Moriarty, that’s the best part of gardening. “Being outside digging up dirt and investigating what’s in the ground is really fun.”
The junior gardeners came to the show with various levels of screen experience, but Molly brought bona fide star power to the set: having appeared in productions from Cowboy Bebop to Heartbreak High to Thor: Love and Thunder, there was no chance of her getting overawed by the camera. But like all her co-stars on GA Junior, Molly’s gardening credentials are also impeccable – her passion for greenery began under the stress of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I’ve been into gardening since the first COVID lockdown – my school had sent out care packages to all the students and inside was a packet of sunflower seeds. So I planted my very first plant and watched it grow, and from then on, I’ve loved getting out and taking care of all our plants.”
Many adults in 2023 would probably be sceptical of the idea that your average Australian child would be amenable to taking an interest in gardening – or of going outside at all, given the joys to be found on various screens. But Costa believes the ability of children today to plug in to all the information available online actually helps in pushing them to take an interest in nature.
Reggie Swao, Costa Giorgiadis and Molly Moriarty in Gardening Australia Junior.Credit: ABC
“Children are incredible sponges,” he enthuses, “and they’re having so much information thrown at them these days, across multiple platforms and devices. It’s easy to generalise and say, get off your phone and your computer and get into the real world. But the thing is, as a result of all that information they’re very much conscious of the world around them, and they’re conscious of the challenges, particularly around the environment.” And though Gardening Australia Junior may be just a little show where kids make compost or build a butterfly cafe (yes, butterflies have cafes – who knew?), he sees children’s love of gardening as evidence of their desire to do something to make the world around them better.
“(When kids are) constantly bombarded with information that the planet is in trouble – they’re taking it in, they see this information – when you sit them down and talk to them, they’re aware of the state of the world, and they want to do something. That’s what I love: that practical side of saying, I’m not going to get in a tailspin about it, let’s do something. And they do, they love learning about native bees and native insects and how they fit into the picture and what pollination’s about. Creating challenges around nature, they are challenged because they see the state of the world, but they also want to do something. The school strike, and all of that kind of activism: that’s because they care, and they’re scared. They are alarmed about the future, and that’s not a negative, it’s just a reality, and gardening is kind of a way of connecting to the environment.”
In a way it’s surprising this show took so long to come into being.
If kids are connected to the environment, it’s clear that Costa is connected to the kids. All of the Gardening Australia team take part in the junior version, but as on the grown-up edition, Costa tends to draw the eye more than most. Capering about like a friendly green-thumbed Rasputin, his energy makes him seem a big kid himself – gigantic beard notwithstanding. “Costa was very funny, and full of energy,” Molly says, inspired as all are who come into contact with the great man. “I loved watching him talk a million miles an hour.”
Maybe the greatest takeaway from Gardening Australia Junior – at least from the perspective of an old TV reviewer who, let’s face it, is not exactly the target demographic – is the chance to see young people soaking up knowledge, gaining new information about the world, and – like the plants they’re working with – growing. Molly speaks excitedly about what she learned on the show – “I’ve learned that you can grow plants in a jar!” – and Costa is just as excited about what he witnessed in his co-stars. “Probably what came out of the series is that by the end of their involvement, they were seeing things differently, and excited about seeing nature. They learnt that nature isn’t this thing that’s out there – it’s actually them. It was nice to see those little lightbulbs come on, when they were exploring a story and actually connecting to the threads behind it, and how those threads connected to the big picture. They gained a new capacity to express themselves.”
Gardening Australia Junior premieres on ABC TV Plus, Friday, 7.05pm.
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