I'm sad to hear that HGTV in the U.S. sucks as badly as it's Canadian counterpart.
Maybe the "G" should stand for Garage. Or just plain Goofy.
I miss the gardening shows too, esp. now that we're beginning our 11 months of winter in Canada.

The G stands for gay.

The H stands for homosexual.

Uh....joepye...who cares. My problem is that they don't have gardening shows anymore. I couldn't care less about the sexuality of the people featured on them. april

I don't really care about the sexuality, either... but the HGTV shows are more about decorating than gardening.

And in my world the word "gay", means silly rather than anything to do with sex...

IMHO, and this certainly is another generalization, I think gardening TV doesn't do well, because people who like to garden aren't generally people who like to watch TV. If a gardener has spare time, they are outside kibbitzing in the garden and probably not watching TV.

Joepye, I think you've hit the nail on the head (something I learned from "This Old House")
I used to be an avid fisherman, and the fishing shows that I wanted to watch were always on when I would be on the water, early mornings on weekends. I suppose they were there as a consolation for those who couldn't get away from the house.
I do wish they'd run at least some gardening shows during our endless winter season here in Canuckland, just to show us what we're missing. Instead, it's "Decorate my Linen Closet" and "Send the Contractor's Kid to University" and "Hot Glue Hoedown" in endless cycles.

I enjoy some of the craft shows: quilting, knitting, and Carol Duvall. I learn a ton from them. I have gotten a lot of maintenance and decorating ideas from Room by Room which is the pleasantest show on tv. I watch it to feel happy.

Design to Sell gave me a bunch of decorating tricks that I have applied to my ugly house but the new decorators are not as good as Lisa.

I dislike the rich guy home decorating shows where people get $20,000 bathroom makeovers and have their yards re-done by hoardes of hispanic landscapers. Gay is the word, at least for one show which I call the rich gay guy's dream pad makeover. Nothing wrong with that except it's not for me. I don't care about buying 500,000 euro flats in Barcelona, or nasty people who get ugly when their overpriced houses won't sell either. Room-by-Room is the closest to reality in my town.

THere isn't much garden in HGTV. Gardening by the Yard is fun to watch but it isn't my type of gardening, since I am going native. I cut my grass to avoid a ticket!

Wouldn't it be great to have a program that took a mundane yard and slowly changed it to a native scape. They could show how to collect seeds, and teach us to identify the plants. Native plant id is a program by itself. Native plants and trees have so many uses. (cotronwood is used for popsicle sticks!)

People could learn how wonderful the natives are. We need a program about creating woodlands, the reason wood-scapes are good. I knwo the suppliers do not want this to cut sales of turf products but there is a whole untapped market if the public is converted to native scaping.

(And I miss 'Help Around the House' which showed you how to hang a door, or use a pry bar. Because of that show I was able to build a new windowsill with zero experience. I fixed a broken window, and built an inside storm too.)

I don't cut the grass so that a thicket will grow.I always wanted to live in the bush,but it took me a years to relize that being mowhappy wasn't really conducive to that goal.Its taken years for it all to grow back.Thank god I only owned a small push mower.Watch Hgtv to learn what not to do.(I doubt theres many gays involved in the program since it's all sooo tacky)

Check out your PBS listings. Often there are gardening shows in their lineup. I quit watching HGTV because I'm so into gardening, and NOT into decorating. I don't have time for indoor stuff.

When their gardening shows USED to be on, I was always outside working in the garden. I tried to remember so I could go inside and watch Gardening by the Yard with Paul James. BTW, he did do a couple shows on native plants. However, I would look at my watch and if it wasn't time for the show yet, I would get intensely involved with what I was doing outside, and forget to go inside to watch it. Darn! Yes, they need to put them on in the evening, or early morning. They used to be on early morning (like about 6 a.m.), which meant I could watch a show or two, and then go work outside.

I've heard the DIY has a couple of gardening shows on - isn't that the oxymoron statement. So, maybe that's why they took the garden shows off HGTV? I don't get DIY, but our PBC channel has two shows - Oklahoma Gardening - which I really like. It varies from native plants to all kinds of plantings, including vegetables, trees, ornamentals, etc. that do well in our climate. Also Victory Garden is on PBS. Sometimes I watch it, but the new yuppie hosts are like "way" out there. Also, a lot of their shows are geared to plants that thrive in a northern garden, and not the heat of Oklahoma, Texas, and the southern states. I miss Roger!

Susan (new to this forum, but not GW)

DIY Network is owned by the same company as hgtv, E.W. Scripps, so is the Food Network, a couple of other obscure networks, many newspapers and TV stations and the Shop at Home/Jewelry channels (TV stations), which is on the block for sale.
Read a recent interview with one of their spokesman and to no one's surprise, gardening programming was not mentioned. True to form, only revenues and prospective new sources of revenue was the main topic of discussion.
As long as they can book sponsors for their repair, remodel, rework and redecorate network, we likely will have to watch for gardening programs elsewhere.
We have 2 PBS station locally, both air the VG (at different times) and one carries a local gardening program, probably similar in content to the one in OK and they repeat it at 12:30PM on Sunday. If you rush home from church or attend early services, you can catch it. I think the regular airing is on Saturday, when I'm busy with other pursuits.
"TV is a vast wasteland" (Newton Minnow, Chair of FCC, May 1961) and especially true, when it comes to gardening programs.
Rb

Yes, I agree with everything you say RB. I am drawn more to Animal Planet these days. There is one show in particular that I like, called "Backyard Habitat", and they really promote the use of native plants in gardening for wildlife. It's on daily at 8:00 a.m. Bad time for people who go to work, but it could be recorded.

I, too, miss a lot of the gardening shows because I'm busy elsewhere during air time. Like I said, I try to remember, but I'm one of those who gets enthralled with whatever project I'm working on, and don't check my watch all the time.

It's a shame, really, that HGTV does not live up to it's call name.

Susan