You might not realize it, but watching Zach Galifianakis poke around in the dirt like he’s just discovered it is exactly what you need right now.
In “This Is a Gardening Show,” a six-part series premiering April 22 on Netflix for Earth Day, the actor and comedian brings a kind of wide-eyed curiosity to gardening that feels at once sincere and ridiculous.
The episodes run an easily digestible 15 to 20 minutes each — just long enough to learn something
new without feeling overwhelmed.
Galifianakis, who says he’s been gardening “on and off” for 25 years, doesn’t come across as polished, but it’s clear he’s not trying to. Instead, he leaves experts in charge of their own domains -- apples, tomatoes, foraging, root vegetables, corn and compost -- taking it all in with the wonder of a kid who just realized food doesn’t come from the grocery store.
Those laid-back experts show him — and us — the ropes, demonstrating, among other things, how to graft an apple tree, and how to add nitrogen-rich ingredients to a compost bin.
Each episode features amusing sit-downs with students from Brooklyn Elementary School in Comox, British Columbia. At first, you might think you’re watching a kids’ show. But then you realize you’re the kid.
Galifianakis interviews them with the same deadpan style he used on celebrities in his satirical talk show “Between Two Ferns,” which ran from 2008-2018. He asks questions like “How many children do you have?” and lets their sometimes off-the-wall responses land however they may (“11,” in this case).
From the kids’ perspective, though, he’s probably the one saying the darndest things. Galifianakis tosses out a knock-knock joke about Benjamin Netanyahu, suggests urinal cakes when asking about their favorite foods, and commits to an unexplained running gag about Ryan Reynolds, all of which go over their heads. It’s quirky and silly.
There’s a callback for fans as he walks through greenery: “It’s nice to be between two ferns again,” he says.
Bloopers are woven into each episode, along with lines like, “If I were to offer a remedy to the human condition, it would be a garden … or acid.”
The humor doesn’t upstage the gardening, though.
“The future is agrarian,” he says, adding that gardening is “good for your heart.”
And so is this show.
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Jessica Damiano writes regular gardening columns for The Associated Press. She publishes the award-winning Weekly Dirt Newsletter. Sign up here for weekly gardening tips and advice.
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For more AP gardening stories, go to https://apnews.com/hub/gardening.
