This Is The Perfect Season For Ageless Gardens

Here I am locked in winter with the snowploughs outside and the howling wind  shaking the windows.
I don't mind at all --the power has even been off for several frigid hours.
When everything clicked back on I clicked my DVD to play the three first episodes of the new documentary series Ageless Gardens and this one is a real winner.
You can catch the premiere on Vision TV Monday night at 9.m.
The press release tells us "It is commonly known that gardening is a good for us."
So is the act of watching gardening TV series.
I've virtually given up on seeing anything relating to gardening on the badly titled HGTV.
So I'm turning to Ancient Gardens directed by veteran Ian Toews for Vision TV (or is it Zoomer TV, I'm not certain).
I watched the first three episodes in one go and was ready for more.
In fact, I,think I'll re-watch all three during the next snow storm predicted any day from now.
The three I saw all have imaginative titles: Healing Plants, Therapeutic Gardens, The Wild Garden.
I'm on the cusp of Baby Boomdom and now contemplating the serenities of old agedom.
And my current Toronto garden is a mess although one bush imported with my grandparents from Yorkshire in 1912 still blooms steadily every year.
Visually, this is the most gorgeous series of the new TV season. But it's more than pretty pictures but a rapture about how gardening offers therapeutic factors in health and well being as we age.
In the first half hour gardening doyenne Marjorie Harris shows how important gardening is to one's mental fitness --she shows how she lives off her huge garden simply by looking out her house's gigantic picture window.
We visit with an indigenous medicine woman who knows how nature's herbs can be harvested to help with various ailments.
There's also a visit with a sculptor who has been at the gardening business for 70 years.
And I wish I'd taken down the ingredients for a nature baked cookie guaranteed to solve insomnia.
I found the second episode (premiering Feb. 19) to be even more important.
Therapeutic Gardens takes us to B.C. hospitals where aged patients are encouraged to keep small gardens in and around where they live.
The hospital garden helps them relax and think of the act of producing new plants rather than worrying about their declining energy levels.
The 93-year old retired nurse who uses her garden to combat stress -this is a wonderful portrait.
But I think I liked Episode 3 The Wild Garden best of all.
We follow a restaurant chef and friend who forage for wild mushrooms and find a staggering number of different varieties.
Sisters-in-law look for special plants for the herbal teas they can make.
There's even a champion gardener who rescues wild plants needed to sustain wildlife.
Of course I immediately wanted to toddle off to my back yard and start gardening but the snow drifts art my door just wouldn't go away.
I felt better just watching these three episodes. Think how I'd feel if actually gardening at bit.
Veteran Ian Toews produced  and directed and shot it with his usual care- -he's made a model of a series that moves briskly and is packed with information.
AGELESS GARDENS PREMIERES ON VISION TV MONDAY FEBRUARY 12 AT 9 P.M.
MY RATING: ***1/2.




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No Stone Unturned: A Brilliant Documentary

In the brilliant new documentary No Stone Unturned ace director Alex Gibney tells us he stumbled into this true story while making another film about the World Cup soccer matches in 1994.
The details are precise: on June 18, 1994, in a very small pub in Northern Ireland a group of men were watching the match on the telly when two men came in the front door and shot to death six innocent people.
What Carney has done is not only recreate that event with all its brutality but ruminate on the massacre and why it remains unsolved to this day although the British government believes it knows the identities of the killers.
You can catch this four star production in its North American premiere on TVONTARIO Saturday night at 9.
I couldn't stop watching because Gibney is telling a true story and unraveling layers and layers of concealment.
The killings happened more than 24 years ago but as eye witnesses relate each and every incident the incident seems as vivid as yesterday.
The six victims of the Loughinisland massacre were ordinary folk and simply enjoying a night out when the masked killers sprayed the pub from a Czech-made automatic weapon.
We get what are victim statements from the relatives who calmly relate the state of the country --a civil war was ongoing between militant Catholics and Protestants.
And police had a clear idea who were the killers almost from the outset.
But evidence was either deliberately mislaid or destroyed and no one has ever been charged.
Gibney sets the scene brilliantly giving us a detailed dissection of the state of race relations between the two warring factions.
The Troubles had been bubbling forth for decades and over 3,000 people had been killed. The World Cup might have been a unifying moment after so much bloodshed.
In a strange way Gibney's film is beautiful: the stark images of the green countryside are intersperced with footage of the riots and the random killings.
We see even young children play acting with their toy machine guns and bloody faced spectators being led away by police after senseless bombings.
Gibney sets the scene that fateful night --June 128 1994 as Ireland played Italy at the World Cup and he takes us inside the Heights Bar, a very obscure pub in this County Down village as patrons watched the game live from New Jersey.
Gibney brilliantly mixes archival footage with remembrances of survivors and relatives of the slain pub members --the oldest was a darling old man of 87.
Many have been emotionally scarred for life. But just as shocking is the investigative work showing the British government pretty soon knew the identities of the killers but never acted because of polkitical considerations.
Gbney's reasons for this stonewalling can't be revealed here --you'll understand by watching this densely textured profile of a village that has never quite been the same decades after that fateful night.
NO STONE UNTURNED HAS ITS NORTH AMERICAN TV PREMIERE SATURDAY FEBUARY 10 ON TVO AT 9 P.M.
MY RATING: ****.