The Greenmount Garden - Produced by Tern Television- Sneaky Peak...

Sneaky Peak...

The bulk of the filming of the programme takes place at our home garden in Antrim. This happens every Tuesday, throughout the series. The team meets on site at 8.30am for a production meeting to talk camera angles and run through the script for the day. The day runs through until about 6pm, come rain or shine.

We use 2 cameras and 2 cameramen - and yes they are all men. The 2 are used together so that 1 camera concentrates on the presenter and the other on the action and to get in really close. Each piece is recorded to time so that, Claire for example, knows that she has 2mins to talk about pricking out and potting on. In this way we record a large amount of material in a relatively short amount of time.

We have one soundman who has to battle sound wise with the elements, John Cushnie, and most especially in our location, with the noise of passing aircraft as we are close to Belfast International Airport.

Most days we use what we fondly call our 'boys toys'. A steadicam allows us to follow action and be completely mobile - even if our cameraman, Martin, does look like Robocop while doing it.

We also use a jib to give us fancy shots and a bit of height when needed.

The crew is complemented by several production staff. The director, who calls the shots (and gets thrown in the pond), the production manager who logs every shot, every movement, to make the editing job as straightforward as possible, and a researcher carefully taking notes of what's been said for that week's factsheet.

It ends up being a team of about 14 who descend on the garden every week, treading carefully through the garden in fear of incurring the wrath of our gardeners.

The rest of the programme is filmed at locations the length and breadth of Ireland.

The weather is added at the last minute to keep it as up to date as possible.

The editing takes place in BBC Northern Ireland and each programme takes 3 days to put together.