Halfway through the show the housemates used the dried grass for smoking material!
bringing in the big rolls. These were soon laid out and by late afternoon we started cutting in the edges. By 7.00pm the lawn was down and it looked a treat. There were a lot of builders, carpenters, painters, carpet fitters and production team working around each other all day; a typical building site. But, for those who had been on the project since the start, the lawn seemed to have the desired effect, a sign that all their hard work was coming to fruition. We brushed up and I popped in the next morning to run a mower over the lawn, to settle it down and stripe it up. I left watering responsibilities with one of the production guys and said I’d be back to cut the grass during the week. On my next visit, I cut the grass, strimmed around the edges and painted in the logos for a photography session.
My last visit was on the Thursday, the day before the show went live. There would be no access to the house on the day of the show, and all the work needed to be completed. Within minutes of arriving the heavens opened and it just poured down. I was meant to do a final cut, paint in the logos again, and give the armchairs a final trim with a pair of scissors. I also had twelve long wooden beams to embed in the turf. These beams would provide a solid floor for the large stainless steel garden table and chairs to be bolted too. However, the rain continued into the evening, the lawn flooded and there was nothing that could be done but go back the next morning. I arrived at 5.00am, got my passes from security, (by now 24 strong, plus dogs) and went inside. The heavy rain had soaked through the lawn nicely. I strimmed around the edges before mowing the lawn three times, producing a circular pattern emanating from the spa bath. The Production Designer
said that he preferred the shaggy look of the armchairs, so they avoided their customary short back and sides and I got on with burying the beams into the lawn.
Once done, I helped put the table and chairs in place, secured some plastic balls of privet around the edges of the garden and helped fix a static camera inside a giant plastic privet bunny! Then the photographers moved in to get all their promotional shots of the house and garden. I left Elstree to get home in time to see Davina start her two hour preamble to the housemates coming in. Now, I’m not a lover of
reality TV but, with a clear interest in how the lawn looked, I became a nightly viewer of the programme. All of the production team had been saying to me that as long as the set looked great at the start that was all that mattered. In fact, they said the housemates would trash it, so no need to worry. My concern was keeping the turf watered but, for the first two weeks of the show, it rained much of the time and the grass looked lush and just grew and grew. Eventually, the housemates had to cut the grass as a task, but then the rain made way for the sun and the blisteringly hot weather took over.
Due to the hosepipe bans, I believe that the production team took a conscious decision not to water the grass. The grass died but, thankfully, my reservations about the turf curling up and the armchairs falling apart were unfounded. Halfway through the show the housemates did start to use the dried grass as smoking material after losing their concessions. Perhaps they were hoping that,like the production company Endemol, the grass would have had Dutch origins as well!
My thanks to Simon, Peter and David for a first class service.
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