In the Garden with Zach Galifianakis

It’s hard to find a show that I enjoy and can watch with all my nieces and nephews (ranging in age from 2-16). Who would have thought that comedian and actor Zach Galifianakis had a way in? With wit, charm, information, and a healthy dose of irreverence, his Netflix Series, This Is a Gardening Show, which debuted in April, manages to fly that uneasy path.

At a bitesized 15-20 minutes, the episodes, each focusing on one agricultural topic, go down easy. They feature time in the garden with kids, an expert guest, evocative animation, music, some history, much hilarity, and not a moment of didacticism.

The success of the series, and its magic, is not merely Galifianakis’ light touch, or that there is something for everyone.

Yes, my five-year-old niece will enjoy the poop jokes, and my 13-year-old niece will love how cute and funny the kids are—and the humor Galifianakis manages to cajole from his nursery-pot-sized subjects (my oldest niece, 16, will appreciate his pokes at Joe Rogan and the patriarchy). But the power here is in the sincerity, and the irreverence, too. In “This is A Gardening Show,” Galifianakis uses his gifts not just to entertain but to inspire. Watching, with kids or teens or grandparents, it is hard not to laugh, and feel a little hopeful.

Galifianakis spoke to Edible Manhattan editor in chief John Ortved about his show, our terrifying future, New York City shopping cart gardens, and diarrhea.

Gardening, Zach. Where did this come from?

In my 20s, I moved to California. I started planting things in the ground. I had just gotten back from Greece, and I had seen this old man in his potato patch, and it struck me. I thought: If I’m lucky enough to get that old, I want to be doing that. 

How much garden space do you have?

I’ve had a small space for years, but it doesn’t get enough sun. I am building a new garden. I have a lot of blueberries.  I have kiwi. I have asparagus. You name a vegetable, I probably have it, but not lettuces, because  I don’t know how to do those yet. 

Something you say in the show is “The only future is agrarian.” Can you get into that?

There’s a lot of talk about AI and the future, and I think we, as humans, are heading in a weird direction that I don’t necessarily agree with. My hope for the show is to get a conversation started: “Hey, we used to have these practices. We used to do this. We’ve lost that connection.” Is that serious enough for you?

This is very funny so far.

I know the show is a little flippant, but I do have this seriousness underneath. 

You’re doing what you can; you’ve made this show.

I didn’t want to shame anyone. I am not a confident gardener.  I never know if it’s going to work. But there’s just so much reward in the garden. I read this: the garden is the opposite of war. There’s so much solution in the garden. There’s camaraderie. There’s harmony. 

You mentioned your blueberries—those grow where I’m from in Ontario. If you’ve eaten a blueberry off a bush you can never go back to the giant supermarket ones. 

You’re 100% correct. Even our tomatoes. I read—in a great book called Tomatoland — that they pick the tomatoes green, which is fine, but they pump them full of gasses to send them to the supermarket. There’s no life. There’s no taste to them. 

You brought up AI. I worry the future of food will be like that. Fast food is ubiquitous; Whole Foods is just full of junk. People don’t actually know what real food tastes like anymore.

I think in the average town in North America, you can find a McDonald’s quicker than you can find a garden. It’s normal now to have all this fast food. Well, it shouldn’t be. 

Why was it important to have kids involved in the show?

There’s two reasons. There’s, there’s the comedic device; interviewing a kid is always fun. And then there’s casting the wider net. So they might want to watch this too and be inspired by it. You can see it as a kid’s eyes widen when they learn how a carrot became a carrot.

I learned a ton watching this—how Greek grafting gave us apples; how to water tomato plants—at the same time, you mention diarrhea in every episode. 

God, every episode? I really should watch the show. It sounds hilarious. 

I’m being hyperbolic, but there’s a good amount of the scatological in there.

Well, kids like poop stuff. And I have young kids, so I know that audience a little bit.

We don’t have big gardens in Manhattan, but we find little ways. Do you have any advice for aspiring gardeners who don’t have a lot of space for gardening?

I’ve noticed in New York there’s this cool thing where people take shopping carts and make little planting beds. I took a picture of one. They had a nice little sign that said, “Please don’t touch this. I’m growing herbs.”

You’d be amazed what will grow in a windowsill. Also, you can secretly plant things in the city. You can throw seeds and see what they do. You could do carrots easily because they’re so small. Now, what you’re throwing it into in New York City, who knows? 

Have you ever done that kind of guerilla gardening in a city?

In Los Angeles, there’s a patch of grass between your house and the road, and the city owns it..Maybe 15 years ago, this urban gardener, Ron Finley, somehow convinced the city of Los Angeles to let people garden that space. I had it dug out and I put some fresh manure in there, and compost, and I reclaimed the dirt. I put a fence—not to keep people out—I wanted people to eat from the garden. I had raspberries and blackberries and ghost peppers. I was so hoping that would catch on. 

Are you a gardener? Is that something you call yourself?

God, not to the level that I want to be. But yes, I’m a gardener.  I’m an experimental gardener. I’ve done pumpkins on a trellis, which is not the greatest idea. But when you get something right, man, it just feels so great. To cook a pumpkin pie for the pumpkins that I grow, and to be able to share it with people? I’m a simpleton. I don’t need much more in life than that.

You joke in the show that you found happiness in gardening. But is that true?

100% true. I was just telling my wife yesterday, “I don’t have any hobbies. Wait, I’ve had this whole time.” I didn’t think of it as a hobby. I just thought of it as a meditation, as a way of life. 

At times your show is quite meditative; serene and inspiring. You say at one point “If people understood roots more, they’d understand gardening.” It’s almost philosophical.

There’s a lot of wisdom in the garden. Humans thought we could outsmart nature, that’s ridiculous. The farming practices should copy nature, not fight it. 

It’s the grafting metaphor.

Last week, I was at a Salvation Army garden in Los Angeles. It was a blighted area. They come in, they bring in this garden, and it drops the temperature. I heard a scientist say that it’s so simple it’s almost frustrating. If we greened up the world a lot more, we could fix this. I don’t know how you get the humans to do it.