My 15 Minutes of Fame- Virginia Home Grown

Me with Richard Nunnally on the set of Virginia Home Grown

This week I had a really fun opportunity to be a guest on Virginia Home Grown, a gardening show on my local PBS channel, WCVE.  I was on the show to promote Orchids Galore at Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden.  For the first part of the show, the host, Richard Nunnally, visited me at the garden to get some shots of our orchid display.  Then we did a studio piece where I explained a little bit about some commonly available orchids.  I wasn't too worried about either of these segments of the show.  I figured that with beautiful orchids as my props, I couldn't go wrong!  Plus, my colleague from the garden, Director of Marketing and PR, Beth Monroe, joined me for the filming of the show, so it calmed my nerves knowing that she was there to support me.

The next part of the show had me completely nervous all week.  First of all, this is a live show, filmed in front of a live audience.  That part didn't end up being bad at all.  The way the studio is set up, there is a wall of cameras between me and the audience, so I really forgot that the audience was there.  Plus, Richard told me to look at him while I was answering questions so I eventually forgot the cameras were there as well.  The second part that made me nervous was that, during the show, viewers and audience members can submit their gardening questions and we have to answer them live on the air without any prep... eek!  I figured that most of the questions would be about orchids since that was the theme of the show, and most of them were, but there were also a few general gardening questions as well.  Although I started out a little shy, I think my confidence grew as I realized, hey, I actually know the answers to these questions and I can actually help people by answering them!  It turned out to be a really fun experience and brought some great exposure to Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden.  I look forward to getting to do this again in the future!

The show was streamed live on the web, and they also have the full version currently on their web site.  Check it out!

Virginia Home Grown March 2012: Tropical Plants; Interior Plantscapes; Japanese Flowering Apricot  

Show #1201: Richard visits Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden to meet the new Director of Horticulture Grace Chapman and they talk about Tropical Plants. We find out about Interior Plantscapes when Amy visits with Buckingham Greenery at the University of Virginia. Peggy Singlemann of Maymont shares her Plant of the Month, the Japanese flowering apricot (Prunus mume).