Green team

Irrepressible <i>Mucking In</i> TV show presenters Tony Murrell and Jim Mora.Tony and helpers on the job. Photo / Doug Sherring

Jim Mora and Tony Murrell, stars of Mucking In, are as irrepressibly enthusiastic and irreverent off-screen as they are on their garden makeover show.

Not that they'd like to be described that way. As stars, that is.

Yapping away and trading mock insults, the two are like a couple of play-fighting puppies as they reminisce about their three years together on the TV One series that turns 10 this year and has become a perennial favourite.

But in between their jokes about the challenges and near-disasters involved in racing against the clock to transform people's gardens in a single weekend, they are deadly serious about promoting the real stars of their show.

"You really do get a frisson of pleasure helping these people. It is important for them to be held up and praised, and they come around to realising that's what the rest of their community wants for them," says Jim.

"You're talking about people who get up to about 80 friends, workmates and family members wanting to pitch in to transform their garden," says Tony. "I thought of getting my own one done, but I don't think I'd get the same turnout."

Judging by the grassroots enthusiasm for championing these unsung Kiwi heroes - Mucking In sifts through about 1000 nominations a month - the book released this month to celebrate the show already has a captive audience to tap into.

Mucking In - The Gardens and The Gardeners is 160 pages of highlights, garden designs and tips from the past three series of the show, including the stories of recipients nominated for garden makeovers because of their good work.

"For families involved in the show, the book is like a photo album. But it's also a kind of gardeners' manual, full of great garden design ideas for people who might want to hire a garden designer but can't afford to," says Jim.

He says the effort Tony puts into each design, and vetting prospective candidates, including checking their criminal records, are the most time-consuming aspects of the show.

"We get some perfectly lovely people who have fallen over at the last minute. It's not that people have to be perfect. They can have foibles and human failings and they are allowed to have a past," says Jim.

"But we have to know that everyone will support them and not be divided by something they have done. The last thing we want to do is to create schisms and rifts in the community."

The gardens can't fall over either.

With all that rushing about - bulldozing dirt, pouring concrete, laying Readylawn, whacking up fences and digging in hundreds of plants - you can't help wondering whether the hastily constructed gardens are built to last.

"Sound as a pound," says Tony. "And if there is a problem, we fix it. I'm talking to Sue Smith of Himitangi at the moment about her grasses."

Planting sometimes has to be thinned out later because the gardens are planted intensively to look good immediately on TV. But Tony seeks out lower maintenance plants that do well in specific regions before he comes up with a plan, which these days will usually includes edibles.

Even though the gardens' owners are often not green-fingered, maintenance is seldom an issue as mates and family members who helped out in the first place are usually happy to keep doing so.

"They have a real sense of pride and ownership of the gardens," says Jim, who has returned to gardens to check them out.

"If I'm passing through the area, I'll knock on the door. If no one's home, I'll sneak around the back and see how the garden's developing and make sure the plants I put in are still alive."

Despite the speed with which the gardens are put together, there have been only a few disasters on the show - usually due to the weather.

"We can't leave a garden in a partially finished, or parlous state for that matter. There's only once that I've had to say to someone 'don't be shocked by what you see'. The garden itself was okay but the lawn was liquid mud."