John Nash Ott Collection > SERIES I: How Does Your Garden Grow?

SERIES I: How Does Your Garden Grow?

Abstract

Episodes and elements related to John Nash Ott's television show How Does Your Garden Grow?.

Series identifier

S.2022-09-0001

Description

Ott began hosting the weekly gardening show on Chicago TV in 1948. It included advice about growing flowers, time-lapse films of plants growing, and answers to readers’ mail. One reporter wrote in 1952 that How Does Your Garden Grow? was “a combination of the Fountain of Youth, a trip to California, and a sunny 70 degree morning in May. … The program is the very stuff of life for hog tied Chicago area gardeners who spend winters despondently riffling fingers thru the barren earth of a window box. Ott not only feeds house plants, he nourishes twitching green thumbs, too.” An article in an April 1954 issue of TV Guide titled “His Treasure’s in a Jam Closet” begins, “No Chicago TV star is looking forward to color television more than WNBQ’s wizard of time-lapse photography, John Ott. The striking films of blossoming plants and flowers that enhance his popular show How Does Your Garden Grow? are impressive even in black-and-white. Transmitted in color, they’ll carry a powerful impact.” In March 1955, How Does Your Garden Grow? was the first show broadcast in color by Chicago’s NBC affiliate.

Extent

66 reels