'The Big Flower Fight' Is a Glorious Escape For Those of Us Trapped Inside
New York City is currently on what our governor euphemistically likes to call a “pause.” I am paused in a neighborhood that, like much of the city, offers residents very little access to green space. The only park walking distance from me occupies the space of two city blocks, and is an expressly social place, somewhere the neighborhood gathers to play sports together, for kids to hang out together, for dogs to get their exercise in together. Feet of pavement, rubber padding, and dirt—basketball courts, playground, dog runs—far outnumber the areas devoted to greenery.
Like many New Yorkers, I don’t have a car, placing parks farther afield out of reach. Sometimes I hatch plans for treks to more distant parkland, but the sight of morgue trucks at my nearby hospital, two blocks away and spotted during every grocery store run and most walks around the neighborhood, tends to break my cabin fever. There is one local spot filled with grass, dirt, and trees: the neighborhood cemetery. It’s a beautiful and moving place to visit, but, of course, far from fun. Especially with all the new graves.
I know that’s a grim way to introduce an article about Netflix’s The Big Flower Fight, but the floristry and gardening reality competition is debuting in a grim world. Works whose spirits are at odds with their eras tend to either be tone deaf or pitch perfect, and this show is absolutely the latter. The competition, which gathers ten pairs of gardeners, artists, landscape designers, and florists under a giant dome in the British countryside to plant and prune way to the title of Best in Bloom, offers a burst of brightness, a celebration of natural beauty that feels like a balm for this isolated and aggressively hand-sanitized time.
Basically, The Big Flower Fight is The Great British Bake Off with carnations instead of cakes. In each episode, the pairs attempt to build a botanical sculpture based on challenges laid out by judges, a rotating cast of horticultural experts anchored by florist-to-the stars Kristen Griffith-Vanderyacht, which is exactly the name a person should have if they’re going to be a florist to the stars. Comedian hosts Vic Reeves and Natasia Demetriou steward us through this beautiful world, one that might as well have contestant Helen’s episode two statement as its guiding motto: “We’re competitive, but not in a nasty way.”
On Flower Fight—which, during the episodes made available for review, features almost nothing in the way of fighting—contestants build grand, stunning botanical sculptures. The first episode’s insect-themed challenge produces a beautiful sphinx moth with coconut husk lugs, and the next episode, which finds contestants making couture gowns out of cut flowers, features one lovely creation with a bodice made of lily petals. It’s everything that, holed up far away from sphinx moths, coconuts, and lilies alike, I could dream of. But even during normal times, it would serve as diverting testament to the natural world’s boundless appeal.
The people are great, too. What We Do in the Shadows star Demetriou is quietly hilarious, wording her queries and commentary in a perfectly slanted style, as when she asks one guest judge, “What do your eyeballs dream of seeing when they finish the challenge?” The contestants include wedding florist Sarah and her assistant Jordan, who calls her friendship with her boss one of “my favorite relationships in my entire life,” and seems completely sincere, and father son pair Ralph and Jim, all smiling and supportive and enjoying their quality time together. My taste in reality TV is normally aimed squarely at the gutter, perhaps because I’m lucky enough to have a real life filled with decent human beings who behave in reasonable ways, and have no desire to fill my television viewing time with more of same. But now that so many of the decent human beings we care about most are physically out of reach, it’s comforting to see the ones featured on this show.
Much like Netflix’s glass blowing competition series Blown Away, The Big Flower Fight showcases an art form that often goes unheralded. And like Bake Off, it’s a feminine-coded craft. The coronavirus pandemic has illustrated just how much undervalued yet essential work is women's work, like nursing, teaching, cleaning, and childcare. Floral arrangements are anything but essential, but they are most often exchanged as a form of care and closeness—we send them to the sick, lay them over coffins, give them as presents to our moms and our Valentines. Even those of us lucky enough to be relatively free of worries about the health and safety of ourselves and our love ones could use a little extra care these days, and Flower Fight offers a lovely array.
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