The BBC turned cupcakes and pastries into primetime TV fare with The Great British Bake Off. Now it is hoping to do the same with a horticultural contest on BBC2. Grow, Make, Eat: The Great Allotment Challenge will feature green-fingered contestants growing a crop of fruit and vegetables, and facing three trials each week that test their horticultural knowledge, creativity and culinary skills. The six-hour-long episodes will air early next year – and the show will no doubt be given time to bed in and cultivate an audience. Fronted by Fern Britton, the show will be judged by Royal Horticultural Society judge Jim Buttress, floral designer Jonathan Moseley and cookery writer Thane Prince. Suggestions that 69-year-old Buttress – vice-chairman of the RHS Herbaceous Plant Committee and described by the Daily Telegraph as the "Judge Dread" of the Britain in Bloom competition – may be the new Paul Hollywood appear somewhat premature.
