Locally grown PBS series airs

When the Hook first talked to Rebecca Frischkorn in 2004, she envisioned GardenStory as a 13-episode television series on gardens as "inspiring places, healing spaces." Four years later, a 10-episode PBS series launched nationally in April, and the Hook belatedly realizes the last few shows are being shown this weekend on WVPT, where it began airing in April. Oops. But that isn't the last chance to see it.

Frischkorn was living in Charlottesville when she teamed up with UVA landscape architect prof Reuben Rainey (pictured) and producer Bill Reifenberger. By 2005, they had put together four episodes that were broadcast on the other local PBS station, WHTJ.

"Today is the first day they're on 24/7 nationwide on Create," says Frischkorn, who now lives in Washington. Create TV offers how-to programming for PBS, although Frischkorn always has maintained that GardenStory was not a how-to show, but one on "the power of gardens to change lives."

"I'll get email from Boston from people who've seen it," says Crozet resident Reifenberger. GardenStory is in 70 percent of the households that get PBS, he says. Individual stations can schedule their own programming of it over the next three years.

WHTJ doesn't have GardenStory scheduled at the moment, but will likely air it, says the station's D.J. Crotteau. "We're very fond of that show. We aired it three years ago."

Episodes on the gardens of poet Anne Spencer, UVA's Academical Village and St. Louis' Missouri Botanical Gardens air over the weekend. One other option: DVDs of the series are available on PBS Home Video.