Zach Galifianakis's This is a Gardening Show highlights Vancouver Island

"The future is agrarian," says avid gardener and actor Zach Galifianakis. Galifianakis sells that theory in his new six-part Netflix show. Called This is a Gardening Show, the series begins streaming on Earth Day on April 22. Photo by Netflix /Netflix

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Actor/comedian Zach Galifianakis has branched out with the new Netflix offering This is a Gardening Show.

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Shot mostly on Vancouver Island, the six-part series that lands on Netflix on Earth Day (April 22), sees Galifianakis meet with and learn from various local gardening and farming experts in a bid to help his own garden grow.

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Zach Galifianakis gets tomato-growing tips from Royann Petrell of Stellar Raven Ecological Farm in the Courtenay area of Vancouver Island. Tomato training and plenty of other gardening tips are to be had in Galifianakis’s new Netflix series This is a Gardening Show. The series premieres on April 22. Photo by Netflix /Radical Media/Netflix

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“We should all garden, it’s a better hobby than jet skiing,” Galifianakis says in the show.

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For the record, according to the internet, Galifianakis has a home on Denman Island. While unconfirmed, he did tell David Letterman during their show at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre on Feb. 18 that he had to take two ferries to get to Vancouver for the gig.

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Galifianakis’s connection to B.C. goes further as he has a recurring role in the new Vancouver-shot AMC series The Audacity.   The series about a tech bro (Billy Magnussen) engulfed in a scandal premiered on the American network on April 12.

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Thanks to Galifianakis’s curiosity and comedy instincts, the series is a perfect mix of joy and jokes delivered in tight 15-to-20-minute-long episodes. And, like a great Pixar film, the show works for both adults and kids as it effortlessly combines sophomoric and sophisticated humour — an ear of corn becomes a phone, Benjamin Netanyahu is the subject of a knock, knock joke, and a couple of French foragers become the butt of a France and the Vietnam War joke.

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As Galifianakis heads into the forest with the foragers, he offers a callback to an earlier career high point.

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“It’s nice to be between the ferns again,” he says referring to Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifianakis, the Funny or Die satirical and hilarious interview series he hosted.

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