Zach Galifianakis is turning to dirt, seeds and school-age curiosity for his next project. He is making This Is a Gardening Show for Netflix, and the series was filmed in the Vancouver Island area with interviews planned with farmers and kids across the region.
The project puts Galifianakis far from the deadpan interviews and awkward comedy many viewers know him for, and it arrives in a place he says has long mattered to him. “I’ve been coming to the Vancouver Island area for 30 years,” he said, adding that he was happy to make the show there because the area has “a tradition of fantastic gardeners” and a history he hopes the next generation carries forward.
That local connection is part of why the setting matters now. Various locales in the Comox Valley are confirmed to appear, and the Vancouver Island backdrop gives the series a place where gardening is not a novelty but part of the landscape. Galifianakis also said he has young children, and that the source of food today “seems very not good for them,” which is why his main goal is simple: he wants kids to be ignited by the show.
He has also made the project personal in a way that fits the subject. Galifianakis said he grew pumpkins last year and made a pumpkin pie with them that was “so good.” He said he wants to make 30 pumpkin pies to give out for Christmas, though he admitted, “It’ll never happen, but that’s my goal.” He said he makes the pie with a graham cracker crust, because pumpkin “plays better” that way.
The series also nudges Galifianakis into a format viewers are less used to seeing from him. He is frequently associated with Between Two Ferns, but this show places him in a gardening setting instead, and previous reports have suggested he lives on nearby Denman Island rather than Vancouver Island itself. For now, the more immediate story is the one on screen: a comedian using a local farming culture to try to get children thinking about where their food comes from.
If the show lands the way Galifianakis says he hopes it will, the measure of success will not be laughs alone. It will be whether kids leave wanting to plant something, and whether the island’s garden traditions reach one more generation.
