Taking Root ‘People, Place and Plants’ transplanted to national home and garden channel

A TV show grows in North Yarmouth.

For two seasons, the syndicated series “People, Places and Plants” has been aired across the nation on about 100 stations, including WLBZ (Channel 2) in Bangor, WCSH (Channel 6) in Portland and WAGM (Channel 8) in Presque Isle.

Now the show, carefully cultivated by co-hosts Paul Tukey and Roger Swain, has found a new home on Home and Garden Television. It’s been airing at 10:30 a.m. Saturdays on HGTV since July 3.

“People say to me, ‘You must be walking on air,’ ” Tukey said from his office at People, Places and Plants magazine, which he founded a decade ago. “But I look at it as a heck of a long way to fall.”

The timing of the HGTV connection couldn’t have been better, as the series almost was headed to the compost pile.

“In December, Paul had figured that it wasn’t profitable to get our own sponsors and get it on the air anymore,” said Cameron Bonsey, executive producer for “PPP.” “He’d decided to pull back and not do the show anymore.”

Then, after Bonsey’s three years experience making connections, the deal with HGTV came through, giving “PPP” new life with a healthy dose of green.

So how does a homegrown product end up blooming nationally?

Tukey had long had the idea of using the format of his successful gardening magazine in a TV show. For a time, he did gardening spots with WCSH co-anchor Sharon Rose. But still, while that was good exposure for his magazine, it wasn’t exactly what he had in mind.

During appearances at the annual Bangor Garden Show, Tukey became friends with Roger Swain, former co-host of PBS’s “Victory Garden,” science editor for Horticulture magazine and, in his own words, “the poster boy for backyard gardening, for better or worse.”

At the 2002 show, Tukey took Swain and his wife, Elizabeth, to lunch and sketched out his plans for “PPP” on a napkin, proposing that Swain join him as co-host.

“Since he was buying lunch – and especially beer – I said certainly I’d consider it,” Swain recalled. “I knew there wasn’t a chance he’d pull it off.”

But Tukey found financing despite self-imposed limits that the show not accept ads from chemical companies and “big-box” stores and would support organic methods and local garden centers instead.

So the pilot was shot, with Swain as co-host and his wife as producer. Swain had a simple mission going in: “To do the things that are real, to say things that need to be said, and to reach out to those who would otherwise be alone.”

Funding was always tight, but the “PPP” troupe soldiered on for 46 episodes.

“We made beautiful TV long after the money had run out,” Swain said. “On ‘Victory Garden,’ we had a caterer. Here, I made sandwiches for everybody. We all economized to put money where it was needed.”

Ever since the pilot was shot, Bonsey had been making connections in the TV business. He struck up a valuable relationship with syndicator Andy Weir of North Star Media, who advised him along the way.

Earlier this year, Weir contacted Bonsey with the news that an old acquaintance had landed at HGTV. He asked if Bonsey wanted him to have the contact take “PPP” to the channel’s higher-ups.

A three-year contract grew from that phone call. HGTV bought the series’ domestic rebroadcast rights and put “PPP” in its most prominent gardening timeslot.

“We’re editing those shows to meet HGTV’s standards,” Bonsey said. “Their shows are shorter, and we have to go back and blur out product names. When we originally filmed these, we would get it done by Tuesday, edit it by Wednesday, then send it out to the stations. Now we have the time to go back, re-edit and make it stronger.”

“We hope they’ll go through this batch of shows and call back and order more,” Tukey said, adding, “What I’m happiest about is 19 of my segments feature Maine companies, and they’re getting national exposure. I’m so proud of this state, and I get to show it off to the world.”

Swain wasn’t surprised that “PPP” is now reaching a national audience.

“E.O. Wilson, my old professor at Harvard, had a lovely phrase: ‘Wherever you are, do your best, because cream rises,’ ” he said.