"People started this addicting hobby of gardening," said Jane Latman, president of HGTV. “We are constantly receiving letters and comments on our social feed. Where's the gardening? You are HGTV. Put the "G" back in HGTV. "
The first two seasons of "Martha Knows Best" were filmed with a skeleton crew on Ms. Stewart's 153 acre estate, where she was imprisoned with some members of her housekeeping. The domestic mogul spent much of each episode pestering her cheerful gardener Ryan McCallister as he dutifully planted 18,000 daffodil bulbs and wrapped their giant box trees in burlap for the winter. (A crew of silent workers sewed the burlap shut with sewing needles.) In typical Martha Stewart fashion, she also showed how to carve pumpkins and make wreaths, and scolded celebrities, including Ms. Barrymore, over video.
Filming began on April 9 for season three, which will bring viewers more of Ms. Stewart's property and indoors as pandemic restrictions relax. "We will see more chickens," said Ms. Latman. "The audience was very interested in the chickens."
As HGTV starts looking beyond the pandemic, it is still keeping an eye out. "The idea of home has changed in the last year and a half, and there is a nesting that people have made and will continue to do," said Ms. Latman.
"Inside Out," a show about an interior designer and a landscape designer heading out to win the greater chunk of a homeowner's budget, will air on April 26th on Discovery +, parent company Discovery's streaming service by HGTV, premiered. And "Clipped," a topiary competition series that premieres May 12th, has selected Ms. Stewart as the lead judge who will decide who created the best-sculpted bushes.
If Ms. Stewart is a natural fit to channel our newfound enthusiasm for the garden, Ms. Barrymore is less likely. "If you'd asked me two years ago, I would probably have said, 'You don't want me, I'm not the real deal," she said of her partnership with Instead.
But when the company came by, Ms. Barrymore, who also has beauty and home furnishings lines, was hosting a new talk show and had received an appreciation for smut. Now, her Instagram feed is an eclectic mix of trying on lipstick for her beauty brand, selfies in the TV studio, and videos of her hugging her chickens.
