The Man Who Worked in the Garden was a pivotal unseen character

Unseen character

In fiction, an unseen character is a character that is never directly observed by the audience but is only described by other characters. They are a common device in drama and have been called "triumphs of theatrical invention". They are continuing characters — characters who are currently in...

 in the long-running BBC

BBC

The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

 children’s television series, The Flower Pot Men

Flower Pot Men

The Flower Pot Men were a British pop group created in 1967 as a result of the single "Let's Go to San Francisco", recorded by session musicians, becoming a major UK Top 20 and Continental Europe hit) in the autumn of 1967...

, one of the programmes broadcast weekly from 1952 as part of the daily slot, Watch with Mother

Watch with Mother

Watch With Mother was a cycle of children's programmes broadcast from 1952 by BBC Television which was created by Freda Lingstrom.It was the first BBC television programme specifically aimed at pre-school children, like its radio equivalent Listen with Mother that also started in 1950...

.

The Flower Pot Men

The invariable setting for The Flower Pot Men was the “beautiful garden” surrounding a large English house (though it was introduced as a “little house”). Whenever the “man who worked in the garden”, as he was always called, went “inside the house to have his dinner”, two puppets with strange elocution, made from flowerpots, came out to play. They were Bill and Ben, who lived in very large adjacent flowerpots bearing their respective names, between which grew a large plant, similar to a sunflower

Sunflower

Sunflower is an annual plant native to the Americas. It possesses a large inflorescence . The sunflower got its name from its huge, fiery blooms, whose shape and image is often used to depict the sun. The sunflower has a rough, hairy stem, broad, coarsely toothed, rough leaves and circular heads...

 (helianthus annuus), called the “Little Weed”.

The ploy, whereby viewers were privy to apparently secret activities, was a familiar one. In Andy Pandy

Andy Pandy

Andy Pandy is a British children's television series that premiered on BBC TV in June or July 1950. The original series of programmes was shown until 1970, when a new series was made. A third series was made in 2002...

, another Watch with Mother series, a rag doll called Looby Loo came to life whenever Andy and his friend, Teddy, were out of the room.

Mores of the 1950s

The Man Who Worked in the Garden was an interesting reflection of his times and class. In particular, he ate dinner in the middle of the day, whereas those running the BBC at the time, whose attitudes and habits seemed to pervade the Corporation's programmes, would have taken lunch or luncheon. In fact, the reference to “dinner” helped to establish the man’s working class credentials; no doubt, in the evening he would have had “tea”, rather than the middle or upper class “dinner”.

Another point of note was that, during a period of relative austerity in the early to mid 1950s, the BBC chose to locate The Flower Pot Men in what was plainly a prosperous and leafy suburban or semi-rural area. In changing times since the Second World War, most “ordinary” people would neither have employed nor have been able to afford a gardener - if, indeed, they had a garden.

An alternative reading is that the female "Little Weed" significantly dominates the two rather childish Flowerpot Men.