Monty Don to return to present Gardeners World

Monty Don is returning as the main presenter of the BBC programme Gardeners' World and current host Toby Buckland has been dropped.

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Really, um not sure what I think about that. I like Monty Don but I can't help but switch off a little when he speaks. I've not really watched Gardeners world since Geoff Hamiliton sadly left.

Someone mentioned this over on the Kitchen Garden magazine forum. I quite like both Toby and Monty, although there seem to be quite a few who don't like Monty Don for one reason or another (quite probably to do with his Soil Association connections) over at KG.

I feel a bit sorry for Toby Buckland, he and Carol Klein made a pretty knowledgeable team. GW was not without its problems, but I don't think the presenters were to blame !

I see also that Rachel de Totty is to make a return. I am left wondering why. It was the beginning of an irritating phase on GW when the camera work took on the "hyperactive" style which worked well for Jamie Oliver's cooking, but was totally inappropriate for gardening. I got weary of camera shots peering through the bushes in an arty way at Rachel !

Hmmm - feel sorry for Toby to be given the boot, but looking forward to Monty's return. I understand Joe and Carol are staying, but Alys Fowler is also going. Can't say I'll miss her... Sorry!

Mrs C

Huzzah, I despise the current incarnation of GW..

Now then, lets see Aunty commission a second series of Mastercrafts and they will make my Yule...

I deliberately didn't comment until a few others had made their views known, but I personally am pleased to be rid of the current presenting team. Except Carol.

Monty can be irritiating but he is a good gardener and the fact he is not formally qualified, but is vastly experioenced, IMO helps to bring in those who are just starting out.

I quite like Joe Swift, as a fellow designer, I can appreciate his work, but he is a lousy presenter and I detest Carol, her need to giggle all the time really winds me up, as shame, because her plant knowledge is superb.

But then, I can't stand Alan T, his style is really annoying to me!

Groan Monty Don. He is just posh totty for the post menopause brigade. He should stick with 'deigning' diamante scotty dog brooches and all that tat.
Oh wait, he went bankrupt owing fortunes to suppliers doing that, didn't he?

Wilhelm Von Rhomboid wrote:Groan Monty Don. He is just posh totty for the post menopause brigade.

snip

Sigh. Bit insulting, that, don'tyou think?. As if all women who like him, only like him for that reason.

Well I don't view him in that light and never have.

I like monty Don and will be glad to see him bacj.

Liked Toby too though.

I think Gardeners World hasn't quite been working recently.

I still miss Geoff Hamilton

Compostwoman wrote:

Wilhelm Von Rhomboid wrote:Groan Monty Don. He is just posh totty for the post menopause brigade.

snip

Sigh. Bit insulting, that, don'tyou think?. As if all women who like him, only like him for that reason.

Well I don't view him in that light and never have.

Sorry, you are right.

Groan Monty Don. he is just posh totty for the post menopause brigade and CW, who likes him for his wealth of gardening experience.

I would guess Billy has just trashed the opinion of in the least 1/6 of the population.

I have only seen Monty Don in Mastercrafts and I'm pretty sure he is not posh. He is eloquent and worldly. The main characteristic that impressed me was how he deeply listened and understood the people he dealt with.

Zoe wrote:I would guess Billy has just trashed the opinion of in the least 1/6 of the population.

lol, really?
Does enjoying looking at totty mean one's opinion is trashed?

Well regardless of the pros and cons of posh totty (have been called totty and posh in my time, so I am no person to judge), the greatest GW present was the much missed Geoff Hamilton (well greatest imho)

The presenters I enjoy watching the most are the ones who share their knowledge and enthusiasm - who make you think 'Yes - I'll have a go at that tomorrow.' Geoff Hamilton was a good example of this. What I hate is being lectured or spoken down to, or patronised - I find it hard to take advice from someone who irritates me. Gardeners World had become a bit of a joke in our house, so hopefully a change of presenters will be an improvement.

I think we have to try not to compare with Geoff Hamilton. He was, and probably will remain, the best. For those of us who grew up with his version of GW, he was like an extra grandad.

Personally I don't blame the recent decline of GW on the presenters, but the material. Even before the low spot (the shed with inane chat and a Top Gear style cool wall, minute makes like Cbeebies ...), the content was repetetive. Every week we were shown someone dividing a plant with two forks back to back - I was almost ready to apply the same procedure to the producer's head !

Strange they should choose to scapegoat the presenters at this point, when this years series had made good progress back in the right direction. I enjoyed the fun elements like Toby's giant pumpkin ...

Oooohhh,I obviously missed Toby's giant pumpkin

I still won't be watching then. Disliked the style of the program before and get irritated by Montagu

Gardener's Question Time... far more fun! ....

I had no idea who Dan Pearson was that Angelina mentioned so I googled him. And yes he looks good but also I found this article from the Observer...he sounds good too. Thought you might like it.

actual article link

Dan Pearson: Putting down new roots
Swapping his small garden in south London for 20 acres in Somerset gives Dan Pearson the chance to think big
o Dan Pearson
o The Observer, Sunday 14 November 2010

At 46, I have arrived at a turning point. One I wasn't quite prepared for, although I knew it was coming. Gardening in London for the past 19 years – first on my roof garden and then in Peckham – provided me with sanctuary from city life and I made my oasis within the hubbub. A garden is such a personal form of expression and my Peckham plot allowed me to experiment. It was a think tank for ideas, a testing bed for new plants and my place of escape. It was also filled to the very brim by the time we left, with layer upon layer of plants and a myriad of associations.

I was protective of my weekends because it was precious gardening time and by combining mind with body I could lose myself, even in the heart of the city. In my total immersion I found the sounds of sirens, of radios, of neighbours were drowned out. And the garden provided for others, too. Passers by would stop and marvel at the daphne or the banksian rose in the front garden and I never tired of the surprise when people walked through the house to find something so unexpected at the back.

But a nagging feeling that I should be working at another scale had been hounding me for some time. Planting trees in number, sowing meadows and being able to express myself through my clients' gardens only reinforced the confinement of fences and a sky framed by buildings. I had outgrown my boundaries and like the plants that were straining at my fences I needed to be part of something bigger. By that I mean a landscape that I am unable to control, a place that has its own rhythms that I can tap into and not necessarily have to shape. I want to feel like I am part of the seasons, with big skies, weather and breathing space, and where I do garden I want to learn to do so differently, to shape something new and exciting.

Set in a fold of the Somerset hills just north of Bath, the new ground provides me with a blank canvas. There is no garden, save a legacy of two postage-sized beds of antirrhinums by the front door and a rotovated square where the farmer grew his cabbages, but stretching up the valley to the west, and then down the valley to the east, are 20 acres of rolling limestone pasture. The land is divided into six fields by a lane, field hedges and gates. The top fields, with the best views over the valley, bear the remains of a craggy orchard and, below the lane, the land folds down to a constantly running stream.

The stream is the boundary to good friends who farm in the valley. I was at Kew with Jane many years ago and it was an important part of the equation that we landed in good company. Both Jane and Donald will be a vital link with the local community and a font of knowledge where farming sensitively is concerned. We are just a stride across the stream and the shaded slopes running up and away on to their land are wooded. Trembling poplars roar gently in the wind that moves up the valley and as the leaves pull from the trees we can see the crows' nests set dark against the skyline.

We borrow these trees as the backdrop from the house, which is small and centrally positioned on the slope to harvest the sunshine. There is a makeshift feeling to the buildings and I have never seen such ingenious use of scrap iron and bailer twine to corral the livestock. There are tin barns, dilapidated but with potential for the future and two springs, one of which runs in a crease down the slope, the slower of the two trickling into an old stone trough. Pull a compass out and you will see that the land faces south-southwest and the light sweeps across it, revealing the humps and bumps when it is low at either end of the day.

Though we will have to do this on a shoestring, the small-holding offers the potential to explore a whole new way of engaging with the land and I am aiming to bring all the experience I have gained over the past 25 years to create a new work. The greater part of the experience will focus on engagement with the environment. There will be a circuit to take in the land and to draw out the story of the place. The pathway will explore the intricacy in the meadows, the life in the streams and the weave in the hedgerows where I can already see the rosettes of violets and the puckered foliage of primroses. It will skirt the stream edge and the borrowed wood opposite and I will add to the wood on our side of the brook once I know what feels appropriate, with a blossom wood and a native copse for coppicing our own wood.

Who knows what shape a new garden will take but at the core, and close to the buildings, will be a productive space which will enable us to live off the land in a committed manner. There will be luxury there with asparagus beds, a decent patch of artichokes and unusual salads but I also want to be able to pickle and bottle and freeze the basics to keep us going throughout the winter. There will be a fruit cage with currants, raspberries, gooseberries and loganberries and I will use the tin barns as a backdrop and support for peaches, apricots, figs and a range of pears. They will like the heat and the baking. I would also like a small field of lavender for the oil and to trial varieties I have had my eye on for some time and never had the room or the opportunity to try for myself, and I might even plant a vineyard to make the most of the aspects.

All that remains of an old orchard is a craggy line of Bramleys and further down the slope and standing in a huddle, is a group of Beauty of Bath. The trees were a delicious sugary pink when we came to look over the property last the spring, but I was frightened to enjoy the blossom for fear of the negotiations falling through. I have the keys in my pocket now and it feels good to pick though the windfalls and reflect upon what we have had to do to get here.

Leaving an established garden, full of treasures and carefully thought-through corners, has been easier than I had thought it might be – and with such a canvas I can't imagine I will look back. I want to plant a young orchard for a new generation of apples and I will use a large rootstock so that over time they will assume some character and provide the shade to lie in when they are grown. There is nothing like walking under a tree that you have planted and I am planning on local varieties and russets and cider apples because neighbours in the valley have a press. There will be a copse of stone fruit, too, with damsons, plums and greengages. A friend running a restaurant has already expressed excitement at the potential of being able to call in special varieties and I'm more than happy to rise to the challenge.

I want to plant a walnut, a quince and a mulberry, which I will place somewhere solitary so that I can enjoy their crankiness from all angles and there will be a nuttery, with crested cobnuts and a sprinkling of crab apples. One day the nuttery will help to provide the dappling for a shade garden, but before I do any of this I have told myself I will take a year to look. As a friend aptly put it, you need to create a tabula rasa, to check your footing and sense the new direction.

For now, I am lining out the plants I moved from Peckham and I am looking forward to seeing them in rows in the vegetable plot. It will be easy on the mind while I take stock and see what feels right here in Somerset, and I look forward to not seeing them in combination or as part of a composition. Though I know the land is good ground as the valley was famed for its market gardens in the past, I will need to get to know what grows well here. To do this I will put my energy into vegetables and annuals in the first year and plan for a more intimate ornamental garden, which will eventually encompass the house. This will be close and manageable; the "tended" garden big enough to continue my life-long experimentation with plants, but not be so big that it will detract from the reason for being here.

Moving has been momentous, and troubling at times, but we have never questioned that this has been the right step to take.


.......sounds like he might be good to keep an eye on!!

Having only been quite interested in gardening for a relatively few years I have tried to gather information from a lot of different sources one of which was watching Gardeners World, I must admit I gave up watching it rather quickly.

I did like Monty Don in Mastercrafts & the other programme he did, & will probably give the new series a go...