When we saw advance publicity on Monty Don’s new ‘British Gardens’ TV series, we wondered how long we would have to wait to see it here. We are old, you see, so it took our younger gardener Zach to alert us to the fact that it is readily available online. We watched it on You Tube (just go to their home page and type in Monty Don) but it is probably available on other streaming services too. It is worth watching.
Love him or not, Monty Don knows his stuff and this is not just a happy jaunt around various gardens – sixty of them, I believe, in an attempt to define what characterises British gardens. That comes to about twelve gardens per hour of TV time so some are once over lightly but Monty’s thoughtful commentary and analysis is what knits it all together. I imagine there is fierce debate over his selection of gardens in UK gardening communities but all I want to say on that is that out of sixty gardens, there were only two that made us raise our eyebrows and wonder at their inclusion.
We have a great deal of respect for the English gardening tradition. The standards set there are high, due in no small part to the fact that gardening and working with plants is a respected profession with high skill levels. I did a cursory trawl through the memory banks and photo files and was a bit surprised to find that on our trips, we have seen more than seventy gardens in Britain, both great and small, so we are not inexperienced. We had been to quite a number that Monty Don included in his five part series which added to our viewing interest.
He started in the north, in Scotland and Northumberland which is an area that is unfamiliar to us. The only times I have been to Scotland were before I started gardening. But the gardens in the far north with low winter light levels and exposed to North Sea storms are very different to our gardening experience. Starting a garden there might be akin to starting a garden on Chatham Island – not for the faint-hearted.
Episode two was somewhat poignant for us. In the north of England with a foray over to Northern Ireland, it was more familiar territory. We had another trip planned in 2020 which had to be cancelled due to Covid and that included some of the gardens in this episode – Lowther Castle, Levens Hall, Nigel Dunnett’s private garden and Chatsworth. I wish we had managed to get to see them in person but there comes a point in life when realism means accepting things that will not happen after all. Other highlights of this episode include a local competitive gooseberry show – British eccentricity at its very best – and landscape architect Tom Stuart-Smith talking with Monty Don at Chatsworth. When I had Chatsworth on our list of places to visit, it was primarily to see the area designed and executed by Dan Pearson. I didn’t even know that there were major new borders that are the work of Tom Stuart Smith so that would have been a bonus.
Episode three covers the area from Wales to Norfolk, four is in London and the Home Counties and five is in south. There were quite a few gardens we had been to and we were waiting with anticipation for Monty Don’s visit to Wildside, one of our most favourite gardens of all. The interview between Don and Keith Wiley was fine, as were Don’s interpretative comments. The timing of the visit was not. Wildside is predominantly perennials full of flowers, colour and interesting plant combinations but on screen it just looked, well, green. Mark’s comment was “Could they have picked a time to visit when there was less colour in the garden?”
There is enough meat in this series to make us want to view it a second time. I think I am coming to a slightly different conclusion as to what sets British gardening apart but that will have to wait until after the second viewing. Also thoughts on what the Brits are calling ‘rewilding’, what makes a garden film or photograph well as opposed to being in the garden in person and how much they are talking about the impact of climate change which many people are resolutely ignoring in this country.
I am still wondering about the gooseberry show where the top award went to the heaviest gooseberry. What I want to know is how they guarded against cheating. Is it possible to increase the weight of one’s show gooseberry by nefarious means, maybe injecting the fruit with additional water just before tabling it at the show? This may remain one of life’s little mysteries.
Tikorangi The Jury Garden 
Thank you, great article as always.
We are currently enjoying this series of television programmes as they are presented “live’. Monty Don is at his very best, in my opinion, when visiting and introducing gardens. This is his strength and far surpasses his weekly appearances on BBC’s Gardener’s World. The programme where he visits Keith Wiley’s garden has not yet been aired for us (we didn’t know of their availably on YouTube) and I look forward to it. We visited shortly after he had begun his work there and my thoughts were that he was a total nutcase!!! Re the rewilding – which I presume refers to the lady who had changed her walled garden to a mediterranean- style planting – I felt it was a load of rubbish, an attempt to put present-day in-favour labels onto something where they don’t apply and aren’t relevant, a case of jumping on a bandwagon despite a complete lack of fit.
If you get a chance to go back to Keith Wiley’s garden, go and see it now. We have been twice and planned a third visit because we find it so exciting. When we visited The Garden House nearby in 2009, the Quarry Garden was one of the most magical little gardens we had seen and we found out later that was Keith’s work. I need to watch the ‘rewilding’ of the walled garden at Knepp Castle again. What did you make of Waltham Place which I think was in the same episode? We visited it and to this day, I am still not certain whether it is a case of the emperor’s new clothes or not but we still remember it and think about it ten years later so it is certainly thought provoking. The walled garden neither of us liked was the one that is planted out like nursery stock beds. I agree it is Monty Don at his best but it does surprise me that he doesn’t peronally visit all the gardens before he films there for a show of this calibre.
Re Waltham Place: There was an interview with the gardener where he outlined the approach to gardening there and I thought it was the greatest heap of rubbish I had heard in a long time. He was doing very little; leaving plants, weeds included, have their own way and the putting a cloak of biodiversity and catering for wildlife etc etc on it all when really it just looked to me like a gardener who was too damn lazy to get out there and do a bit of work. It was a pretense, a bluff, an attempt to pull the wool over viewer’s eyes. Rubbish!
I am not so harsh in my judgement, Paddy. I think Waltham Place sits more in the conceptual garden genre – and that the concept is more important to the owners than the aesthetics.
If memory serves me correctly, the concept was to create a garden suited to nature, to allow self-seeding, with minimal interference. However, the project began by bringing in loads and loads of old bricks, stones etc – a complete destruction of the properties of the soil in the walled garden, something created over generations. The concept struck me more as an excuse from the gardeners to avoid a bit of work, a level of bull…t beyond the beyonds!
I think you are confusing Knepp Castle with Waltham?
I’ll have to search out the programme again.
Thank you for this Abbie. I too thought we’d be waiting a year (in Australia) for Monty Don’s latest series! At least! Just love visiting English gardens! This is the next best thing though.
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Hello Abbie
Thanks for the tip about the latest Monty Don Series. I will definitely try and find it. Trouble is by the time I come in from the garden myself, itâs late, Iâm exhausted (more than I ever used to be), eat something and go to bed! We donât even get non-gardening rainy days much any more. Such a different climate here in Canterbury, from beautiful Taranaki! The sun shines mercilessly on, drying up those poor wilting plants ad infinitum!! You probably think that sounds like heaven, but even heaven has itâs drawbacks, and sometimes I think itâs not worth growing anything here but cacti and succulents
I have friends who have just come back from Taranaki and raved about it, which made me think of you!! Itâs always good to read what you have to say re gardens, as so much of it I can identify with despite the difference in climate and geography.
Iâm not sure how to comment from your website, dummy that I am, so Iâm doing an email reply I instead. Keep up the good work!
Cheers
Robyn Kilty
Hi Robyn, well you managed to post this as a comment, not an email! We are unusually hot and dry here this summer which is starting to feel very limiting. We need more rain! All the best, Abbie
Well – fancy that – I must have pressed the right buttons after all!
And while you’ve been basking in sunshine, we’ve had the rainiest and cloudiest summer ever! I haven’t had to get the hose out once this summer!! I have been busy in my garden because I have a garden visit today, and it’s looking cloudy and threatening again!!
But after the visit I will definitely be on the job to find Monty!
Robyn xxx
I hope the garden visit went really well. XXX