New Gardeners’ World ‘Head Gardener’ announced!

The long awaited news of the next national Head Gardener has recently been announced – he will be 38 year old nurseryman and landscape gardener Toby Buckland, dubbed an ‘ethical gardener’ and ‘hugely likable and enthusiastic’ – Monty’s wellies are a big thing to step into, so I wish him well.

Toby won a gold for his garden made from recycled materials at Gardeners’ World Live this year, so I am pleased to see the Geoff Hamilton tradition continuing in organic gardening making the most of what is to hand – its certainly the way we do things around here – very little gets wasted and what does go goes to Freecycle!

I am a tad disappointed not to see a woman at the GW helm – as it was certainly time, and there are lots of us about, lets face it. Alys would have done a grand job, I’m sure.

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Alys for Head Gardener!

I am SO with my garden right now, as months of planning and loving tending are coming to manifestation. Things are coming up everywhere, the peas are flowering, the potatoes are burgeoning, the salads being picked, tomatoes potted on, courgettes and runner beans planted out, broad beans making pods and apples fruiting. Whilst I am still taking maximum organic preventative measures in the form of slug pubs, bird decoys and soap sprays, I am now resolved to the fact that the Earth, in the form of slugs, snails, birds and insects, will take something back. In the end it will be me!!

On matters of mortality, I am still gutted about Monty Don leaving Gardeners World, and have noticed that the BBC blog records similar dismay at Monty’s departure and concern for his health. I just read Alys Fowler’s (Berryfields’ Head Gardener) blog, and it moved me to tears. Just the words “Monty has gone. The swallows have moved into the tool shed’ were enough. ‘The Mighty ‘D” is such a touching and poignant posting.

Like a lot of Gardeners World fans, I think its time for a woman as national Head Gardener. No-one mentions Alys (though Carol gets a lot of votes), but it struck me that she is perfect for the job. She has Monty’s gentle affability, youth, pleasant good looks, is very well qualified and has a quirky little dog to entertain and beguile. I agree that Chris Beardshaw is also very easy on the eye, but I do think that the time is right for us gardening girls to strike out. So Alys – go girl!

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Get well soon, Monty

Well – it seems that my ‘missing Monty Don’ postings were a bit prophetic. Its just been announced that he has suffered from a stroke and will be stepping down from the Gardener’s World Head Gardener job with the BBC. His shoes will be extremely difficult to fill, but I really wish him well for a very speedy recovery. What more can we say but get well soon, Monty.

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Missing Monty Don Part 2

Okay, now that I am on this ‘descriptive writing about Monty Don’ trip, I am finding all sorts of waxing lyricals about him. He really captures the imagination, doesn’t he – that’s because there is something of the Earth about him. After I posted last night’s whimsy, Carol announced that Monty is having a break – hope he is okay, bless him. I will look forward to seeing him back on our screens soon!

Here’s an extract from an interview he did with Jane Wheatley in the Times, who has also cottoned on to that Hardy connection – we English love our Wessexness:

The tall, burly man kneeling in a potato patch rubbing friable soil through his fingers as if he were making pastry is terribly good-looking in a Lawrentian sort of way — or Thomas Hardyish, possibly; anyway you wouldn’t shoo him out of your kitchen garden if you came across him there. “You want to earth up your spuds,” he says to the camera hovering over his head on the end of a long jib. “Keep them protected till frosts are over.” He has curly hair, sleepy eyes and dirt under his fingernails; his dandyish costume ­ corduroy trousers, button braces, leather jerkin — has just a sufficient patina of use about it to escape parody. This, we think, is evolved nurturing man, anchored to the land, taking the long view while the rest of us are tossed around like jetsam.

I love the bit about being anchored in the land – that is such a good, good thought, and reminds me how important groundedness is – we need groundedness when we all at sea with the world. Thank goodness for Monty…

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Missing Monty Don

You’ve got to take your hat off to AA Gill, the Times’ TV critic. Whilst he may have been rather unforgivably panning Monty Don’s Around the World in 80 Gardens, the way he describes Monty is a hoot. It really is such a classic that I have to include it here, where mostly I usually only record my own whimsy… (and I thought I was guilty of purple passages!)

Monty is the reincarnation of Hardy’s Gabriel Oak (if fictional characters can be reincarnated). Whereas Alan Titch-marsh, for all his rambling, is still the evocation of suburban patios, Monty is redolent of a wilder, more ancient throb. He has an ancient boskiness, a Celtic spirit – the green man. He comes from a preindustrial land of peasantry, a place of half-remembered folk song and Catweazle. I’m awestruck by his wild, set-aside, organic beauty, that perfect unkempt meadow of hair, the charmingly lopsided five-bar mouth and all the Bodenish foliage of corduroy and faded cotton, the solid daisy roots and manly man bag. He is retro, eco, postmodern: a difficult look to pull off, but Monty does so with gusto. He is the mulchy, double-dug fantasy of a great many of the female audience, who dream of being espaliered up against a warm garden wall.

Well… he may have a certain point, but what tosh!

But where is Monty? He has disappeared from Gardener’s World and good old Carol Klein is taking about him as though he has passed on to garden nirvana. It’s ‘Monty always intended’ and ‘Monty wanted us to have a go” etc. GW just isn’t the same without him, and its time he got back, wherever he is!

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Gardeners World Again!

I so love Gardeners World – when it’s not on I long for it, and when it is I eschew any social activity going to settle myself down in front of it on a Friday evening. It has an odd effect – something between an adrenaline rush and a mug of hot chocolate – but gives me such a warm feel-good factor that gets my weekend in the garden off to a fantastic start. So I was thrilled to see that, last night, I got a whole hour of the exquisite pleasure.

I really enjoyed Joe’s allotment piece – being an avid veggie gardener it was fascinating viewing. It did make me glad though that I have my very own kitchen garden paradise at home and don’t have to set off somewhere else for the weekend. It was very funny to watch the reactions of the allotment stalwarts to Joe’s ‘Chelsea Flower Show’ raised bed arrangement – you know, Joe, they do have a point – Geoff Hamilton of blessed memory didn’t make them rectangular and 4 feet wide for nothing!

At 8.30, I thought, great, now I have 30 minutes of Monty and Alys at Berryfields with a bit of magazine style cutting to various short clips of interest. But alas – what is going on, BBC???! Granted, we get an interesting and engaging, but largely repeated 25 minutes of Carol Kline on propagation and green gardening. Don’t get me wrong, I think that CAT at Machynlleth is fab, and always welcome the ‘green’ view – but we only got a cursory glance at what is going on at Berryfields, and that is my favourite bit!!

Monty promises to be back next week, but BBC – you had better hold him to it!!

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Quote of the Day

I love Monty Don – I thought that no-one could ever take the special place in my heart occupied by Geoff Hamilton of blessed memory – but Monty has such a gentle passion for the earth about him. As everything is peeping above the surface now wanting to push upwards and grow, here’s a quote of Monty’s I liked – in a very straightforward way it speaks to me of the inexorable movement of the seasons and of the release that comes when we give in to the majestic flow of life:

“You cannot cheat nature. You can’t lie to a pig that needs feeding or a plant that’s got to be grown“

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