@Big Blue Sky GW on TV is produced by the BBC. They choose the presenters, features and gardens to be visited.
They sold the rights to the magazine and website years ago and it's now owned and run by a media company which has decided the forum is inconvenient and expensive.
I don't think Monty Don's garden is the best place from which to film and run a mainstream gardening programme as it is so unlike the mainstream of UK gardens in size, style and budget plus his fetish for hedging dividers. However, he's affable and eloquent and that's enough for some.
I'd love to see Adam Frost take it on but that seems unlikely now he's moved back to his old house with a smaller garden for family reasons. We'll just have to wait and see and hope for the best.
Vendée - 20kms from Atlantic coast.
"The price good men (and women) pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men (and women)."
Leave Monty alone - he's better than some of the other GW presenters we've had and his garden doesn't have 'unlimited' space - it's about an acre and was an empty plot turned into a family garden by him and his wife.
Couldn't agree more.
Based in Sussex, I garden to encourage as many birds to my garden as possible.
Honestly I like Monty himself, just find the show a bit annoying. I would really love them to stick with stuff. Couple of times they started some “follow along” planting, but they basically show him planting the seeds and picking the produce…..nothing in between, which honestly is the stuff some of us need help with. Visiting “ inspiration gardens” is again all well and good but not very useful to the majority of gardeners who need inspiration to stop paving over every postage stamp sized green space. What can look nice instead of another driveway?
Marne la vallée, basically just outside Paris 🇫🇷, but definitely Scottish at heart.
I too, like Monty, and, while his garden is significantly larger than most others, if he had an "average" garden, there would be complaints from many that he was unsuited to the job, because he couldn't show enough choices to please people. He has to have a large garden in order to show the different styles of gardening. What he cannot show, is gardening with different types of soil - thus the need for gardens in different areas. It provides a reasonable variety, but will never please everyone.
Some people seem to have short memories. When Monty had his stroke in 2008 and had to leave, the BBC tried a younger presenter line up with Toby Buckland and Alys Fowler. For the new GW they built a garden from scratch showing the viewers how to do it each week, as Geoff Hamilton did. It didn’t work. The show lost viewers in droves. The BBC went to Monty and begged him to come back and rescue the show. So he did and the viewing figures went back to what they were before he left and even increased. I know not everyone likes him but it seems the majority do otherwise he wouldn’t still be doing the show.
@rossdriscoll13 It lost viewers in droves because they tried to make it more like Top Gear than GW. It was appalling! Full of slapdash projects, stupid ideas, no respect for the mainstream viewers and, because it was a rented plot, no ownership so the gardeners didn't much care.
When Geoff H presented he did it on his own land that he'd deliberately bought in order to make separate plots of average size gardens done in different styles for different tastes and abilities. He also used plots there to film his Cottage Garden, ornamental Kitchen Garden and paradise Garden series. That whole space is now managed by his son and is open to the public. On my wishlist to visit.
Monty's garden has some interesting plants and I like his veg and fruit areas but the ornamental part is too claustrophobic for me, closed in as it is with hedges of this and that. It's taken him far too long to abandon, finally, those infested box hedges and topiaries; I can't recall how many times he's re-done the Mound and his paradise garden is not lovely.
He's OK but not the bees knees and he's no use at all to new build gardeners or beginners .
Vendée - 20kms from Atlantic coast.
"The price good men (and women) pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men (and women)."
@Obelixx the trouble is if you are going to make a programme like that, building everything from scratch, people are always going to compare it to what Geoff Hamilton did. It’s never going to work. There was only one Geoff Hamilton. The reason people went back to GW after Monty returned is because they can relate to him. He has no horticultural training, unlike all the other presenters, he is self taught. So he is just like everyone who watches the programme. I’m not having a go at anyone who doesn’t like him as presenter of GW, everyone is entitled to their opinion, however if people don’t like him it’s simple. Don’t watch. The trouble is whoever the presenter is you’re going to have people saying they don’t like him... or her.
Posts
They sold the rights to the magazine and website years ago and it's now owned and run by a media company which has decided the forum is inconvenient and expensive.
I don't think Monty Don's garden is the best place from which to film and run a mainstream gardening programme as it is so unlike the mainstream of UK gardens in size, style and budget plus his fetish for hedging dividers. However, he's affable and eloquent and that's enough for some.
I'd love to see Adam Frost take it on but that seems unlikely now he's moved back to his old house with a smaller garden for family reasons. We'll just have to wait and see and hope for the best.
He has to have a large garden in order to show the different styles of gardening. What he cannot show, is gardening with different types of soil - thus the need for gardens in different areas.
It provides a reasonable variety, but will never please everyone.
When Geoff H presented he did it on his own land that he'd deliberately bought in order to make separate plots of average size gardens done in different styles for different tastes and abilities. He also used plots there to film his Cottage Garden, ornamental Kitchen Garden and paradise Garden series. That whole space is now managed by his son and is open to the public. On my wishlist to visit.
Monty's garden has some interesting plants and I like his veg and fruit areas but the ornamental part is too claustrophobic for me, closed in as it is with hedges of this and that. It's taken him far too long to abandon, finally, those infested box hedges and topiaries; I can't recall how many times he's re-done the Mound and his paradise garden is not lovely.
He's OK but not the bees knees and he's no use at all to new build gardeners or beginners .
But it is to him. We're all different.
Re-doing parts of our gardens is what makes us proper gardeners and gets us out of bed in a morning.
Monty is a far better presenter than Adam will ever be and is the perfect anchor for the show.
I play with plants and soil and sometimes it's successful