Big mistake!! We loved Monty and had real reservations when he left. However Toby has surpassed our expectations with a natural ability to enthuse the audience with his genuine unpretencious approach to gardening. Alys was the perfect foil and together they provided a sense of humour and fun which previous series lacked. Really sorry format is changing and feel this is a regressive step
Well what an awful end to the year and a dismal start to the new - the end of gardening as we love it. Well done beeb you have gone and spoiled a real gem. Never wanted costume jewels from monty - prefered the real diamonds that you showed us i.e Toby and Alys.
I, for one, will be VERY disappointed that you are RETURNING to a previous presenter. This is an unimaginative and backward step. How about giving a youngster, fresh from agricultural college a chance? I am fed up with YESTERDAY's people populating the television. It is time for some NEW BLOOD. I won't be watching.
Well, it's wonderful news that Monty is better & well enough to continue where he left off and that we will get to see him in his own garden - that will be a real treat. Us gardeners love having a nose round everyone else's little plots of heaven! And well done to Toby and Alys for stepping into te breach when Monty was taken ill. It would be absolutely wonderful if the programme could be extended to a full hour and bring in people such as Roy Lancaster and others in the next generatio (or two)like him who are almost beside themselves with enthusiasm.
Out with old & in with the new is sometimes a good thing, but also if something works well, change for change's sake isn't actually progress.
It wasn't Toby & Alys's fault that the programme seemed to lose it's way a little, but there were also some refreshing new things in there.
Why don't the BBC take this opportunity to bring us an extra gardening treat with Toby & Alys, in a whole new show? Most definitely NOT in competion with GW, but to compliment & broaden our horizons over the garden gate?
In these days of credit crunch, we won't all be able to fling pots(no pun intended!) of money on our backyards and acerages and will most likely be spending more of our precious time at home in our gardens.
Some of us will need advice and/or inspiration, some of us like traditional, quirky, romantic, formal, exotic, two rows of dahlias & the odd auntyrrhinum(as my grandad used to say) - the possibilities are endless.
I'm sure the Beeb could harness this as a relly good opportunity, to provide something really useful, for such a time as this for almost everyone and negate the apparent need for unkind & uneccessarily vitriolic character assassinations of people just trying to do their job in their own way. Just as all our own gardening styles & approach may not be everyone else's cuppa tea.
I am very sorry to see Toby go as he was great and I was inspired to copy several of his ideas - I haven't done that since Geoff Hamilton died. Please Beeb give us Toby and Alys on their own programme. I enjoy learning new ideas from bright young people and do not want to just depend on books for inspiration.
So sorry to see Monty Don returning to GW. A more self-opinionated egotistical presenter you will never find. He is always right and never wrong. He spent the last few programmes when he was presenting undoing everything that the other presenters had done. I was sceptical about Toby but thought he settled in well. I'm sure he is just as knowledgeable as MD (probably more so) but he never talked down to the viewers. And if it's also true that Rachel de Thame will be returning then that's also a retrograde step. She is better suited to a catwalk not a garden (other than sitting in it). We want a gardener, not someone who wears gloves all the time in case she gets her hands and nails dirty. I for one will no longer be watching the programme - you have lost a regular viewer. Someone with Carol Klein's enthusiasm and knowledge should be offered the job. It's time the people who make these decisions were moved on.
What's gloves got to do with anything? I've been gardening since I was old enough to hold a trowel. I nearly always wear glove when I'm weeding & planting as the neighbourhood has a high cat population & in spite of having a dog, they all seem to come & poop in our garden!
Not everyone has to get muck up to their elbows & wreck a perfectly good pair of jeans every time a bit of gardening is done - even the heavy duty stuff. We don't have to roll around in soil to be good at it, I'm sure I can't be alone in that?
It is always the same when presenters change, it took me a while to get used to Toby, now it is all change again. I don't have a problem with Monty coming back again, but, like Moss(comment 139) I would like to see Toby and Alys do a programme of their own. Even though more people seem to be getting the 'gardening bug' it needs something to attract younger people, especially to struggling village gardening groups.
I don't really know why I am writing this as my blog was deleted. So much for us all having our say! Now comments have been judiciously pruned could someone tell me the proportion of positive to negative comments before so many were removed? To the blogger who said they are looking forward to being in someone's garden again, surely this depends on whether you like the style or not. I do not think that MD will put features in his garden to please us, but to please himself and I did not like the style of Berryfields, so you will lose me.The late great Geoff, to whom we look back with the greatest affection started off in a small garden then bought 7 acres of farmland and TAUGHT us how to garden, giving us so much pleasure in the process. There was room to develop a variety of small gardens which would encourage us all to try our own hand, no matter what size the plot or how little the budget. The viewing figures have gone down, in my opinion because we live in a dumbed down society where sensationalism, fashion and novelty are the gods, factors which affect society and not just gardens. Changing the presenter won't change that. The bbc is supposed to be a public service broadcaster not a filler of tingling ears with the passing fancies. Move forward not back, but do it in a way which gives people the tools to choose or at least to perceive their own style. Education could be defined as giving people the tools to find out for themselves, so they can make informed choices, creating true originality and spontaneity not the "lets all dumb down and copy someone else's grand design" mush handed out by so many of our TV programmes, because we are not taught to value our own judgements and take a chance. Surely Geoff's legacy(see Paradise Gardens) was to teach us that no garden is wrong, but each are different and should be an expression of our individuality. Come on BBC treat us like adults! Give us a programme that makes us think not just react or be reactionary.
Posts
We loved Monty and had real reservations when he left. However Toby has surpassed our expectations with a natural ability to enthuse the audience with his genuine unpretencious approach to gardening. Alys was the perfect foil and together they provided a sense of humour and fun which previous series lacked.
Really sorry format is changing and feel this is a regressive step
I won't be watching.
Out with old & in with the new is sometimes a good thing, but also if something works well, change for change's sake isn't actually progress.
It wasn't Toby & Alys's fault that the programme seemed to lose it's way a little, but there were also some refreshing new things in there.
Why don't the BBC take this opportunity to bring us an extra gardening treat with Toby & Alys, in a whole new show? Most definitely NOT in competion with GW, but to compliment & broaden our horizons over the garden gate?
In these days of credit crunch, we won't all be able to fling pots(no pun intended!) of money on our backyards and acerages and will most likely be spending more of our precious time at home in our gardens.
Some of us will need advice and/or inspiration, some of us like traditional, quirky, romantic, formal, exotic, two rows of dahlias & the odd auntyrrhinum(as my grandad used to say) - the possibilities are endless.
I'm sure the Beeb could harness this as a relly good opportunity, to provide something really useful, for such a time as this for almost everyone and negate the apparent need for unkind & uneccessarily vitriolic character assassinations of people just trying to do their job in their own way. Just as all our own gardening styles & approach may not be everyone else's cuppa tea.
Happy New Year & Happy Gardening!
Not everyone has to get muck up to their elbows & wreck a perfectly good pair of jeans every time a bit of gardening is done - even the heavy duty stuff. We don't have to roll around in soil to be good at it, I'm sure I can't be alone in that?
Even though more people seem to be getting the 'gardening bug' it needs something to attract younger people, especially to struggling village gardening groups.
Now comments have been judiciously pruned could someone tell me the proportion of positive to negative comments before so many were removed?
To the blogger who said they are looking forward to being in someone's garden again, surely this depends on whether you like the style or not. I do not think that MD will put features in his garden to please us, but to please himself and I did not like the style of Berryfields, so you will lose me.The late great Geoff, to whom we look back with the greatest affection started off in a small garden then bought 7 acres of farmland and TAUGHT us how to garden, giving us so much pleasure in the process. There was room to develop a variety of small gardens which would encourage us all to try our own hand, no matter what size the plot or how little the budget. The viewing figures have gone down, in my opinion because we live in a dumbed down society where sensationalism, fashion and novelty are the gods, factors which affect society and not just gardens. Changing the presenter won't change that. The bbc is supposed to be a public service broadcaster not a filler of tingling ears with the passing fancies. Move forward not back, but do it in a way which gives people the tools to choose or at least to perceive their own style. Education could be defined as giving people the tools to find out for themselves, so they can make informed choices, creating true originality and spontaneity not the "lets all dumb down and copy someone else's grand design" mush handed out by so many of our TV programmes, because we are not taught to value our own judgements and take a chance. Surely Geoff's legacy(see Paradise Gardens) was to teach us that no garden is wrong, but each are different and should be an expression of our individuality. Come on BBC treat us like adults! Give us a programme that makes us think not just react or be reactionary.