Beechgrove Garden v Gardeners' World

[Ifailed]

I much prefer Beechgrove for a bit of easy telly watching, it's content is more relevant to me as they seem to split about 50/50 between vegetable and decorative gardening and their plot sizes reflect most people's gardens.

GW just seems so unrelatable now. It's skewed far more towards decorative plants and though aware they introduced viewers videos from their gardens during lockdown and have continued, the vast majority are many times larger than anything most viewers will ever own, beyond the point of aspirational unless you were to win the lottery.

I moved from aberdeenshire to the SE many years ago - I would say it was the equivalent of moving from say Oxford to the S of France. I'm in S Scotland now but half listen to much of GW as I know the plants will not thrive here.

I enjoy both. I find GW really relaxing and the quality of the visual production is much higher. BG is better for basic, realatable tips and the new Head Gardener is good. I do find the absolute obsession with 'tatties' quite bemusing though.

Not keen on Beechgrove.

Love Gardener's World. We really like Adam Frost and Frances ( her style is more my reality and I suspect many others). I like Monty too though- his calmness, appreciation of nature and knowledge and his eye for putting things together and the beauty of Longmeadow. Yes I’m jealous but the knowledge he gives re plants don’t be different if it’s in my plot or his.

I would like to see Frances and Adam have regular spots on GW though. They don’t seem to be on that often.

This is really interesting. I've been watching GW avidly for over 40 years but have lately found myself fast forwarding much of it. I'll try Beechgrove.

My absolute favourite part GW is the visits to nutters, as they're affectionately called in our house. The more passionate they are and the more mundane the object of their passion, the better.

Yes I love the viewers own garden snippets

It featured her saying she was going to tackle it, and then abandoning it for another day.

What annoys me about GW is he never says when he is sowing the seeds he later uses, he just casually mentions he sowed them several weeks ago. That's not alot of use for people now is it Monty? Same for 'i took these cuttings months ago'.

They need to come up with a proper schedule of things they are going to do, make it different each year, and show the things at each stage.

Sadly , I find myself fast-forwarding through GW these days.

Frances is brilliant but some of the home videos are truly dire .

I agree with others who have mentioned this business of bringing out seedlings that were planted a while ago... but meaninglessness to most.

The notion of just keeping things warm or over wintered in a greenhouse is irritating.
So many tomatoes , cucumbers, grapevines etc... that can only grow in a greenhouse is irrelevant to the majority of us .
I live in SE and even so, there aren't too many varieties that thrive outdoors.

What I like about Frances is the lack of perfection. I think there is too much of it in both shows and with climate change, the need to help pollinators etc I think her approach is more relevant now. I think perfection can put people off gardening and make you feel rubbish at it, I also think it leads to too much expense and consumerism that isn’t great for the environment.

As much as I have enjoyed Monty and GW over the years - I think it might be about time for him to hand over. (I thought they were gearing Adam up to take over in his old Barnack house, but then he had to move.)

Monty has been great but the reality is, he has his own habits and way of doing things and pretty much sticks to them - perfectly fine in your own garden but does get a bit repetitive to watch year on year. It made me laugh the other year where he made such a big thing of growing loofers - something different!

I also agree that most of us struggle to relate to growing so much in numerous greenhouses. It all makes for nice entertainment and pretty views, but rarely these days gives me new info for my own gardening.

Francis is great and I think it brilliant to watch someone tackle their first own garden, small garden. Watching Adam's new garden evolve has also been good.

What WAS good, and there should have been much, much more of was Monty's older series about Big Dreams Small Spaces. That was a brilliant program with lots of learning and inspiration and gave Monty the right kind of show for his skills (I think) - which is teaching and mentoring and encouraging people to achieve some great gardens on limited budget and space.

Beechgroove is much more relatable and I also love all the little experiments they do. Some work, some don't. The only issue is that, because they are so far north of me, they are often doing things 1-2 weeks after I've already done them

Watched GW for many , many years but have stopped now as don't like the past few years format .
Like Beechgrove for same reasons as others have commented , better tips , more relatable.

I was struck by something in Frances' piece the other day. She was wandering about her allotment collecting flowers to make an arrangement which I assumed that she was going to plonk in a vase. But no! She went round to the Big House and gave them to her job-share. She actually spoke to another gardener!!
We also had Adam do a 'visit to a nutter' (™ MDBS) in person!!
We all know that gardening is such a friendly hobby - look at the help given on here - but for some reason GW has its presenters wandering lonely as a cloud around their patch, accompanied only by the obligatory dog/cat (which only emphasises the lack of other humans). It's about time we had more interaction.

Absolutely this .
The best bit of GW is others peoples gardens .
I do think GW is more for the decorative ' other room ' type gardeners and BG is for serious soil shakers .

Beechgrove all the way. The new head gardener, Scott, is absolutely brilliant. He explains everything so well.

Carole, George and Brian are very knowledgable, too.

Also Looking forward to Beechgrove’s winter series starting soon.

I always feel strangely bereft when the garden programs stop for winter. It's the very time when we need a little reminder of the spring. And there are so many discussions to be had on the best ways to garden and the latest methods, I feel they are missing a trick.