Gardeners World - What a shame

[Chumpfriend]

Am I being unreasonable to think that Gardener’s World has jumped the shark?

It’s honestly a travesty of what went before and in no way makes anyone with a modest garden feel capable of creating a garden or delivers any meaningful advice.

There are BBC tropes and messaging rammed down your throat and literally nothing that relates to any ordinary gardener at this time of year.

The Beechwood Garden is a shadow reference to the old GW but I’m so disappointed at such a lost opportunity to make people feel like they can have a go at growing stuff.

Geoff Hamilton may be turning in his grave.

I really see that. It’s almost like they want to discourage us from gardening as we understand it and don’t want to encourage horticulture in its current form.
I get that garden centres and imported plants are problematic but most cultivars were imports at some point. GW could play a really important role - by showing people how to propagate, take cuttings, divide perennials, save seed they’d be making the situation better.
That’s what I felt Geoff Hamilton did well. He gardened on the cheap and made you feel it wasn’t that hard or expensive. Didn’t he once make two gardens on that basis - one posh and one affordable?

I do like GQT and I also fast forward through the walking around bits when they have a ‘post bag edition’ - that’s one thing that I really don’t think works on radio! But I love that the panel are so enthusiastic about solving people’s random garden issues. As well as interest and inspiration, I like the fact that they quite often disagree. It’s not experts laying down the ‘right’ way to do things, they are just sharing the benefit of their experience about what might work and acknowledging people’s different situations and tastes. It’s good humoured and sometimes quite funny, like friends chatting down the pub who are all totally geeky about the same thing.

I’d watch a show called “small, cheap, thriving gardens”. The presenter wouldn’t have a massive potting shed but would have to grow plants on the window sill in their small house.

I have no garden or plants even but listen to GQT and watch GW, except anything re Chelsea flower show. I prefer to see gardening on the smaller scale. I know lots of gardener like a lawn but it isn’t shown much because it is about everything being good for the environment. Maybe all the borders can attract wildlife and have a lawn.

I don’t mind the specialist growers or ones who have something like the National hyacinths collection.

However the large gardens are unrealistic. The idea that this huge fountain can inspire how a typical gardener can have a water feature is a bit ridiculous. Maybe for a different programme just showing gardens like the ones on over winter in the GW slot. I

Monty seems to use seed trays and plastic pots he has had for years, while saying new ones are bad for the environment. How are new gardeners supposed to get started?

Me too. Like Monty. Enjoy aspirational gardens or allotments..tons of beauty to enjoy

Yeah it’s worse than that. Even cultivars are a bit taboo atm. You have to go straight native, preferably seed bank to local area. It’s all gone a bit to far and I was pleased to see rhs did a state of gardening publication this year. I think people are realising if they don’t get control of this quick then that’s horticulture gone. Professionally availability of less common cultivars is already down because of BNG.

And it doesn’t actually make sense ecologically. But ecologists were trained to conserve. Most don’t know or have ever studied garden ecology.

It’s actually a real worry. I could go on for days about this.

I got into GW during lockdown and loved the videos people sent in of their gardens. I’d love a show that was just 30 full minutes a week of gardening enthusiasts showing off their gardens.

I’d love a show that was just 30 full minutes a week of gardening enthusiasts showing off their gardens.

Then it would just be a garden show. I want gardening; the how, the why. I want the failures and why they failed. How do you turn a new build from a load of rubble with a layer of inadequate top soil, how to rescue an older garden that's been untouched/unloved.
It'll take time, effort, planning and research. Maybe that's the issue, it's easier and cheaper to send a film crew and presenter on a nice sunny day for 10 minutes about an established garden, tended by professionals, set in rolling countryside with a view of the sea, rather than an Amazon warehouse or the M6.

I don't think I've ever seen, without spending a fortune:
How to make a start in a new build
How to work out north facing versus north aspect and plant for either
How to properly install waterbutts and store water for the summer
How to manage bad soil
How to tackle an overgrown garden you just moved into
How to set up small seed growing space in a tiny house with cats
How to choose your colour palette for big impact in small spaces
How to make large amounts of compost, quickly
How to dispose of huge amounts of waste without just chucking it into a bin

Beechgrove is excellent for straightforward advice especially for the north of the country, wash out summers, short growing season etc. And how to garden cheaply. And a world away from those garden makeover programmes.

but I’ll defend GW, I sat and watched it last week in a little cocoon of happiness and gentleness and took away some tips on pruning and sowing for my very small, much loved, garden. It was a happy colourful hour and so far removed from the awful news etc.

Beechgrove is for the practical stuff, gardeners world is for the beautifully shot features. I like both.

Me too...I went to see him at a talk at Capel Manor and he was great. Easy to listen to, informative and relatable.

I no longer watch it. It dumbed down during Covid and has never recovered.

I still watch it, mainly for the escapism. I like the variety in each episode -. it's a bit of feel good telly.

But I also love walking around the gardens in the open garden scheme, or RHS Wisley etc, even though I have a small terraced house garden and a wild allotment.

Whole point is to get ideas to inspure you to make the best use/have fun with what space you have.

Oh, and love the advice above about plants either have a choice to live or die! I always remember Percy Thrower basically saying - plants want to grow, don't mess with them too much, just give them space and time to do their thing.

I agree. The smaller gardens are my favourite bit but I also like seeing the larger, professional ones. No idea what you mean by messaging.

I find it a really odd mix of dumbed down and, as someone else said, 'instagram' style aspirational stuff. Disclaimer, haven't watched last night's but ...

I don't mind Longmeadow at all. I can happily enter into the fantasy that I too have however many acres it is to potter around in, with a huge staff helping me. That's fine so long as it's actually about gardening in a big garden, not pretending we all have big gardens - there is a difference! What annoys me is:

1. repeated visits to some utterly tedious person with the national collection of whatever, who blathers on about how obsessed they are by the different varieties, but has absolutely nothing useful to say about growing them or why anyone else would like them. If I wanted to mix with people who just like collecting for the sake of it, I'd chat to stamp collectors or trainspotters.

2. babyish advice that's been repeated over and over about how to sow seeds. If we're going to have advice sections, these do need to be relevant to how most of us garden. I like Frances and Rekha for this, but Rekha, especially, doens't get enough screen time.

3. patronising segments about utter shite. Sue Kent is bad for this - she wittered on and on about a show garden that a child could have knocked together. Carol Klein can be awful too.

I would like there to be at least a few bits in each show that are genuinely new/interesting tips. Not endless lectures about peat (yes, important, but yes, we get the message now!), but for example, let's have someone demonstrate how to 'Niff' a rose, because that is fairly new. Let's have someone tell us what new varieties they're excited about and why - not a whole collection, just a couple of interesting new cultivars we might want to plant. Let's see someone actually making a garden from scratch (which I thought both Frances and Rekha were going to get to do, but we've barely seen it). I love Dan Pearson's blog about his garden and I'd totally go for more of that style.

I'm giving up on it now, I've stopped watching a couple of times before but always gone back but have to say that over the last year or so, I've realised I haven't paid as much attention to the episodes as I used to.

It is boring at times and the massive gardens that are often featured with people who obviously don't have any money worries or only have a small back garden to work with means it doesn't hold my interest at all.

I really did love the short viewers garden segments, a couple usually each episode. They are the only interesting bits on there I find. Bring them back and I might start watching again.

I’d love to see this list too! Plus adding wildlife into a normal sized garden( not a massive plot in the Cotswolds), more problems like gardening on clay soil, dry shade, how to treat black spot, gardens from nothing on tiny budgets, upcycling ( as opposed to lorry deliveries of bespoke hazel hurdles, looking at you Monty), more how to do things( I still don’t know how to take cuttings successfully), less focused gardeners on viewers single plant obsession, more real smaller gardens.

I do find it a bit similar to Instagram- you know the character filled million pound houses/ “ cottages” that would look good anyway and more so if you’re throwing £££ at it. I could have an amazing garden if I had a million pound plot and a gardener same as I could have an amazing kitchen if I lived in a character filled cottage and paid £££ for a kitchen designer. It’s kind of fake.

I love people making great spaces with what they have, on a budget and upcycling. Not professionals. I want to see more of that on GW, overcoming big gardening hurdles, mistakes and skills coupled with some beautiful spaces small, medium and occasionally big.

I love Francis( her small more realistic wild plot), Frosty and I do like Monty. His zones are beautiful and his eye and introduction to plants and some skills are useful however they really do need to include more of the above and definitely less mahoosive designer, gardener maintained plots.

This thread is really interesting.
You have one poster saying "GW could play a really important role - by showing people how to propagate, take cuttings, divide perennials, save seed they’d be making the situation better." and another saying, "babyish advice that's been repeated over and over about how to sow seeds."

It shows how hard it is to please everyone.

GQT is brilliant. You can go to see it being recorded. When I went Bob Flowerdew was on the panel and it was a hoot. The live session was much funnier and bawdier than the show you hear on the radio - in large part down to Bob.

Yes.. 'jumped the shark' what does it mean?? Ive seen it used twice on the last 2 threads ive opened this morning. Is this a new thing or have I been hiding under a rock for months. ??

I've not seen last night's episode but it is usually the one thing I will sit down to watch in real time.

The small garden segments on Your Garden Made Perfect really showed how to transform a space - but maybe not "garden" - on a budget, and Beechgrove definitely had a recent repeating segment on gardening in a new build. Perhaps they should put all them all into one dedicated programme.

The GW segments on tropical gardens, or pot gardening are obviously filmed when the gardens are at their best. What would be more interesting would be "through the seasons' to see what the garden is like with no huge banana leaves.

I find it funny how Monty doesn't disguise how much he hated doing his Chelsea garden. Didn't he hint he won't even be presenting Chelsea this year?

Ok, but ...

I'm fine with showing people how to propagate etc.

When I say 'babyish advice' I mean Monty taking out one of his 93 different sieves, giving us the 'peat free compost' lecture, sifting soil in his massive shed and tapping it down as if he's playing pat-a-cake, then reminding us to water seeds after we plant them, in case we weren't sure on that bit.

All the information is on the back of the fucking seed packet.

OTOH, I don't mind when he does cuttings, because it's usually advice you don't immediately have to hand when you do the job - like, pop them in a plastic bag; cut the leaves in half to stop them losing too much moisture. I also can't recall being annoyed by him describing how to split perennials and I'm sure I've seen that. I know how to do these things, but I also know tons of people don't and it doesn't feel daft.

It's the difference between a segment mainly filmed so we can see lots of beautiful shots of Monty's shed, Monty's heritage soil sieve, Monty's hands dusted lightly with instagrammable soil ... and a segment that is primarily about delivering info that some viewers might not know.

All the information is on the back of the fucking seed packet.

To those viewers sowing seed for the first time this is exactly what they need to see.

Sure - so let's do it, perhaps rather infrequently - without all the poncey shots of sieves/sheds/Monty. Right?

Those segments are long for what they are.

If you're actually sowing seed for the first time, why not show someone doing it in normal conditions, like most of us do it?

If you do want to go on, I'd be interested to hear about it!

I have a background in ecology (but don't work in that area, so I'm not a very good ecologist!) And I'm interested in getting more nature into my garden. I generally try to grow a few veggies and let the rest of the garden run a bit wild. But, honestly, this has been quite unsatisfying. We're going to redo all the fencing this year and with that I think we have the opportunity to make a more "gardeny" garden. With my background I've been feeling I should go all native, but secretly I think all the exciting cultivars are interesting too. Anyway, I'm interested to hear your thoughts!