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've not seen such a busy thread in the Gardening topic since I joined a year or so ago. Everyone feels quite differently - it's almost as if GW is trying to cater to all of us simultaneously 😉

I love the people with national collections, though they don't usually do a good job of interviewing them. I feel gardening and horticulture would be all the poorer without the nerdy specialists. Someone in my family has a large collection of succulents (cacti, lithops, agave) mostly from Central and South America, and it's really lovely to hear him talk about his passion.

I’m so new to GW that this is fascinating to me — it’s like talking to people reminiscing about the Blitz.😀

The wood violet grower did go on a bit, I felt…

See I prefer Alan. I haven’t watched GW for ages but follow both on Instagram. I always think Monty is a bit chippy. Alan is a warm hug.

Id also like
How to work out if you have decent drainable soil
How to conduct a 1m square insect or plant survey
Definitely how to ID weeds and plants at the seedling stage
How to actually grow a wildflower patch and manage it properly
How often and how best to water during a drought
How to actually dig out perennial weeds
What a perennial weed is and why you cant just put a piece of cardboard down and it will all go away

It's a bit like the new David Attenborough series," secret gardens".
Sir David,I love you,but we dont all have acres of garden surrounding our water mill,and wildlife such as otters and heron in the back garden! I was hoping for something more relatable.

I'd totally be up for 'I have a heliotrope infestation in my garden, and the roots are like submarine cables -- is there anything I can do, or should I just ignore my garden until it actually starts coming in the windows?'

How to make and set up a wormery for fifteen New English Pounds and collect worms for it for free
How to make bug habitats in the garden
Why No Dig on top of Bindweed just feeds the Bindweed and creates a monster
Why No Dig is bloody expensive if you haven't made a shit ton of compost before you start
How to fit out a polytunnel or greenhouse with raised beds without wasting space and minimising trip hazards
Why using fresh chipped wood is not a good idea under expensive compost
How to mend polytunnel rips, tears or replace a greenhouse glass pane
Advantages and disadvantges and costs of greenhouses, coldframes and polytunnels
why you should never put a greenhouse or polytunnel up without planning how you intend to water it all summer
How to grow veg and have a summer holiday

I think that part of the problem with GW is that they show the better sort of garden, they don't show the problem garden (that we all have).
It would be more useful if they had a section like a visual GQT: somebody with a real garden presents a real problem (that we all have) and then gets a solution (or several solutions).
We don't need Monty wasting airtime showing us for the billionth time how to plant seeds. He just needs to point us towards the mini-tutorial on the website.
I feel that the programme generally doesn't do enough on design (although Adam does), it is too fixated on plants.

I also wonder if the problem lies in BBC Directing guidelines. It was noticeable when Top Gear changed all its presenters that the programme still remained pretty much the same. I wonder if GW is too samey and boring because the presenters aren't allowed to inject too much of their own personality or gardening views (whereas GQT loves a difference of opinion).

My copy of Geoff Hamilton's Ornamental Kitchen Garden
is very well thumbed.

It would be good if GW could focus on ideas that would work in normal sized gardens.

I used to have a lot of wildlife in my garden, but since both neighbours destroyed all the cover in their gardens (one laid to lawn and the other bare earth) the hedgehogs and more are gone.

I agree it dumbed down during Covid. We do still watch it occasionally (DH more than me), but I really don't want to see a myriad of short snippets of other people's gardens. We both adore Monty though and treasure a copy of his The Prickotty Bush written years back ❤️

Otoh, I'm happy to see the 'stately home' gardens as these are inspirational imo. We recently downsized from a 0.5 acre rural garden we'd created from scratch, to a walled courtyard garden by the sea which we're trying to make more interesting than a load of grey paving devoid of plants we found on completion day! I can still pick up ideas from huge gardens in the same way I do wandering around a stately home garden in real life. Plus they're a real feast for the eyes - but maybe I'm just an escapist!

However, I agree there's too much emphasis on planting seeds. I'm more interested in the design side of things - but not in a Charlie Dimmock sort of way!

As for a garden show presented by Stacey Solomon, on the lines of Sort Your Life Out - that would have me reaching for the off button on the remote quicker than you can say Joe Swash (can't stand him either 🤮)

See, I actually had the national Bindweed collection in my allotment, but I didn’t see GW running up to cover that for the programme.

One problem I have is that even when Monty does the “relatable” bits I have no idea if his somewhat handwavy “if you don’t have a spare greenhouse for this, just put it on a sunny windowsill” will work because no one actually films a house with the windowsills festooned with seed trays. Will I not be able to draw the curtains for 3 weeks? Can you fit a whole packet of 50 seeds on a sunny windowsill or should I only sow half? Where am I supposed to harden them off if my garden isn’t much bigger than Monty’s windowsills? Will my house look like a Brighton wanker who’s made houseplants their personality/life partner if I put seed trays on the windowsills?

Last year I sowed the sunflowers into old Costa cardboard cups because those are much easier to line up on a windowsill and then move outside without spilling soil everywhere.

Also some Real Talk about what’s worth bothering with from seed (I only have so many windowsills) and what’s worth saving up and spending £15-20 on a big healthy pot from the garden centre. How do I tell what’s good and what’s a rip off in the garden centre? What’s worth paying them to get to 1-2-3 years old rather than doing myself?

My problem with Monty is that his soil is so clearly prepared by minions.

The rest of us have to cope with weeds coming under the fence from next door

Get some gardening books. When I first had a garden 40 years ago I read so many books that had the answers to all those questions and really everything you need to know. The RHS published a huge tome and it told me everything. Alan Titchmarsh did a good series of books called How to Garden I think, you could probably pick them up in a charity shop. But there are loads of books and you'll learn infinitely more than expecting to learn it all from a one hour TV programme.

Of course the main thing is experience, but books are key. Also subscribe to Gardeners World magazine, that has loads of information too.

I dont need any more books; I taught organic horticulture for a decade.

I already know the answers to the above. Hence knowing they are issues.

I don't have anything like @Shedmistress' levels of experience, but I am a professional gardener and I know a bit, and ... yes, books are wonderful, but I don't think the answer to whether or not Gardener's World works as a TV programme can sensibly be 'oh, but it's fine so long as you get some books as well'.

There's a reason why the BBC was set up to educate and entertain people - lots of us learn best by seeing something done. Even the most beautifully-photographed book won't do quite the same things, and even if it did, we're still back at the same question - is GW still worthwhile, and if not, what could be done to make it more watchable?

I disagree about books not being better than seeing things being done. A good instructive book gives far more detail than a 3 minute segment on GW could ever do.

I also don't think GW has ever set itself up as being all things to anyone who has any sort of interest in gardening, that would be impossible. As can be seen from the comments on this thread there's a very wide range of desirable elements that viewers would like, many directly opposed to each other.

I'm pretty sure that almost all the things that people are saying GW doesn't do have actually been shown on the programme in the past few years, including both overgrown and new build gardens.

I actually love seeing the national plant collections, it's inspiring seeing someone so passionate. I love the large gardens, they are inspirational. I don't want to see someone's new build minuscule garden every week. I'm glad they're restricting the videos of people's own gardens that they've sent in, I hated it in COVID when there were so many. I love seeing Monty's perfect potting shed and huge greenhouses and how he's changing his garden after 30 years of it maturing from an open field. I shall enjoy seeing Adam frost's new garden develop.

I don't think the programme needs changing at all.

You may not need any more books, but I bet many of the people on this thread complaining that GW doesn't show how to do x,y and z don't own a single instructive gardening book, and would be surprised how much they could learn from a good one.

Well, we can agree to disagree. And perhaps all I am saying is that some of us are visual learners more than others. I do like to see things done.

I think the PP who made the distinction between large collections being boring, and their owners being badly interviewed, has a really good point. I love the idea of hearing from passionate people - but what tends to happen on GW does not convey that passion at all!

Agree with you that during Covid the 'viewers' gardens' segments got tedious fast.

Why assume that?

THe D G Hessayon "Expert" books are well worth owning
Ditto the Hillier Encyclopedias
and of course the RHS Pruning handbook has never EVER been bettered

Because if they did they wouldn't be complaining about the things that they think GW doesn't show eg how to prick out seeds, how to prune correctly, how to tell what's a weed, how to make a wildflower garden, some basic design principles etc etc.

You specifically said to me to get some gardening books. Which is why I responded to say I don't need them.

It is a few examples of things that I taught new gardeners for 10 years. I could go on for hours. Because this is a thread about GW. Not a thread about which books to buy.