The news that Monty Don is stepping down from Gardeners’ World after more than two decades marks the end of an era. Few figures have become quite so fixed in the national imagination: the corduroy trousers, the muddy boots, the docile golden retrievers padding beside him through the borders of Longmeadow, his rambling Herefordshire garden where the show is filmed. It felt like that would be the case forever.
Alas, it was not to be. Don announced today that the current series will be his last, 23 years after he first began presenting the programme. In that time, he estimates he has made around 700 episodes, all through which he has dispensed wisdom on roses, frost, compost and the rhythms of the seasons – and become not merely a television gardener, but something close to the custodian of Britain’s gardening soul.
“I have had the privilege of sharing my own abiding passion for gardens and gardening with an equally passionate, and often equally knowledgeable audience,” he said, describing that connection with millions of viewers as something he had “always treasured”. Now, though, “the right time” had come for a change. He will continue working with the BBC, he added, with “more books to write, more programmes to make” – and, naturally, plenty more gardening at Longmeadow.
