Am I the only one on the planet who was truly gobsmacked this week when Monty Don admitted to TWO full-time gardeners beetling away behind the scenes at his beautifully maintained two-acre garden in Herefordshire?
The crazy comment pile-on on an Instagram reel posted this past Sunday by @thisgardenwanderer (who filmed Mr. Sexy Knickers at RHS Malvern discussing his retirement from BBC Gardener’s World) would suggest that thankfully I do have a few, equally naïve, companions out there collectively having a Eureka moment;
“I KNEW it! He has 2 fulltime gardeners! This makes me feel much better about the chaos in my garden.” @macfunky
“Shame he never acknowledges the fact that he has full time gardeners whilst on GW..” @richard.izzy
But if the defensive flame war waged by adoring fans was anything to go by, my companions and I just haven’t been picking up on the signals.
“He had acknowledged it, many of us have known for years. Not Monty’s fault if you didn’t know” @suechristianweaver
“I’m dumbfounded that anyone believed that he could single handedly manage a garden of that size single handed! Get real people.” @lazeelady
“Do you watch with the sound off or something?” @gallopchristopher
As it happens, I don’t watch with the sound off. And I wonder if someone who rejoices in the Instagram handle @lazeelady is fully qualified to judge what a determined workaholic gardener and writer is capable of achieving in their garden. But I admit, I don’t watch every week. In fact, I don’t even watch every month.
Nevertheless, I still feel my naivety has been passively – maybe actively – encouraged over the years. I first came to Monty Don as a reader of his columns and many of his books, and I’ve watched enough episodes of Gardener’s World to know that even as Don introduces the next segment or other gardeners and their plots on Gardener’s World, he completely neglects to introduce his own.
And that matters – because without that constant visual acknowledgement of something as significant as 70-80 hours of professional gardening help a week, the BBC is peddling fantasy. And it is a fantasy against which a good number of gardeners have judged their own puny efforts, and found them wanting – if they hadn’t felt that way already after scrolling Instagram. (#blessed anyone?)
Putting Two and Two Together
Two. Full-time. Gardeners. Oh sure, I knew he must have some help. And I knew that from my own desperation as a garden writer/speaker/podcaster/founder of a tour company juggling a Triple A personality and an 11-acre plot with a yearly average of 2 hours of help a week that sometimes decides not to show up.
I’m currently writing this at 12:15 in the early morning hours before my deadline, having not touched my garden for three full days during a remarkably insane work week. (And then it was only to race down in slippers looking like a crazy woman with a knife to grab some squash before a dinner party.)
So yes, I knew he had to have some help.
But when the birds sing and the camera pans to a solitary, attractively grubby Don walking through Longmeadow’s two acres of well-tended raised beds, and carefully trimmed topiary and deadheaded dahlia, and talking about the work ‘I’ and ‘we’ have done this week, idiots like myself assumed he meant his gardening wife Sarah, and perhaps a four-hour-a-week gardener that filled in the gaps.
After all, Longmeadow may be shared each week with the world, but it is an intensely personal garden loved by both of them, and Don has always said as much. The truth was more than a little shocking, and once again brought to mind annoyances I’ve wrestled with over the last few years: Why aren’t gardeners (and more importantly, garden writers) more transparent about help in their gardens? And at the same time, realistic about what everyday gardeners should be expected to do without it?
Well of course you have help, don’t you?
I remember a discussion I had recently with a very posh gardener who had taken on the renovation of an old garden as an amateur in her thirties. When I asked her if she had a gardener from the very beginning, she replied, “Well of course I had a gardener! I had small children!”
It was all I could do not to reply “Oh, THAT’S why my thirties were a blur, I forgot to hire a gardener!” Silly me, I was wasting that money on food and clothing.
Or another discussion with a garden writer who was condemning a fellow gardener for his use of glyphosate to paint the stems of cut Ailanthus. “Just dig them out!” she protested indignantly. Further strategic questioning uncovered that it was not, in fact, her doing the digging of the offensive root and stump, but one of two regular gardeners with machines for that sort of thing. Was she really begrudging a gardener with fewer resources the strategic assist of a tablespoon of glyphosate? Yep.
I’m not the only one who has such thoughts – two weeks ago on the podcast I co-host with Leslie Harris, The Garden Mixer, I mentioned the fact that I had two hours of help weeding, and the ears of a listener and fellow garden writer Kathy Purdy pricked up. She brought the discussion over to our Substack chat community to ask other listeners what kind of help they might be paying for – as she wasn’t.
Hearing about those two hours made her feel better about the state of her own garden. The result was a non-judgmental discussion between listeners about where help makes sense, where it doesn’t, and when not to beat yourself up.
If only…
A close relationship with a well-trained professional gardener on even a part-time basis is a thing I think many of us long for and wish we could afford, but even then, the word ‘afford’ is a tricky one. No matter how shamefully little a professional gardener might make, one man may see the expense as a luxury, whilst another views it as a non-negotiable necessity. Our own Ben Probert discussed the difficulties of life as a professional UK gardener in a recent post, and I know it resonated with professionals on both sides of the Atlantic.
Perhaps I feel quite comfortable discussing the issue because I reside in another shamefully underpaid profession: writing. I pay my untrained gardening help more than I make an hour, and spend a fair amount of time helping her learn the job as she goes.
Keeping Up Appearances
For all of us naïve gardeners shocked by how much help Don actually has at Longmeadow, that’s not where most of the outrage lay last Sunday.
A few moments into the conversation, Don confessed that for all these years, the BBC was contracted to contribute to the wages of these two full-time gardeners (a professional gardener in the UK averages £25-30K /$34-40K annually); and that without that subsidy, Don could not afford their salaries and would have to think of ways to make money from the garden or the government to keep the team together next year. “How dare he!” many cried, as if his fame translated into a magical and inexhaustible supply of cash, after the Beeb’s fees dry up.
There’s that word ‘afford’ again. We’re so good at using it to tell others what we think they should do. At the end of the day, he’s a writer with an old house, a big garden, familial responsibilities, and retirement looming. He’s also a man who lost his first dream garden to bankruptcy, and lived hand-to-mouth for years with a wife and small children. He probably has a damn good idea of what he can afford and what he can’t. I respect the acknowledgement that his garden’s needs will change once the cameras leave – and that he will have to find new ways to make it pay for itself when help is required.
To Monty Don, I am grateful for last week’s honesty. But he could have propelled the careers of his beloved “Caroline” and “James” by showing their faces on camera a few times over the last ten years — and helped gardeners in the process to manage their expectations.
We need more reality these days, not less. —MW
Monty having help simply feels part of the whole telly business to me, but I’m not a GW/MD watcher or reader.
But I do know that most of us will probably need help someday, and my earliest days in gardening were helping older people manage their plots. And I loved seeing the pleasure that gave.
We totally depend on the help we have had from Jeff in the past and Angus now, and I’m always happy to acknowledge that and hope we’ll always have Angus. Two acres which we open to the public, plus another few acres with lighter management on a day a fortnight. Plus an indispensible Charles, of course.
If I have a but, it’s Marianne’s suggestion of having a trained gardener. I suspect I would not like having trained methods in my garden, nor paying for the extra time that would take. And, I wonder, if you are a competent gardener, isn’t there potential for some conflicts there? Maybe I’m just remembering garden books from the 30s and 40s, full of difficulties managing the ‘jobbing gardener’ that so many people managed to have then. It seems to work very well if everyone does just what I ask them to do……..
And do those naive folks who are shocked that Monty had helpers also believe that Martha Steward does all the work at her multiple estate gardens?
Oops…. Martha Stuart, not Steward….lol
Good point — but in my case no. Martha Stewart’s aesthetic is so meticulously curated and encompasses so much property, that it is very obvious that she has lots and lots of staff (particularly when she throws it in our faces during the pandemic — which I wrote about here for GardenRant). Monty Don comes across as an intelligent, everyday but high-energy gardener not afraid to get dirty, and a hard worker, with a beloved and personal garden that he and his wife have created together, and which is far from perfect. And that’s precisely the aesthetic the BBC has cultivated for viewers each week by showing him on his own — no gardeners working behind him or helping him in the greenhouse, or discussing the week’s activities ahead. –MW
nice
I like the fantasy he shows us. I have enough reality here in my own garden. I like the background music he uses too. The tweety birds. I assumed he had help, in fact I recall hearing Monty Don using the word “we”.
I love the birds and the music too Phyllis. –MW
A great post, Marianne. I was a private gardener in Pennsylvania and Maryland for mostly older folks, as Anne mentioned, having done and after reading this post, I count myself quite lucky that when their friends would admire their garden, they proudly gave me all the credit, I guess because they could be proud of how their bit of ground or larger gardens looked. They were grateful for my work and I was grateful to them for having me and for the joy it brought them, also something Anne mentioned.
The other thing I was thinking as I read were the times I went to Longwood Gardens in Pennsylvania and would come home discouraged that my own gardens didn’t look like theirs….Until I saw all the gardeners hard at work one day and realized how silly my envy was. Now I’m happy to be able to just take care of my own gardens and hope that I can put off needing help for quite a while yet to come.
I am so happy for you that you were able to experience that kind of relationship with your employer, which no doubt invited collaboration and meant that the garden was richer for it.
And yes — I have had similar moments in big gardens. I wrote about them in Big Dreams, Small Garden. And I remember Beth Chatto having them too (written about in her biography by Catherine Howard) and she did have a head gardener! If you have great vision for a space, but haven’t got the resources to implement them, it is sometimes difficult to see others able to. But envy, as you say, is silly and destructive, and there is more than one way to create aspirational goals that are achievable. Thank you for the comment! –MW
I’ve no idea what Don can afford by way of paid help if he were footing the bill. But I do know that unless you are willing to receive paid visitors who you feed and water and sell nick nacks and maybe plants to, your options of making money from the garden are practically non-existent. I don’t know where the idea that “the government” might help came from but that’s fanciful. Maybe by now he’s got very deep pockets but my guess is that he’ll either sell up or embrace the place becoming a lot wilder than he’s used to it being. Who cares? It’s not as if the garden itself has been able to be visited by the general public.
Exactly. I think sone people took it as Monty Don looking for sympathy or a handout. I think he was just being realistic.
Charles — I’m not sure what he meant by the government because the word was cut off mid flow, and maybe he was just brainstorming, I don’t know — it was a live event. I am sure that he feels [and is] justified in never having opened the garden for visitors, as it is fully “open” to millions of eyeballs every week and it is a personal and private home. He must find himself in a weird place now, because the reality of physical visitors is very different than bringing a regular camera crew in and filming – as well you know. It must also be strange to realize that millions of people have an opinion about how one goes about the next few decades of one’s life! I wish him very well. –MW
I love watching Monty Don’s Shows. I have done gardening for myself for many years and had a small landscaping business for 10 years.
His is a TV show. Why would anyone imagine he does it all by himself?
I never thought he did it all by himself (though I did in the early ears of The Complete Gardener) — I just didn’t expect that level of help. –MW
I have a 2-acre property in Columbus, Ohio, where I also run a garden school. Now in my 60s, I would absolutely lose my mind without weekly paid help. I tell everyone that Amy (my helper) is half my age and has twice my cartilage. I am grateful for the ability to pay her to pull weeds, lop hedges, pull goldenrod, etc. She is worth every dime.
I absolutely LOVE that — “half my age and twice my cartilage.” Sounds like you have found a true kindred spirit. –MW
Two things struck me about this controversy:
1) Monty Don has mentioned his gardeners, by name, many times, in his newspaper columns. Not on TV. On the show he’ll say “we” did this or that but that’s as far as it goes.
2) Many people commented that as a writer he could pay the gardeners out of his earnings from his books. Professional writers may find this amusing.
Sheena — ain’t that the truth — I thought the same thing. –MW
Really? Gobsmacked? Gardener’s World is as aspirational as all the lovely gardening picture books and magazines. Yes, they might contain some nitty gritty, but we’re all just fantasizing about the possibilities, not the realities. Monty never claimed he was doing it all; he was merely showing us his vision and his skills. I can’t believe people are jumping on him for not using “we” all the time.
By the way, I noticed you wrote “two weeks ago on my podcast,” when of course you do the podcast with Leslie Harris. I’m sure you were focusing on what you do and weren’t intentionally pretending that you do it alone.
Yes. Gobsmacked. On two levels actually — one that he even needed two full-time gardeners on two acres, much less had them (speaking as someone with a very large garden and property). As I said, there were enough comments in the thread — and elsewhere online — that I don’t feel fully stupid about my assumptions.
Point well taken re: the podcast, and I have gone back to specify that I co-host The Garden Mixer in the text. I look forward to Leslie rubbing that in — perhaps I’ll mention my takeover tonight when we record. But I do think a slip of the tongue and two links back to a site plastered with both of our faces can’t be stood against maintaining an invisible crew for 20+ years. Longmeadow is his and his wife’s. It is a personal garden and not perfect. And the word ‘we’ can just as easily be assumed by outsiders to mean the two of them with some extra help, rather than four garden warriors putting some serious time on the clock. – MW
I just have to throw in my two cents to say that I agree, 2 full-time — FULL TIME! — gardeners for 2 acres seems overtill — er, overkill. There had better not be a blade of grass bending in the wrong direction.
Don’s 2 full time gardeners were news to me as well. I too assumed the “we “ referred to his spouse and possibly a part time helper. Good for him, it is an immaculately maintained 2 acres. Somehow I feel better about my less immaculately maintained .40 acre garden which gets by on a combination of frenzied and obsessive fits (March- June) balanced with total apathy (July- September) and more sensible maintenance the rest of the year
Excellent — we can be naive together Jennifer. 🙂 –MW
For the first year of watching Monty, I thought he managed his garden alone. I had no idea of his garden’s size or whether his family helped him. When I learned of the garden’s size and when Monty mentioned having gardeners, this made sense. I’m not disappointed he has help. I also hope he stays at Longmeadow once he retires, but I “get” he might be up for a change.
I wish I had help in my garden maybe one day a week. I’m in my mid 60’s. It’s doubtful I could find anyone in my area who knows more than lawn mowing and leaf raking. Nothing wrong with mowing and raking, but I need someone who know a little more. Those people are very hard to come by here.
His comments made clear he had a crew of gardeners working with him. I remember a comment he made once on instructing staff that Fridays were “fertilizer Friday” that made clear it was more than one.
People can’t complain about the public losing its gardening ways and then jump on and beat up one of the most prominent and committed ones in the public eye. It would be different if he revealed he bought all his plants full grown at Home Depot.
Thanks for the comment Ellen. I think that enough people have shown genuine surprise at the amount of help he had to infer that it has not been made abundantly clear. Staff could mean 2 people, four hours a week, or as it turns out, 70. The fact that they were never really a part of the visible face of the tending of the garden even though it was all about tending the garden, says loads.
I don’t think that it is as much the “public losing its gardening ways” that people complain about, as much as it is a superficial coverage of gardening that is generally complained about by everyone here at GardenRant. And although I don’t think for a moment that Don was superficial — I truly believe he loves the soil deeply — this wasn’t a good look. Criticizing that is not beating up someone. It’s recognizing that something was missing and pointing it out — in this case, the faces of two gardeners who did the lion’s share of the work. -MW
Seriously? I sm gobsmacked that you would think otherwise.
Talk about naive.
I bow to your superior intellect. –MW
I’ve read all of his books and that must be where I picked up the sure knowledge that he had helpers whom he praised and values highly. As a jobbing gardener before retirement, I thought what a wonderful job that would be! You also might not know that he has another very different sort of garden in Wales, I think that was in his most recent gardening memoir.
So what if I’m naive? I’ve never given a thought to how he gets it all done. I’m still grateful that he was my visual and auditory valium during the years of Covid coupled with a family sadness. And now GW provides the same. Some of us are not looking to compare our gardens with his.
And as an aside, “I can’t afford it” is one of the strongest counter-cultural statements a person can make. I say it a lot.
Great comment
It seems most of the outrage/criticism is aimed at the “we’ve been lied to all these years.” I think another issue, that Marianne brought up at the end, is that the BBC monetarily subsidized Monty’s garden. If this happened in the USA, there would be criticism of US tax dollars helping a rich white european male’s property, along with possible continued defunding of public broadcasting (tv and radio).
From a UK perspective, with costs/inflation rising and public services being cut to balance budgets, has there been calls for reducing the budget of the BBC (citing to this revelation as one reason)? With gardening reputedly being an “upper class” pursuit, has their been criticism that the UK government and BBC’s funding is aimed at helping the rich and people like Monty? (Which fairly has been a criticism of the US tax code.) Any additional UK perspective on this story?
Interesting points Linus. American readers might not know that in order to have and use a television in the UK (yes, a television), one must pay a television licensing fee every year of around $230 a year, proceeds of which go almost all to the BBC (even if you watch Satellite TV all day). So yes, I suppose that budget line item does make a difference to taxpayers — money is fungible after all. – MW
I’ve never watched Monty Don, but your gracious and balanced essay makes me wish I had.
The ever-changing nature of gardens makes them a fun challenge to redesign over the years, but it also means that most of their features aside from the “bones” can vanish within a few years without maintenance.
It’s rather bittersweet that the number of years it takes to make a solid and layered garden, including some “bones,” typically exceeds the short window during the human lifespan when we have enough money, and also enough time, but no babies or toddlers, and enough energy and health left, to do it either on our own or with help.
I’m glad Monty Don managed to pull it off for a while. Not everyone can do that, but I’m glad that the stars aligned right for someone to, and that millions of people got to experience some beauty because of it.
I hope that even if his garden goes the way of all gardens sooner rather than later, modern documentation will capture some of its charms and will inspire others to create beauty however they can.
Oh, and above all, I’m glad he enjoyed doing it. YOLO.
As someone who is ‘the help’ for people who need help in the garden I’ve been watching with interest.
Firstly two full time people (and there have long been rumours of four additional part-time gardeners too) seems like quite a lot for a two acre garden. The garden has to be maintained to artificially high standards as it’s a TV studio and not a private home, and looking at it on Google Maps it’s a complex two acres. Remember he’s organic so that will mean a bit more hand weeding of paths as well as looking after the green garden.
A lot has been said by others, but what I will say is the Monty’s pleading of poverty is something that will be familiar to a great many gardeners, especially freelancers. Monty is going to have to cut his cloth according to need given that he won’t have the regular (and I’m told fairly generous) income from GW to rely on. He will either have to let go of one or more gardeners, amending the garden to cope with the change, or make economies elsewhere. This is part of life for everyone else so why should it be different for Monty?
Sticking with a financial theme, different people have different ideas of what constitutes ‘struggling’. After their business collapsed in the late 1980s Monty was unemployed between 1991 and 1993, receiving welfare payments from the British government as he was out of work. However during this time he and his wife were still able to afford to buy a large Tudor house – in need of restoration – with two acres of land. He was also then able to use his connections to write gardening articles and make TV appearances. I don’t doubt for a moment that Monty has worked hard to get where he is, but he comes from a well heeled family (who were able to send him to expensive boarding schools) and has never seen the level of poverty where he must exist on next to nothing. In short he has worked hard but has a different idea of ‘hard up’ than a great number of people, many of whom watch his programme.
I work for a great number of people who are asset rich and cash poor, although there have been cases where clients have tried to plead poverty after buying an expensive car or a luxury holiday. I’m at peace with the fact that for a lot of people both the garden and my services are not a high priority. In some cases it’s my job to love the garden on behalf of the clients, and as long as there’s no conflict I’m fine with the arrangement. I also have to be at peace with the fact that as a gardener I am a luxury: in a great many cases the services of the gardener allows a client to stay in their homes, but if gardeners vanished and they couldn’t cope they would have the option of downsizing.
I’m not unsympathetic to Monty’s plight, but as we write for GardenRant we must always remember that gardeners are a spectrum, from people gardening on tiny plots with tiny budgets right through to those with vast gardens and vast budgets, and nearly every variation in between. What is undeniably good about this whole thing is that it makes the idea of committed gardeners hiring/employing gardeners more acceptable. If Monty Don can hire in professional gardeners then, subject to affordability, so can other gardeners.
All great points Ben.
I really can’t comment on his financial situation. Only he and his bank manager know that — and honestly I don’t think it’s anyone’s business.
He details in The Jewel Garden how he managed to get the column in The Observer. Luckily, he was still pitching at a time when broadsheets wanted columnists — pre digital age — and he is a very good writer with a slight edge. He also is extremely articulate and obviously very passionate about gardening. An obvious leg-up when the BBC was looking for a presenter. So much of media is about being in the right place at the right time. Acknowledging that doesn’t dismiss his talent.
You bring up the fact that he is all organic (and reportedly, peat-free) — and I think that this makes my original point about transparency even more of an issue. Organic gardening is very labor intensive, and involves a level of tolerance for “disorder”, that quite frankly, is missing from a meticulously curated Longmeadow. The betrayal seems almost worse. ie. “Hey you people out there with little gardens trying not to give up because you didn’t net your broccoli early enough and it’s filled with loopers, (and you only had three plants) — I’m taking care of mine organically on two acres while the birds sing and the dogs play with their balls.”
This gets into what I meant with the garden writer having absolutely no compassion for someone with less resources painting glyphosate on a stump. Painting it. Not spraying it haphazardly over all and sundry. And it turns out, she has people to dig those stumps for her. Do as I say not as I do (because others are doing it for me). I’m not cool with that. -MW
Thanks for this article. The point about the resource gap between those who often set standards and those who are meant to follow them is so important. I went to a recording of the podcast, Cultivating Place, where the host tried to shame a local volunteer for using glyphosate on the stumps of Amur honeysuckle in a large-scale forest restoration project. “We can do better than that and we have to,” etc, etc. It was later mentioned that we’d managed to bring Jewell to our local public radio station because a family member is a major donor. Of course I don’t have the whole picture, but this helped me understand the sanctimony.
Yes. May I be so bold as to suggest that we can do better than that and we have to. 🙂 -MW
I agree, having a live camera crew can be tricky. However; for his brilliant design and master garden, of course he has had help, I assume as much as gardening’s hard work with hours behind it. Wish I had help but I enjoy my little piece of heaven I’ve made through the great man above! Tanya semel
Also, loved the music and birds! Tanya semel