Monty Don

Euphorbia is a large genus, with plants ranging from Christmas poinsettias and cowboy cacti to large shrubs like Euphorbia mellifera. The shrubby hardy varieties make excellent garden plants for a range of situations, depending on their size and preference.

Join us for a new podcast series of summer conversations with the BBC Gardeners’ World team. Listen to gardening inspiration from some of the UK’s most loved and well-respected gardening experts. With advice for adding colour to your garden, working with nature, boosting your wellbeing, thrifty gardening, veg growing and allotment life. We’ll also take you on a royal tour, go behind the scenes at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show, share garden designer secrets, tips for growing better roses, plant-based recipes with Deliciously Ella and much more. Plus, take a sneak peak inside the gardens of celebrities including Griff Rhys Jones and Caroline Quentin. Enjoy friendly gardening chat and informative discussion, perfect for everyone who loves gardening. With new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday. Subscribe now, wherever you get your podcasts, and never miss an episode.

Without doubt the biggest change to gardening over the past decade or so has been the rise in interest and love for plants that can be grown and nurtured indoors.

Wildlife gardening has many benefits. By growing plants, digging a pond and creating other habitats, such as log piles and compost heaps, we can provide homes for wildlife that would otherwise be homeless. There are around 30 million gardens in the UK. Potentially, if enough of us garden with wildlife in mind we can help slow down or even reverse declines of some species, like hedgehogs, right across the country.

Autumn crocuses (Colchicum spp.) look like spring crocuses but are actually members of the lily family. They most commonly bloom in autumn, with flowers ranging in colour from purple to the palest of pink and even pure white. They look good naturalised in grass, beneath trees, or at the front of borders. The flowers come up without any leaves which gives them their other common name of ‘naked ladies’.

Growing beetroot is easy, giving you delicious, round, red roots that can be boiled, roasted and pickled – and even grated into salads. The colourful young leaves can be picked fresh and used in salads, and mature leaves can be wilted and used as spinach. There’s a wide variety of beetroot to grow, with orange, yellow and pink cultivars to choose from.

Whether travelling the world with Monty Don, making your garden look great all year with Nick Bailey, growing winter veg with Rekha Mistry, or celebrating Christmas with Joe Lycett, this winter series is full of seasonal treats. You’ll be inspired to get out in the garden, as well as finding plenty of excuses to stay indoors when the weather is less appealing. Listen to new episodes, every Thursday.

Google the name “Monty Don” and the resulting list of endearingly odd questions that appears on the screen is eye-opening in terms of what it reveals about the public’s fascination with this charismatic, Cambridge-educated British gardener, writer, broadcaster and host of BBC’s Gardeners’ World.

Monty Don is one of the nation’s favourite gardeners. For nearly twenty years, Monty has been lead presenter on BBC Gardeners’ World, the beloved television programme which inspires this magazine.

If you’d like some garden inspiration, there are lots of gardening quotes and sayings to give you a boost.

Shrubs growing in shade perform a variety of functions – from serving as a leafy foil to other plants, to lighting up dark areas with bright flowers or impressing with dramatic foliage. Small or low-growing shrubs can even be used for ground cover.

Tomato blight, a fungal infection called Phytophthora infestans, spreads by wind and water-splash. It attacks tomatoes and potatoes and is triggered by warm, wet conditions, making outdoor tomatoes more susceptible than those in a greenhouse. The crop is quickly ruined and even if you pick the tomatoes at the first sign of infection, you can’t stop them rotting.

A couple of weeks ago, I was looking for some statistics about the average UK garden size, and I found some interesting ones. According to the 2015 media pack for the RHS The Garden magazine, a document that is aimed at attracting advertisers to the publication, the 380,000 RHS members the magazine is sent to have gardens that are 10 times larger than the UK average, covering over half an acre.

Monty Don was recently explaining how to save tomato seeds on Gardeners’ World. I know this not because I watch it, but because his method (sticking seeds to paper towel) was roundly slated on Twitter. I’m fairly sure I tried that once, and that it worked just fine, but it was a long time ago and to be honest I just can’t remember.

I don’t generally watch Gardeners’ World these days, but two weeks ago they broadcast a special edition (episode 20 in this year’s series) as part of the BBC’s Big British Asian Summer, exploring South Asian influences on British gardens. Monty Don ‘hosted’ the show from the stunning gardens of Europe’s first traditional Hindu temple, BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir in London. The stonework for the temple itself was all carved in India, then brought to London to be assembled. Flowers, particularly the sacred lotus, are represented throughout the decorative motifs. Mountains of flowers are used in the temple’s religious ceremonies, and I was intrigued to learn that – in India – there are businesses based around recycling temple flowers into products such as incense sticks, soaps, and eco-packaging, to reduce their environmental impact. At the London temple, the gardens are a fusion of a European parterre-style design, with Indian motifs, colourful flowers, and a delightful lack of symmetry.

Join us for an exclusive conversation with the nation’s head gardener, Monty Don, recorded at BBC Gardeners’ World Live. Hosted by presenter and broadcaster, Nicki Chapman, the live audience listened in as Monty gives behind-the-scenes insight into filming Gardeners’ World TV. You can buy tickets for the next live show, BBC Gardeners’ World Autumn Fair here.

With National Book Lovers Day approaching on Wednesday, 9 August, what better time for avid gardeners to dip their noses into a gardening book for all the inspiration and practical advice for their green spaces?

“A garden is not a place. It’s a Journey.” ~Monty Don~

James Golden has been guided by a more nuanced version of that idea in creating a much-praised garden, a wildish, unexpected landscape in New Jersey called Federal Twist. It was even featured on Monty Don’s “American Gardens” series for BBC Two. I’ve been reading James’s new book about Federal Twist, and just like that old garden adage, a lot of his philosophy of garden making is about acceptance, about letting the place tell you what it wants to be.James Golden came to garden making later in life, when he was preparing to retire from a writing j

Discover how to transform a new plot into your dream garden, whatever its size and whatever your budget. As Gardeners’ World presenter Nick Bailey shares his designer tips and tricks for making a new garden. Plus he reveals what he has planned for his own new garden.

Box Blight, so disappointing, fortunately the Box Topiary is still looking healthy.

Laurus Nobilis Standard Bay Tree, tender?

We were sitting enjoying our lunch in the restaurant at Grootbos Nature Reserve near Cape Town, when in walked Monty Don.  It turns out that he was a guest of South African Tourism in preparation for a competition called ‘My Mission to South Africa’ which is being run in association with The Guardian.  It turned out th

It’s RHS Tatton from your Northern Correspondent, Daniel Carruthers. Capturing this g

What do I Have in Common with Monty Don & Sarah Raven? We are all devotees of the Japanese style workwear made by Kiraku Clothing – Monty’s blue denim jacket and Sarah’s tunic are both made by Kiraku who have now branched out as The Garden Clothing Company and have a stand at the Hampton Court Flower Show. If you aspire to looking stylish when you garden (at least some of the time) but need something durable – these are the clothes for you – and me.

The Great British Garden Revival Fingers crossed the new 10 part series coming to BBC2 should be  a treat to watch, with horticultural luminaries that include Monty Don, Carole Klein, Chris Beardshaw and Alys Fowler aiming to encourage the entire nation to get involved in gardening. In each episode, two presenters will focus on an endangered aspect of gardens which they feel passionately about and offer hands-on, practical advice to viewers on how they can restore and look after their own gardens. The series will feature episodes on cottage gardens, herbaceous borders, cut flowers, roof gardens, topiary, ornamental bedding, ponds and water features, fruit trees and kitchen gardens.

Monty’s French Gardens After watching Monty Don’s new program on French Gardens on Friday I looked up ‘La theorie et la pratique du Jardinage’ and was pleased to find it on Google Books.

If you love gardening then you must watch these Best Garden Shows on Netflix that will surely give you more idea on how to do it right along with detailed insights on plants!

Is it time for a book giveaway? I think so.