Monty Don Gardeners’ World final episode, Digi Mart USA News: TV’s most soothing gardener bids viewers farewell in his own inimitable style, poetically and with barely a hint of fuss.
Monty Don paces through his garden, slowly and deliberately. “Welcome to a beautiful day,” he announces.
Autumn has hit and the greens of Longmeadow have softened into yellows and oranges. He is right, and this is as idyllic as his place will get.
“But,” he warns, “we know winter will come.” With winter comes change, death, and a final loss before regrowth. Don is talking about gardens and the approaching first frosts, but perhaps he is also talking about himself.
This is his final episode of Gardeners’ World, after presenting on and off for almost a quarter of a century, and the subtext hangs heavy in the air.
Subtext has always been a big part of Don’s tenure on the programme. Where some previous presenters, such as Percy Thrower and Geoff Hamilton, had a slightly authoritarian side, Don has tended toward the poetic.
There have been hard and fast instructional segments, but he has always managed to enthuse about the potential of a garden.
His stock in trade has always been enthusing about what gardens represent: slow change, gentle struggle, and the nurturing of life. This is apparent during his final outing.
Maybe it is the time of year, or perhaps because this is the last episode before winter. Whatever the reason, a sense of loss suffuses the show.
There is a segment on pruning back roses and another on packing and tying up tropical trees, both acts of preparation for colder times ahead. A film follows a garden designer who finds solace in her garden after the death of her husband, and there is talk of letters from viewers whose gardens helped them through difficult times.
The seasons shift, and try as we might, we are unable to stop them.
For the most part, the episode is presented as a perfectly normal edition of Gardeners’ World. Doing anything else would be crass, although a fuller Longmeadow retrospective is promised around Christmas.
Until the final few minutes, the closest thing to a recognition of the end is Don’s segment on making a bulb lasagne, a pot of layered tulips that prolong display. He says it was the first thing he ever made on television, all the way back in 1989.
It is yet another sign of the deeply felt subtlety that has long been Don’s hallmark. Under his watch, Gardeners’ World, which in its time could be abjectly boring, has become blissful.
There is a stillness to it, a sense of peace so pronounced that you can feel your breath slow.
Don’s last segment covers how to care for windfall apples. They cannot be stored, he says, but they are perfectly good to eat or to juice.
Watching this, one is struck that Don lacks the cut-throat commercial instincts of some of his peers. Were he Jeremy Clarkson, for example, there would be Longmeadow apple juice and theme park garden centres with his face all over them.
Instead, you always get the sense that he gardens for the love of it. If the cameras were not there, he would still be potting and pruning, dog in tow, purely because he enjoys it so much.
If this episode was meant as an audition for Don’s successor, the result is inconclusive. All of the show’s presenters are moulded in his image, with the same understated wonder, to the extent that continuing with a single figurehead may not be the best idea.
Perhaps the only way to fill Don’s boots is a team of presenters with equal billing. He is a hard act to follow.
When it comes, Don’s goodbye is brief. “That’s it for today, and this series,” he announces, before adding: “For myself, Ned and Longmeadow, it’s the final goodbye.” Since he started, and especially since he began filming at Longmeadow, the garden has grown, and dogs have died.
It was his privilege and pleasure to do it all with us in tow, he says. With another word of thanks and a more keenly stressed wish of good luck, he says goodbye, a fitting end to an extraordinary stint.
