‘You find out a lot about people through their gardens’
In his new BBC series, Monty Don digs deep into America’s backyard. The broadcaster talks to Madeleine Howell about the incredible natural diversity he discovered across the country
‘Iwent in search of the definitive American garden, but what struck me about American gardens – having spent six weeks filming there in the past year – was their diversity,” muses Monty Don, when we meet at The Wigmore, opposite BBC Broadcasting House, to discuss his latest three-part series.
He admits it was an ambitious task to condense such a large country into three hours of television. “How can you compare the deserts of Arizona to Seattle, or Boston? But, and this is a spoiler, I came to the conclusion that the American garden was one that was characterised by an attitude: the pioneering, bold spirit of trying new things, and pushing outwards.”
In the first episode, which aired on Friday, Don visits a community of vegetable growers in the Bronx (“one of the happiest places I’ve ever set foot in: people behaving well towards each other, growing things and sharing them”), and the Prairie Garden Trust in Missouri, to meet a couple reviving the flowers and grasses of the American prairie, including coneflowers such as egg-yolk coloured Rudbeckia fulgida var. sullivantii ‘Goldsturm’ (exceptional, biodiversity-encouraging pollinators, now increasingly popular in the
UK). The contrast between the two is just one example of how distinct the range of gardens to be discovered in America truly is.
“I’ve been going to America since the early Eighties, and thought I knew it well: I’d already visited a few American gardens to film Around the World in 80 Gardens,” says Don. “But until you travel a lot in America, you just don’t realise how big it is: the geographical expanse, the mountains, the deserts.”
During his travels, Don found himself gazing in awe at “possibly the most beautiful” trees he’s ever seen. “It was extraordinary. The coastal redwoods, the tallest trees in the world, run a narrow strip down the coast of California and up into Oregon, and can only exist there, because they need the moisture of the sea mist and that particular climate to grow. They shade out everything else, so nothing grows under them – you find yourself walking softly and silently through the giant pillars.
“While California has its redwoods, in the south there are southern live oaks (Quercus virginiana) dripping with Spanish moss, and huge southern magnolias; in Seattle, there are Douglas firs and pines, and in Arizona, of course, there are cacti. These are localities bigger than the whole of the UK: the Sonoran Desert alone stretches over 100,000 square miles.”
In the second episode, Don travels south to explore the gardens of early independent America, and is struck by how much they can reveal about the country’s past. “The civil war is still so recent, and so raw in America’s consciousness. At Middleton Place, just outside Charleston in South Carolina, developed by plantation owner Henry Middleton, they’ve left the rubble of the house that was burnt down by Union soldiers as a visible reminder. It was sobering for me to realise there were still people alive in the Thirties that fought in the civil war. In family and folk memory, it’s fresh and personal.
“For me, visiting gardens is about the people, the history and the culture. You find out about people through their gardens, and you can’t separate the two.” This, Don says, is particularly true of Monticello in Virginia, Thomas Jefferson’s garden – famed for a twoacre vegetable plot built by slaves. “What makes gardens beautiful to me is the human story behind them. If I look around and there isn’t a story, there’s always going to be something lacking,” he says.
The episode closes in Congo Square, New Orleans, the birthplace of jazz: “It’s where the slaves in the 18th and 19th century who didn’t work on a Sunday would gather, and the tradition of playing drums there continues today.” In the third episode, Don heads west, and sees an example of the pioneering spirit and ambition he speaks of in evidence at Sunnylands near Palm Springs, California, which was media mogul Walter Annenberg’s estate. It has played host to statesmen and royalty, and was built on desert despite the arid conditions.
Don notes that America’s attitude towards gardening as a pastime is very different to that in Britain. “While there are incredibly vibrant gardeners in America gardening with skill, energy and fervour, there’s no mainstream gardening culture, as we know it. In Britain, if you go to a dinner party, you wouldn’t consider it odd or unusual to meet a gardener. In America, the chances of finding someone who actively gardens is far more remote: it’s not part of the zeitgeist, and it’s seen as eccentric. The view is, why would you garden yourself when you could pay someone to do it? Many are not gardened, but maintained: which largely means cutting the grass.”
The classic trope of the white-picketfenced, suburban garden also very much exists. “One gardener I met, who was in his 70s, explained the reason for this to me: he said his family were very poor, dirt poor, so they didn’t have grass. You’d go from the veranda into dust. When you could afford to have a house with grass, it was a step up, one that you wanted to proclaim. Only as far back as 1880, it was still the Wild West. Suburbia was only really created in fairly recent history: short, white picket fences were about showing you were a responsible, respectable citizen. If you put a hedge up, people might ask what you’re hiding.”
America’s relationship with nature is complicated, says Don. “It’s based around wilderness and the great outdoors, whereas ours is with countryside, and gardening. We’ll go to a park or sit in our garden: in America, you don’t go for walks, you go for hikes, and climb mountains. It’s almost a spiritual thing, getting out into the landscape and being purged and cleansed: you could walk for days in their national parks and not see anyone. In our national parks, you’re lucky to get a parking space!
“In Britain, our interaction with nature means we can immediately see the effects of climate change: it means our snowdrops will start flowering before Christmas, or that birds are nesting in February. It’s incredibly powerful. It’s much harder for people to see that in America, and to convince people to see this thing that’s happening ‘out there’.”
Now Don has completed his search for the American garden, he says he hopes next to explore how the world is dealing with climate change, through the filter of its gardens. “How are people reacting when they see the evidence of it in their gardens, what knock-on effects is it having, and what are the consequences? My subject is gardens: but how does that relate to everything else that’s happening in the world? I can teach you to grow a carrot or a rose, as I do through Gardeners’ World – but what cannot be satisfied by that is the bigger picture.”
‘In America the view is, why garden yourself when you can pay someone to do it?’