Welcome back!
As Gardeners’ World returns to our screens this month, we reveal the highlights, starting with Monty, who guides us through his plans for Longmeadow
A new series of Gardeners’ World starts filming on 1 March and we have been preparing for this in the garden since the beginning of January. There is always a distinct split in our winter working. November and December are spent tidying, putting the garden to bed and doing jobs we did not have a chance to do earlier in the year – and always working with one eye on the weather, in the knowledge that days and weeks can be lost to bad weather.
But after Christmas, we look entirely forward. There are seasonal jobs to be done – pruning the orchard and the pleached limes, seeds such as chillies and sweet peas that must be sown early in the year, paths and hard landscaping to be repaired. We’re mindful, however, of not doing too much before the film crew arrives in March. This can be a harsh month weather-wise in the garden, often meaning there are fewer jobs to film. And with the new series consisting of only hour-long programmes (twice as long as previous spring episodes), we need twice as much material – so we’ll hold back a few traditional February jobs.
My news? I have no big projects planned for 2022. I will probably make a rock garden in the Dry Garden but need to be sure I can source a supply of good stone. Other than that, my only intention is to look after this complex, very intense garden as well as I can. That inevitably means fine-tuning, tweaking and adjusting almost every square yard of planting, which, come to think of it, is my definition of gardening.
My intention is to look after this complex, very intense garden as well as I can