Chelsea needs more women judges, claims Monty Don

CELEBRITY gardeners last night called for gender quotas for judges in the Chelsea Flower Show.

Former Gardeners’ World presenter Monty Don said the ‘pool’ of female judges at the show ‘is too small’.

His co-presenter Joe Swift said the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) should force panels to be 50 per cent female.

The pair said Andy Sturgeon’s garden, which won best in show, was ‘very male’.

‘Men really like it and respond to it, but all the women, including the presenters here on our team are slightly less enthusiastic,’ said Don, who is a columnist for the Mail’s Weekend magazine.

Swift added: ‘I think it’s something the RHS really need to address. I guess really they should have 50-50.’

It is the latest battle of the sexes at the show as it is believed the mostly male panels may not appreciate more intricate gardens which are often designed by women.

Male designers’ macho gardens have raised eyebrows with huge rocks, machinery and metal. A leading exponent of mechanical gardening, Diarmuid Gavin, exemplified the trend with a garden featuring rotating bay

‘Women have an artistic approach’

trees and box bushes which bob up and down every few minutes.

Mr Gavin said: ‘Men like to mow and trim the hedges, and like the stripes in the lawn to be very green. Women have a much more artistic approach.’

Leading designer Jekka McVicar, whose garden at Chelsea, designed for the St John’s Hospice in St John’s Wood, London, features herbs and flowers used in healing, said there was a ‘male’ approach to garden design.

She said: ‘Obviously boys like toys, naturally that’s the way it is. Men are very much more attracted to some of these mechanical things, the structure is dominant.

‘While the girls are creating beautiful gardens that are much more plant oriented.’

The debate follows a row last week over whether gardening was too ‘middle class’.

Juliet Sargeant, the show’s first black designer in its 103 year history, said it was dominated by white middle class people with double-barrelled surnames.

But Alan Titchmarsh said gardening was ‘not a preserve of duke and duchesses’, adding that Mrs Sargeant’s views were ‘not particularly helpful’.

The gardener, who was born in Tanzania, has said television coverage of gardening is a ‘traditional white middle class’ occupation.

The RHS unveiled the former children’s TV presenter Floella Benjamin, who was born in Trinidad, as its roving ambassador last week. Baroness Benjamin, who will work alongside Alan Titchmarsh and Mary Berry to promote the RHS, said she does not believe gardening is class-specific.

The Liberal Democrat peer, who is a keen cultivator of orchids, said of her appointment: ‘I knew six months ago this was going to happen, it’s not a knee jerk reaction.’

Mrs Sargeant, who studied garden design at Middlesex University in the late 1990s, said: ‘The RHS is trying to encourage young people into the industry because there is a widening skills gap.

But I don’t think it has even occurred to anybody to think about diversity. I do think the RHS could do more to promote diversity. I don’t come across any other black garden designers when I’m out and about.

‘But that doesn’t mean black people aren’t interested in gardening and design – I think they do not culturally feel part of the horticultural scene.’ RHS vice president Titchmarsh, 67, said people can discuss gardening ‘on a level playing field’. He added: ‘I think the great thing about gardening is that it has always been open to all. All kinds of people garden and all kinds of people are represented.’