Alan Titchmarsh and Monty Don

Spruce, do you mean Geoffry Hamilton??? I can't think of a Geoffry Smith as a garden presenter? The late great Geoff Hamilton was the best presenter, in my opinion, of Gardeners World but died of a heart attack during a charity bike ride.

 

Spot on Spruce, Geoffrey Smith was my all time favourite, down to earth and extremely knowledgable - he was on some very early TV programmes before GW I recall and had a few series like Mr Smiths World of Flowers. Sadly missed

 

I must have been out of the country when Mr Smith was around, JWK. What era was this 60's, 70's???

 

He started on TV in the 1970s, then did GW in the early 1980s - he was also on Gardeners Question Time for several years (he had a very distinctive soft Yorkshire accent and a very dry sense of humour and came out with some great one-liners).

This is him here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7916174.stm

 

Thanks for that, JWK. I do remember him now!!!, mainly from Gardeners Question Time, which is why I couldn't put a face to the name. I was out of the country in the 70's for over six while in Kenya [a hard life] so I don't think I ever saw him on TV. After that Geoff Hamilton came on the scene and captured the gardening public.
Thanks again, JWK

 

Hi Chopper, I, like you and others on this forum, have a reasonably sized garden and the ability to spend money on the hobby [passion] that we love i.e. gardening - and we're more than lucky to be able to do that. But with gardening I don't think "size matters" regarding the plot of land or your wallet. Sure it helps, but look at the hundreds of thousands of amateur gardeners who have limited space and money but still get the maximum pleasure out of the yard, stamp sized garden, or window box.

In the last 100 years we have suffered two World Wars, numerous financial depressions, and so on, which have altered hamlets, villages, towns, cities and society radically - but people still garden at all levels. Gardeners are a curious lot, we're classless, inventive, inquisitive of mind, and always looking beyond what we know we can achieve!! Even the most professed hard headed, realistic, cynical gardener has a bit of the romanticist and perhaps artist about them.


Allotments are not so much as losing popularity amongst the general public [in fact just the opposite] as losing popularity and support from local authorities. Look around and Councils are closing down and selling off
Allotments by the score - yet the demand for them by Joe Public is as high as it's ever been. So a lot of would-be Allotment Holders are stopped before they can get started because Councils have reduced the number of Allotment plots, creating a huge waiting list [for some up to 30 years!!}' and also there is no active program within most Councils to encourage people to take up Allotments - in fact just the opposite. There are very few local authorities, however "green" they claim to be, that have keenly supported and promoted the use of allotments in the past decades, and are now using this financial depression and government cuts to their advantage to close allotments on the grounds of cost. It's the local authorities that need "educating" and to be brought to book so that more allotments are made available,

You're right, we do need a program to show how to make the best use of small plots, one to get complete novices interested and asking questions. But we also need more gardening programs of general interest for other gardeners as well. We've got a miserly ration of programs at the moment and when we do get one it's usually in a fashionable format that puts actual gardening last. But if you take a look at past comments on this subject there are so many different views of what is wanted!! Some want just vegetable gardening, some want allotment gardening, some want just flower gardening, and so on. So clearly, you're not going to please everyone with just one styled gardening program.

There have been so many "discussions" regarding the different merits of Garden Program Presenters that the passion behind it get's as hot as politics. There have been very few Presenters who have been able to catch the imagination and enthusiasm of the gardening public to the extent that Geoff Hamilton and Alan Titmarsh had and have. I, personally, don't see any forthcoming Presenters of that ability and appeal to match them. There are some good Presenters out there, granted, but that is the problem they're are only good and not inspirational.

Having said all that, I honestly don't think there's a danger of the old fashioned and successful methods, or the more modern, newly invented methods either vanishing. Gardeners, as I said, at all levels of competence, with large gardens or just a window box, a large wallet or small, are a curious lot in all senses - and we survive!!

Gardeners who do so in the face of financial restriction, lack of land, or whatever, will probably enjoy their gardening more than the wealthy gardener because of the effort, inventiveness, and sense of achievement they get from success in the face of adversity. And, because there's a lot of truth about "necessity being the mother of invention" it's at that level that most ideas come from, including the re-invention of "old fashioned ideas!! Carrying on gardening!!