Mossy catwalks, mycelial designs and Monty Don: the growth of gardener style

You could argue that photosynthesis, soil bacteria, chlorophyll and germination, by their nature, never go out of style. But somehow, as the news broke this week that Monty Don would step down from Gardeners’ World after 23 years behind the shovel, gardening is having a moment in the sun.

On Saturday, New Balance will launch a pair of trainers alongside the jewellery designer Bleue Wickham-Burnham in a campaign fronted by Don himself, photographed shrinking into a bush with a pair of the trainers around his neck. In high fashion of late, the gardener Charlie McCormick became the face of JW Anderson’s spring 2027 campaign, and Alfie Nickerson, who grows flowers biodynamically in Norfolk for his brand Burnt Fen Flowers, has recently been plucked by Jimmy Choo for its autumn campaign, Wild Rose. Catwalks have been mossy, designs have been mycelial.

In more everyday settings, a pair of beige hemp gardening clogs have become the kind of thing twenty-somethings Lime bike across London to bag. Gardener style – cords, gilets, Blundstones and barn jackets – is now as familiar on concrete as compost. Don might have been wearing a chore jacket – arguably not a gardener’s staple, despite its factory origins – on the telly for more than a decade, but they are now omnipresent in cafes, ad agencies and other places far from an allotment.

Online, gardeners are finding new audiences, in some cases for reasons besides their knowledge of gerberas: i-D magazine has hailed a new gen of “hot gardeners” as part of the catalyst for a 50% increase in gardening content on TikTok this year, alongside actual interest in it.

Fancy gardening tools and clobber are aspirational: a site called Gardenheir has made a name for itself selling hand-forged tools, £275 two-gallon watering cans and various items in collaboration with the French workwear brand Le Laboureur that seem more likely destined for a small-plates restaurant than a vegetable patch.

Niwaki is another site for very fancy gardening gear. According to Jake Hobson, its founder, the popularity of gardening togs is as much about the mindset it offers as practicality. “They communicate a particular attitude. They’re comfortable and loose-fitting, but they also suggest that you’re ready for action,” he says.

Niwaki has intentionally pushed its products to new, non-gardening markets. “We sell a lot from Chiltern Street to customers who may or may not have a garden, and who may or may not even wear it in the garden,” he says, drawing a parallel with the broader rise in the appeal of workwear.

He delights in seeing Niwaki’s gardening gear worn outside the garden, such as one of their hard-wearing canvas tool bags, designed “especially for the travelling pruner”, being worn to the airport. Or the brand’s Tobizubon, which he describes as “the very, very balloon-shaped Japanese gardening trousers” and which are “incredibly popular in France. I’ve seen some amazing people wearing them in Paris, often with boots or funky shoes, and sometimes with a smart jacket on top.”

As with all things gardening, it hasn’t happened in a rush. Matt Collins, the head gardener at the Garden Museum, in central London, thinks it has grown in tandem with an exaltation of the position of professional gardeners more generally, and an overdue understanding that it’s creative, worthy work. “For a long time, it was seen as quite a kind of lower-status [job] … gardeners are cool, gardeners do important work.”

According to Selina Ozanne, the head gardener at The Exchange, in Erith, south-east London, “gardening is often romanticised. It has charm, as well as aesthetic appeal.” Plus she thinks it “holds a lot of nostalgia for people. It’s often a hobby associated with parents or grandparents.”

Gardeners, both professional and amateur, are more visible now, says Collins. And not just on social media. “Galleries and museum spaces and communal spaces are investing more and more in gardens.” Plus, non-gardeners are doing more gardening in public. “People who don’t have the privilege of a garden of their own … are finding other places to garden,” in parks and local community gardens, says Collins.

The timing is key. With climate a central topic, people who are caring for our planet seem like logical recipients of adoration. Plus, as AI experts this week warned of the high likelihood of extinction by AI, the calming, eternal nature of gardening feels even more appealing. “There’s definitely a feeling that gardening is one of those crafts that can’t fully be automated,” says Collins. “Watering schedules can be automated, seed-sowing even, maybe, but the act of observing and engaging in gardens remains quite human.”

For younger people, there is arguably a more specific appeal. Ozanne, of the “Nokia 3310 generation”, spent her childhood “heavily outdoors, building dens and climbing trees”. For the current generation, she thinks gardening “holds a sense of intrigue and presents escapism from a chronically online society”.

Collins points out a few thorns. Where fashion might sell a glamorous ideal of gardening, all forms of it involve muck, and not just some photogenic mud. Public gardening in particular, he says, “can be really difficult”. There can, he says, be “dog shit, human shit, sometimes, and grimy waste bags”. For Ozanne, who wears brands like Gramicci and Toast – repaired over and over again – the work makes her want to dress up. “I knew early on that if I was going to be out in public, picking up litter and dodging all manner of nasty things, that I wanted to look good doing it.”

But, says Collins, the glorification of the gardener isn’t necessarily translating to “their pay grade and how their actual value has been translated into [the] real world”. Gardening isn’t, according to Ozanne, “a career that’s accessible to everybody – both physically and financially”.