Monty Don says he may have to let gardeners go as BBC salary contribution ends

Monty Don has admitted he may have to let go of his two gardeners after announcing his departure from Gardeners’ World.

Now, Don has revealed the future of the two gardeners who have kept his Herefordshire garden, known as Longmeadow, looking healthy and camera-ready all these years.

The legendary gardener revealed the BBC has paid part of the salaries of a full-time landscaper and propagation expert who tend to Longmeadow since he began hosting the show from his garden in 2011.

Monty Don admitted he may have to let go of his team of gardeners

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“I have had two full-time gardeners, and have had them since I have been on Gardeners’ World, and from day one it’s been in my BBC contract that I have to have two full-time gardeners,” Don said at the RHS Malvern autumn flower show, the Guardian reported.

“If I’m off filming in the Rhine or India or somewhere like that, somebody has got to be getting it ready.

“The BBC pays a contribution towards their wages. Not enough, but they do pay something, which is great. Obviously, that contribution is going to go.”

He explained that his current team of two gardeners have been with him for 10 years, adding: “They are a great team and we all work together really well.

“I will have to think of ways – I can’t afford it unless we earn money from it, so I am going to think of ways of earning something from the garden, but I can’t do that until the middle of next year at the earliest.”

Don said he does not want to open the garden to the public as it’s a private space and organising parking would be too difficult.

He employs two gardeners to look after his two-acre garden and keep it camera-ready

PA Wire

He and his wife of 43 years, Sarah, created the two-acre garden in the village of Ivington in 1991, transforming it from a neglected field into four vibrant gardens.

The cottage garden is intended to provide romantic year-round seasonal interest, with forget-me-nots and tulips in the spring giving way to shrub roses and hardy geraniums, while the jewel garden offers bright clashing flowers like dahlias, zinnias and cosmos.

The Islamic-inspired paradise garden has a Charbagh layout - a classic four-part geometric design centred around a water feature and boasting fragrant lillies, roses and annuals like cornflowers.

There’s also a vegetable garden that provides produce almost all year round, a white garden, the grass borders, a Mediterranean-inspired dry garden and the blue and yellow garden that surrounds the potting shed - which was moved from Don’s dog-friendly garden at the Chelsea Flower Show in 2025.

Don announced his exit earlier this month, saying: "I have decided that the current series of Gardeners’ World is to be my last. I began hosting the programme 23 years ago, first at Berryfields and for the past 16 years here in my own garden, Longmeadow.

“Now is the right time for a change. I look forward to continuing to work with and for the BBC on other projects, as well as following new avenues. There are more books to write, more programmes to make. And of course, I will still be gardening, dog by side, here at Longmeadow."

Don pictured with his wife Sarah

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The final series hosted by Don will be broadcast from Longmeadow until later this year. It is thought that he will soon begin filming a BBC travel programme named Island Gardens.

Don has been recovering after having a “horribly painful” knee replacement last November and previously said he will likely have another operation in late 2027.

The BBC presenter admitted in April that he was struggling to film Gardener’s World at Longmeadow due to the procedure.

“I was finding by the end of a day’s filming I could barely walk upstairs and I certainly couldn’t take the dogs for a walk,” he told Saga magazine.

“It was severely limiting what I was doing. I did it so I could keep on working because it was getting to the point where filming was cutting round me limping.”

Don went on: “However you do it, a knee replacement is horribly painful. But three months on I’m gardening again and haven’t walked with a stick for a month.

“Sarah [his wife] says I’ve been doing far too much stuff, but it’s fine and going to plan – though it can be inexplicably painful one day and then not at all another. At some point, I’m going to have to do the other one – but only when I can fit it in, probably late 2027.”