Beloved gardening guru Monty Don has stepped away from the UK — and from his usual potting shed — to make an unexpectedly candid admission about what truly inspires him.
The 70-year-old presenter has spent months travelling the length of the Rhine, from its icy beginnings in the Swiss Alps to its final meeting with the North Sea, filming a brand-new three-part series for BBC Two that premieres tonight, January 16.
But while viewers might expect Don to wax lyrical about rare blooms and clever planting schemes, he has revealed that the journey changed his perspective in a far more human way. Reflecting on the experience, he admitted that the people he met along the way fascinated him more than the gardens themselves, explaining simply that people are always more interesting than plants.
Rather than a traditional horticultural tour, Don described the Rhine project as a cultural exploration. He conceded that he didn’t necessarily come away with vast new botanical knowledge, but he learned a great deal about the communities who care for these green spaces.
Travelling through Switzerland, Germany and the Netherlands, Don noticed a shared love of gardening that mirrors Britain’s — albeit expressed very differently. He observed that the Swiss are irresistibly drawn to tidiness and immaculate order, while Germans approach gardening with enthusiasm but treat it like a job, much as they would cleaning their homes or maintaining their cars. Even the famously laid-back Dutch, he noted, are surprisingly methodical and organised.
Yet Don was keen to stress that these gardens are anything but dull. Across all three countries, he encountered inventive projects that have reshaped both private gardens and public parks, often transforming entire communities in the process. Time and again, he found that these initiatives began not with governments, but with one passionate individual or a small group determined to make a difference. In his view, meaningful change always starts from the ground up.
One of the most striking moments came in the Swiss village of Osterfingen, where Don found himself more moved by the way residents had revived their community than by the plants on display. For him, it perfectly captured the real power of gardening — its ability to change lives, not just landscapes.
Although gardening has been central to Don’s life for decades, his influence reaches far beyond his own borders. As the long-standing face of Gardeners’ World, he has inspired millions with his warmth, practical advice and infectious love of nature.
Away from filming, Don is known as a devoted family man. He married his wife Sarah in 1983, and the couple share a Herefordshire home filled with dogs, memories and muddy boots. They have three children — Adam, Tom and Freya — and Don often speaks about the importance of balancing work with family, even if he rarely resists the call of another garden adventure.
As the new series unfolds, viewers can expect sweeping river views, diverse gardens and striking locations — but above all, stories of the people who nurture them. For Monty Don, the Rhine journey has reaffirmed one simple truth: gardening is about community, creativity and heritage as much as it is about soil and seedlings.
