Monty Don slams garden critics as he shares family reason for major change

Everyone seems to have an opinion on your garden, particularly if you're as renowned a gardener as Monty Don. He recently shared how the simple act of mowing a lawn sparked controversy.

A few years ago, the Gardeners' World star urged fellow gardeners—particularly men—to give up their "obsession" with lawn mowing. "Cutting grass burns lots of fossil fuel, makes a filthy noise and is about the most injurious thing you can do to wildlife," he commented in 2021.

"Letting grass grow...is probably the single most effective thing you can do in any garden of any size to encourage particularly insect life, but also small mammals, invertebrates, reptiles," he further explained.

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However, Monty has since had a change of heart. Writing in the latest issue of BBC Gardeners’ World magazine, he recounts having a trench dug in his garden for drainage, which left the land looking "looked like a ploughed field," This, he felt, was the opportune moment for a new approach.

Monty levelled the disturbed soil and sowed it with grass seeds, creating what he dubs "The Long Walk," a five-metre by 30-metre stretch that not only acts as a "palate cleanser" between two wilder garden sections but also fulfils a more significant role for the 69 year old.

It provides "a place for my grandchildren to play, race around and generally feel free without the precious confines of an all-singing-and-dancing television garden to inhibit them," he reveals.

Despite his meticulous planning, Monty didn't anticipate the commotion his modest lawn would provoke: "One camp [was] saying that I had come home to un-woke sanity (while erroneously claiming I had converted a meadow to a lawn) and the other camp saying I was betraying the moral high ground of rewilding."

He dismisses both arguments as "nonsense of course."

He further explains that the "long walk" turned out just as he had envisioned: "The grass grew, it got mown weekly, grandchildren played and, I think, it works perfectly as a green, calm space and a playground."