Meeting Matthew Biggs, it’s easy to forget that you’re in the company of one of Britain’s most celebrated gardening broadcasters and authors. His broad smile, warmth and humility explain how he has endeared himself to a nation of gardeners for more than 30 years.
Best known for his appearances on Radio 4’s Gardeners’ Question Time and TV shows such as Channel 4’s Garden Club, Matthew has also worked as a toilet cleaner, jobbing gardener, television director, author and RHS judge. He says that this eclectic range of jobs has led to him “careering through life, ducking and diving to keep a roof over my head, and saying ‘yes’ to everything that sounded interesting or fun, then worrying about it afterwards”.
Born in Leicester in 1960, Matthew is one of three siblings. “We had a strict upbringing,” he says. “But my father regularly took the family on country walks and helped to inspire my interest in plants. He loved the open air, the beauty of nature, and of art, which has been my other life-long passion.”
After leaving school at 16 with a handful of O levels, he worked as a clerk for Leicester City Council before the lure of gardening took him in a different direction. “I went to the careers office and looked up jobs in horticulture. There weren’t many opportunities, to be honest, but I signed on for a course in Ornamental Horticulture at Pershore College. However, I needed practical experience, so before going to college, I worked as a gardener at the local parks department for a year, which mainly involved sweeping playgrounds and cleaning toilets.”
On graduating from Pershore, Matthew found it difficult to get a job. “I have mild cerebral palsy and a weakness on my left side causes me to limp, which probably put people off in those less-enlightened times.” Undeterred, he went back to work for the council before applying for a diploma course at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, where he won a prize for the Best Student Lecture and another for his thesis on Plants in Medicine.
My father regularly took us on country walks and helped to inspire my interest in plants
After his studies, he worked at Kew as a visitors’ guide and staff training officer. During this time, he admits to locking himself in Kew’s Economic Botany Collection so that he had the place to himself, and spent many happy hours delving into Kew’s unique collections and amassing the encyclopaedic knowledge for which fans of Gardeners’ Question Time know and love him.
In the following years, Matthew set up a garden maintenance business, which he ran from the back of his old Mini. Then, one day, a friend asked if he would stand in as a presenter on a gardening phone-in show for LBC Radio. He said yes, thinking he’d be answering calls from two to three in the afternoon, but the programme actually went out between two and three o’clock in the morning. “I worked on the show for 14 years,” he says. “Among our loyal night-time listeners was Sven from Hampstead, who turned out to be the comedy legend Peter Cook.”
His guest slots on LBC opened up other media opportunities, including co-presenting Garden Club and directing Grass Roots for ITV. He was also asked to become a panellist on Gardeners’ Question Time and has now been helping listeners with their horticultural problems for almost 20 years.
Alongside his broadcasting career, Matthew also lectures widely on horticulture-related subjects, contributes regularly to national gardening publications and has written 18 books. Always on the look-out for stories about people and plants, he has written about the lives of the great and the good, from the Orchid King – the eminent German-born, Herefordshire nurseryman Henry Frederick Conrad Sander – to ordinary people who simply share his love of gardening.
My motto is ‘The bad makes the good better’ because you only appreciate things by contrast
This year, he published his first book for children, A Home for Every Plant, which tells the fascinating tales of how plants survive in their habitats, enthusing his young readers with the botanical treasures found on our precious planet. He was also thrilled to work as consultant editor on another new book, Garden: Exploring the Horticultural World. “I enjoy beauty in all its forms and this book brings together different types of art – from a painting of the Garden of Eden to a pair of limited-edition Nike sneakers – that take the reader on a journey through the history of gardening and horticulture.”
More recently, he has faced new challenges following a cancer diagnosis, but he’s being supported through this by his wife Gill and adult children Jessica, Henry and Chloe. Even during the darkest times, he says, he’s found solace in gardening. “My motto is ‘The bad makes the good better’ because you only appreciate things by contrast.”
Matthew’s perfect day would be with plant-loving gardening friends, in a plant-filled location, discussing and exchanging views, learning and laughing. He says he’s “just an ordinary bloke”, but it’s clear to anyone and everyone who meets him, and experiences his kindness and generosity, that he is anything but.
Useful information
A Home for Every Plant: Wonders of the Botanical World by Matthew Biggs, with illustrations by artist Lucila Perini, and Garden: Exploring the Horticultural World with an introduction by Matthew are both published by Phaidon and available now.