NOW
Barnsdale Gardens, on an eight-acre site in Rutland, were for many years the home of BBC Gardeners’ World. Before Monty’s Longmedow, Berryfields or even Alan’s Barleywood, Geoff Hamilton presented the show here from 1983, moving up from a smaller site. Made up of 38 individual gardens, the site sought to educate and inspire visitors, sharing its organic and peat-free principles, as it still does today.
“Geoff decided to go peat-free 30 years ago,” explains his son Nickwho has been running the garden since his father passed away 27 years ago. “He was far ahead of his time and understood the problem with the decimation of peat bogs. He promoted it vigorously without being rude to people.”
