Frances Tophill said she once thought Monty Don had the "easiest job in the world," but a screen test in London changed that view. She said the experience made clear why she does not want his role on Gardeners' World.
Tophill, one of the early favourites to succeed Don as the programme's main host, said she had to speak for one minute to a camera about why she loved gardening before being put into groups to build a gardening feature from a pallet and small plants bought by the production team.
Frances Tophill in London
Speaking on the Home Grown podcast, she said the idea came when Monty Don was doing Around the World in 80 Gardens in 2008. She said: "I think it was when Monty Don was doing that around the world in 80 gardens thing. I remember walking to some friends and saying: 'That looks like the world's easiest job."
She added: "You get paid to literally travel around the world and talk about plants." But the screen test changed that view fast. "All of us came away thinking it's the worst thing we've ever done. It wasn't easy at all."
Monty Don and Gardeners' World
Tophill has been on Gardeners' World for 10 years, and she said she has a huge respect for Don. In a Sunday Times interview, she said: "I have a huge respect for Monty - it is such a generous thing to give your garden space to the nation and he does it so well. I hope he never leaves....Broadcasting is not my day job, my day job is being a gardener."
She also said that after standing in for him in 2023, she understood the demands better. In an earlier Telegraph interview, she said: "That's when I got a glimpse of what being Monty must be like... I don't want that."
Gardeners' World successor question
Don announced earlier this month that he will stand down after more than two decades presenting Gardeners' World. Tophill's comments put her own position in sharper focus: she is being discussed among the early favourites, but she has made clear that the day-to-day demands of the job are not something she wants to take on.
That leaves the next step with the programme's future host line-up unresolved, and Tophill's own words point in one direction only: she respects the post, but does not want to fill it.
