Tributes pour in for Matthew Biggs VMH who has died aged 65
Matthew Biggs, the much-loved gardener and broadcaster who devoted more than half a century to sharing his passion for plants, has died, leaving a lasting legacy on British horticulture
“A bundle of energy, a bundle of fun and a bundle of knowledge all bundled together into one person. A bundle of bundles. A man whose company you’d be happy with on any journey”.
Fellow horticulturist and long-time friend Roy Lancaster describing Matthew Biggs: horticulturist, writer, broadcaster and one of the most trusted voices in British gardening, who died on Thursday 21 May, aged 65.
Matthew Biggs was a man who devoted his life to explaining plants to people. Across five decades, he helped define public understanding of horticulture in the UK, bridging the worlds of professional practice, gardening history and everyday experience with rare generosity and warmth.
Training, curiosity and horticultural history
Matthew featured in the line-up for BBC Radio 4’s Gardeners’ Question Time
Best known to millions as a long‑serving panellist on BBC Radio 4’s Gardeners’ Question Time, Matthew Biggs – a trained plantsman, natural teacher, and meticulous historian of horticulture has also been a powerful advocate for gardens as places of refuge and healing.
He trained at Pershore College of Horticulture before studying at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, where he gained the Diploma in Horticulture. Throughout his career, Biggs remained deeply interested in plant hunters, historical gardeners and the intellectual traditions of horticulture. He believed that knowing where a plant came from geographically and culturally enriched the act of growing it.
I first met Matt 40 years ago... I can still vividly remember his welcoming smile, passion and enthusiasm for plants.
“I first met Matt 40 years ago when I started at Kew on the Diploma course; Matt had just graduated. I can still vividly remember his welcoming smile, passion and enthusiasm for plants – something he has taken throughout his career. This came through so powerfully from his friends and colleagues in the nomination for the VMH”, says Tim Upson, Director of Gardens and Horticulture at the RHS.
From television to trusted radio voice
He first appeared on television with Channel 4’s Garden Club, before moving behind the scenes as a director on ITV’s long‑running Grass Roots. “I worked with him on the Channel 4 programme Garden Club from 1991 to 1996, and I noticed straight away that he had an amazing empathy with people – young or old, whoever they were it didn’t matter, he could relate to them,” says Roy Lancaster.
It was BBC Radio that would make him a national figure. Joining BBC Gardeners’ Question Time in the late 1980s, he became one of the programme’s most enduring contributors, serving as a panellist for 35 years, offering ordinary gardeners practical advice delivered with humility, clarity and an obvious pleasure in plants.
Listeners came to trust him, not only because he knew his onions, but because he took questions seriously. Whether advising on a recalcitrant rose or the fate of a long‑lived tree, he answered with empathy and expertise, attentive to the emotional investment that gardeners place in their plots.
“Throughout his long career on Gardeners’ Question Time he would never shirk a question. When everyone else seemed reluctant he would say, ‘I’ll do that’,” says Roy Lancaster. “His expertise was always of the highest standard; he had an interest in anything from mosses to wildflowers, to roses, to turnips.”
Author, teacher and storyteller
RHS A Nation in Bloom, reflecting Matthew’s enduring interest in horticultural history
Alongside broadcasting, he was a prolific writer, authoring and contributing to more than 20 books – from practical vegetable guides to houseplants and historically-rooted works such as RHS The Secrets of Great Botanists and RHS A Nation in Bloom. His writing revealed a particular talent for storytelling: he brought past figures vividly to life and showed how their curiosity still shapes modern gardens.
One of the books he was most proud of was Garden: Exploring the Horticultural World, which received an Award of Excellence in The Council on Botanical and Horticultural Libraries Annual Literature Award 2025.
He was also a regular contributor to BBC Gardeners’ World magazine, Gardens Illustrated and The Garden.
He lectured widely in the UK and overseas, and taught at institutions including Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, The English Gardening School and Oxford University Botanic Garden.
In later years he also developed a distinctive one‑man show, One Man, Two Plant Hunters, exploring the lives of George Forrest and Ernest Wilson.
Service, illness and a healing garden
Matthew sharing his knowledge with audiences at RHS Flower Show Cardiff in 2018
He volunteered extensively, including with Plant Heritage, and played an active role within the RHS as a member of the RHS Woody Expert Group and as an RHS Show Judge.
“As long as I’ve known him, he’s been full of joy and excitement about everything”, says Roy Lancaster.
In December 2020 he was diagnosed with bowel cancer and spoke openly about the experience, plus the role that gardening played in sustaining him through treatment.
While receiving treatment at Mount Vernon Cancer Centre in Hertfordshire, he led a major project to transform the hospital’s outdoor spaces into a genuine healing garden. Working with designers, charities, volunteers and healthcare staff, he helped create a landscape that offered dignity, calm and beauty to patients, visitors and staff, as he observed, “offered a little inspiration” at a moment when inspiration mattered most.
He was a very brave man. A kind and a loving and very brave man.
Biggs co‑hosted the Gardening with Cancer podcast for BBC Gardeners’ World magazine, speaking with characteristic honesty about vulnerability, resilience and the steady consolations of plants. Even in periods of declining health, plants have continued to anchor his days.
Recognition and final years
Roy Lancaster presenting Matthew with his Victoria Medal of Honour
His career was crowned with the award of the Victoria Medal of Honour in May 2026. Limited to 63 living recipients at any one time, the VMH is reserved for gardeners who have made an exceptional and lasting impact on the practice, promotion or understanding of gardening. It is the charity’s highest accolade, with past recipients including King Charles III, Beth Chatto and David Austin.
At the presentation at RHS Garden Wisley in Surrey, tributes spoke of his generosity, his capacity to connect people to plants and his lifelong curiosity. “He had a lovely gentleness about him”, says Roy Lancaster.
Biggs himself was characteristically modest on receiving the Victoria Medal of Honour, describing his career as, “having fun and learning alongside great people”.
Lasting influence
Matthew Biggs passed away on Thursday morning. Earlier in the week, his daughters Chloe and Jessica, son Henry, and partners Jack and Claudia – had visited the RHS Chelsea Flower Show on Monday to spend time with his horticultural family. Matthew's wife, Gill, remained by his side.
Tim Upson said: “Among his peers there are few others who have engaged the public and gardeners so effectively and so warmly, in understanding the world of plants and horticulture, with such enthusiasm and passion”.
