A mainstay of BBC Radio 4’s long-running panel show Gardeners’ Question Time for more than three decades, Matt Biggs, who has died aged 65, became one of Britain’s most trusted gardening authorities. He styled himself “the people’s gardener”, a nod to a horticultural career that began in the late 1970s in the parks department at Leicester council.
After completing his studies at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, he began to concentrate on media work and got an early break on a gardening phone-in show on LBC, the London radio station. Between 1991 and 1996, he was a presenter of Channel 4’s Garden Club alongside the plantsman Roy Lancaster. Matt also directed and researched Grass Roots for ITV in the mid-90s. However, he loved the immediacy and intimacy of radio the most.
