Monty Don is to front a campaign for New Balance, which is launching a pair of trainers alongside the jewellery designer Bleue Wickham-Burnham. Photograph: New Balance View image in fullscreen Monty Don is to front a campaign for New Balance, which is launching a pair of trainers alongside the jewellery designer Bleue Wickham-Burnham. Photograph: New Balance Gardens Mossy catwalks, mycelial designs and Monty Don: the growth of gardener style Aspirational clobber, hot horticulturists and a TikTok content rise suggest gardening has never been cooler
Ellie Violet Bramley Fri 11 Sep 2026 16.07 CEST Last modified on Fri 11 Sep 2026 18.58 CEST Share Prefer the Guardian on Google Y ou could argue that photosynthesis, soil bacteria, chlorophyll and germination, by their nature, never go out of style. But somehow, as the news broke this week that Monty Don would step down from Gardeners’ World after 23 years behind the shovel, gardening is having a moment in the sun.
On Saturday, New Balance will launch a pair of trainers alongside the jewellery designer Bleue Wickham-Burnham in a campaign fronted by Don himself, photographed shrinking into a bush with a pair of the trainers around his neck. In high fashion of late, the gardener Charlie McCormick became the face of JW Anderson’s spring 2027 campaign, and Alfie Nickerson, who grows flowers biodynamically in Norfolk for his brand Burnt Fen Flowers, has recently been plucked by Jimmy Choo for its autumn campaign, Wild Rose. Catwalks have been mossy, designs have been mycelial.
In more everyday settings, a pair of beige hemp gardening clogs have become the kind of thing twenty-somethings Lime bike across London to bag . Gardener style – cords, gilets, Blundstones and barn jackets – is now as familiar on concrete as compost. Don might have been wearing a chore jacket – arguably not a gardener’s staple, despite its factory origins – on the telly for more than a decade, but they are now omnipresent in cafes, ad agencies and other places far from an allotment .
Online, gardeners are finding new audiences, in some cases for reasons besides their knowledge of gerberas: i-D magazine has hailed a new gen of “hot gardeners” as part of the catalyst for a 50% increase in gardening content on TikTok this year, alongside actual interest in it.
View image in fullscreen Monty Don posing in the Royal Horticultural Society and BBC Radio 2 Dog Garden at the RHS Chelsea flower show in 2025. Photograph: PA Images/Alamy Fancy gardening tools and clobber are aspirational: a site called Gardenheir has made a name for itself selling hand-forged tools, £275 two-gallon watering cans and various items in collaboration with the French workwear brand Le Laboureur that seem more likely destined for a small-plates restaurant than a vegetable patch.
Niwaki is another site for very fancy gardening gear. According to Jake Hobson, its founder, the popularity of gardening togs is as much about the mindset it offers as practicality. “They communicate a particular attitude. They’re comfortable and loose-fitting, but they also suggest that you’re ready for action,” he says.
Niwaki has intentionally pushed its products to new, non-gardening markets. “We sell a lot from Chiltern Street to customers who may or may not have a garden, and who may or may not even wear it in the garden,” he says, drawing a parallel with the broader rise in the appeal of workwear.
View image in fullscreen Niwaki’s limited-edition camo range. Photograph:…