I first met Matt Biggs when we hosted Gardener’s Question Time at my synagogue, a highlight of my career and he was on the panel. A deeply religious Christian, he subsequently visited the synagogue for services several times, shared with us the remarkable role Christadelphians had played rescuing Jews from Nazi Europe, went round our garden with us, brought us two special camelias, commented when we showed him the greenhouse kit we’d just bought ‘Putting that up together will test your marriage’ and became a good friend.
I was deeply saddened to learn of his diagnosis with cancer. We kept in touch and I was shocked to hear from him recently that he might have only months left to live. ‘Keep me in your prayers,’ said, and I do. So I hadn’t expected him still to be working and was thrilled to hear him when I turned on the radio during a long drive home and caught the latest episode of GQT. I can’t remember a propos what gardener’s question the chair turned to Matt and invited him to speak about his cancer journey. (Matt has been courageously open about his illness from early on.)
What follows is not a transcription of what he said, but of what I took from it, and the impact his words have had on me.
‘You’ve just been given a special honour Matt; tell us about it.’
‘Yes; I’ve been awarded the VMH (I had to look this up afterwards; it stands for the Victoria Medal of Honour ‘awarded to British horticulturists resident in the United Kingdom whom the Royal Horticultural Society Council considers deserving of special honour.’)
‘I’ve been honoured just for doing what I love.’ (He was clearly thrilled!)
‘I did one of those routine screenings for bowel cancer. If they send one to you, do it. Don’t leave it. It’s so important. They called me in and said I had such a tiny bit of cancer it wasn’t a worry. But a year later it had gone to my liver. You can imagine how that went down. But then, an amazing thing. They took away two thirds of my liver, but it regrows. I had a spring pruning.
‘I had chemo. That’s not easy. (I remembered the conversations we’d had about how he sat looking out of the hospital window and thinking how a piece of semi-wasteland could be turned into a garden, how on his next chemo he had begun to design the space in his head, and how after his third he’d taken steps to make it happen.)
‘We all know the power of green therapy. So I thought: restore the garden as a gift for cancer patients. I gathered amazing people – I love them all to bits. They never say no. Why are they making a garden? Because we know how beauty matters, how beauty can heal. So we’re going to wrap that hospital space round with beauty. It’s an antidote to the world of terrors and despair.
‘I say: “Every cloud has a silver lining,” but, if there isn’t one, make it. So I’m trying to get on with everything while I can. I hate the thought of not being able to communicate.
‘I’m just being Matt as long as I can, and I’m loving it.
Halfway through the programme my phone went.
‘Sorry. I can’t talk now. I’ll call you back in ten.’
I just had to listen. I had to capture every word. I had to lay it to my soul. Nothing was going to stop me hearing the rest of that programme.
Back home with my wife, we tuned in to the programme all over again. But I don’t need iPlayer; I can hear Matt’s words in my heart.
God bless you, Matt. God be with you and send you Refuah Shelemah, as much strength and healing as possible.
Listen at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/2026/matthew-biggs-final-gardeners-question-time-bbc-radio-4