Celebrity gardener Monty Don has revealed he and his wife were stuck inside their house earlier this week as they became flooded in.
The horticulturist and broadcaster, 69, said the increasing frequency of flooding in the UK was “proving to be a much bigger problem than drought”.
“I live in Herefordshire. We live on a flood plain, so flooding has always been part of life there,” he said.
“But it’s definitely got worse. It’s definitely got more frequent.”
Don is the main presenter of TV show Gardeners’ World, which he hosts from his own garden, Longmeadow.
He has recently been filming for a new series, Monty Don’s British Gardens, in which he travels across the UK to discover what gardens can tell us about the nation.
“I think gardeners everywhere are having to deal with [climate change],” he said.
“One of the things of filming from the north of Scotland, right through Britain, is you’re seeing, wherever we went, people were having to deal with changes.
“And floods are proving to be a much bigger problem than drought actually.
“Twenty years ago, if you’d asked me about climate change, I would have said that we’re going to be in a Mediterranean climate, and we need to adapt to that.
“I think what’s shaping up is, we have these big events, and our gardens are very wet, and they’re very dry, and they’re very cold, and that’s tricky.”
Don added: “What’s so odd is it’s not like we’ve had weeks and weeks and weeks of rain. It can be almost overnight and the waters come up.
“On Monday, for example, my wife and I couldn’t get out of the house or garden. We were flooded in.
“No-one could come in, no-one can go out.
“That’s fine [but] I have a 97-year-old neighbour. If anything had happened to him, it would have been a helicopter time, I guess.”