ABC TV Host Retires After 40-Year Career

Legendary Gardening Australia host Jane Edmanson has announced her retirement after four decades as a presenter at ABC.

Edmanson, 75, has been presenting at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation since the late 1980s, joining Gardening Australia when the show first started in 1990. But on Friday, the longtime host announced to Costa Georgiadis that she would be taking a step back and enjoying her years in retirement.

“It’s time,” she shared on Friday’s episode of the series, as per TV Tonight. “I’m retiring, although I don’t like that word, I am retiring from Gardening Australia, having done it for so many years, and it makes me feel really, really proud and humble.”

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“It’s been a pleasure for me for so many years to present what I do on the program, but tide’s time, and I will move on and do other things within the horticultural world, and still see you and all the lovely faces on the telly,” added Edmanson, who has written numerous books on the topic of gardening. “It’ll be just lovely. But time’s right.”

Georgiadis pointed out that Edmanson was the only remaining original host on Gardening Australia, noting that it “really feels like the end of an era.” Edmanson joked, “It could be, the Paleozoic Era is finishing!”

“It’s been so delightful, but I just know that it’s right,” she reiterated. “I look around what’s happening in gardening at the moment, and there’s such a lot of good things happening with young people coming up and students learning all about horticulture and becoming gardeners themselves, and that’s the really important thing.”

“If I can end with one last little thing: keep digging,” she noted. “Keep putting plants in the ground. It doesn’t matter, just keep doing it, and you’ll get so much satisfaction, because it is a lovely, lovely vocation for me for so long, but also for anyone, just as amateur gardeners, to enjoy their garden.”

She added that while she will “miss everyone” at ABC, she will “still be watching.”

“I’ll still be watching, don’t you worry,” she assured. “But it’s been a joy for me because of the team of Gardening Australia. People out there only watch us, but they don’t realise that there’s such a lot that goes behind it. The sound people, the cameraman, the producers, all the horticulturalists that are behind it. It’s such a team effort. It’s fantastic. So, you know, hats off to them, too. I’ll miss them.”