Gardening legend Jim McColl is hanging up TV’s most treasured trowel after four decades on Scottish TV screens.
The green-fingered grandad’s final appearance on The Beechgrove Garden show will be screened tonight on BBC Scotland.
Jim, 84, said he made the difficult decision to bow out after noticing he was slowly losing the power in his hands.
He added: “It is time I retired, not because I have lost any interest in gardening but because I’m getting old.
“If I get down on my knees, I’m not sure I can get back up again. I have to have something to lean on.
“I have a neuropathy thing with my hands. I have no strength in my fingers, no grip, and it has just been gradually getting worse.”
Jim revealed he is getting treatment for the condition but is unable to do things like fasten his top shirt button.
He added: “One of the things you want to do when you’re on the TV is you want to do things properly. I just want to grow old in private but I’ll still garden.”
The horticultural guru has been at the helm of The Beechgrove Garden since it began in 1978, when he presented the show from BBC Scotland’s Aberdeen base with George Barron.
Born and bred in Kilmarnock, Jim trained and worked at the West of Scotland College near Ayr.
After a spell down as a gardening adviser in Reading, he moved to Aberdeenshire where he worked on a ground-breaking project – which was featured on Tomorrow’s World – for the Glen Garioch distillery in Oldmeldrum, Aberdeenshire to use waste energy from cooling whisky to heat glasshouses full of tomatoes.
With George, he transformed a plot of land “barely the third of a football pitch” and the roots of the Beechgrove Garden were planted.
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Over the years, Jim admits he’s lost count of the number of times he has said, “Welcome to Beechgrove Garden” and his catchphrase “Every day’s a school day.”
His life was celebrated in BBC Scotland documentary Jim McColl at 80, screened in 2015, and he gained a Royal Television Society Scotland award in 2016.
Beechgrove producer Gwyneth Hardy said: “I have worked with Jim for over 20 years and it has been a
privilege to work with a real Scottish cultural icon.”
