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I should point out that I'm talking about the names that appear if you search the DID website for "gardeners". For example, Sir Roy Strong and Germaine Greer do not appear, although both are gardeners, indeed extremely good ones; it is simply that they're famous chiefly for other things.

Other household names to appear are Harry Wheatcroft, Graham Stuart Thomas, Rosemary Verey, Penelope Hobhouse and Christopher Lloyd. Curiously, however, the only other 21st-century gardener guests, apart from Lloyd, Titchmarsh and Don, are not household names at all, or at least not as gardeners. Susana Walton is better known as the wife and later widow of Sir William Walton, although she did create a famous garden. And Anne Scott-James is surely better known as a pioneering journalist, although later the author of several classic gardening books.

There's a lesson there for gardeners who would like to be invited on to DID: either get yourself on the telly, or make sure you're also famous for something else besides gardening.

But what, I hear you ask, about the music? Well, I've said before – that no one could really describe gardening as cool, and there's little here to suggest that gardeners are – how can I put this? – down with the kids. There's an awful lot of Mozart, Haydn, Brahms, Bach, Beethoven, Strauss (Johann, not Richard) and Vaughan Williams. Lady Walton showed admirable self-control in choosing only three pieces by Sir William.

If, for the sake of argument, we agree that modern popular music began in 1963 (along with a few other things, according to Philip Larkin), then how much of this has found its way into gardening castaways' choices since then, i.e. from Percy Thrower onwards?

Not much – Monty Don turns out to be virtually the sole standard-bearer for pop music, choosing pieces by the Beatles, Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Nick Drake and the Libertines.

Otherwise it's a bit of a desert. Rosemary Verey keeps her end up with Candle in the Wind (Elton John's only appearance), and Percy Thrower nearly makes the cut with Bobby's Girl by Susan Maughan (good choice, Percy). But that's it; no David Bowie, no Paul Simon, no Motown, no Kraftwerk (only joking).

Nor is there much evidence that gardeners have a sense of humour. Dr W E Shewell-Cooper, who wrote gardening books from the Thirties to the Seventies and appeared on DID in 1965, chose Misalliance by Flanders and Swann. If that doesn't ring any bells, gardening is the clue: it's the one about the "right-handed honeysuckle and the left-handed bindweed".

But apart from that, nothing: no Tom Lehrer, no Bob Newhart, no Allan Sherman, no Goons (mind you, no George Formby or Benny Hill, either, so it could have been worse).

We are overdue for another gardener on DID. Still time to catch up with Beth Chatto.

*Ken Thompson is a plant biologist with a keen interest in the science of gardening. He writes and lectures extensively and has written four gardening books, including Compost, No Nettles Required and Do We Need Pandas? The Uncomfortable Truth About Biodiversity. His latest book is Where do Camels Belong? The Story and Science of Invasive Species