Garden-guru Monty Don follows in the footsteps of gardening greats Percy Thrower, Geoff Hamilton and Alan Titchmarsh, as the main presenter of Gardeners’ World.
Monty has a two-acre garden in Herefordshire, where he lives with his wife Sarah and their three children. He has also recently bought a farm in wales. He particularly loves his spring garden, which is filled with flowers from February to late May. He says When everything else is grey and miserable, it’s full of hope.
It’s difficult for him to name his favourite plant because he has so many. Slugs are his biggest gardening heartache, and he admits that he’s hopeless with houseplants.
A perfect gardening day for Monty would be in late spring. He’d get up at about 5.30am and take photos of the garden in the morning light. The work would involve either making a new piece of garden – digging out new beds and replanting – or tidying up an existing part of the garden. Half of the day would be spent in the vegetable patch and the rest of his time would involve sowing seeds, definitely some planting, pruning, some heavy work and at least one meal, if not two, eaten outside. In the background he’d like to listen to a good play and a comedy on BBC Radio 4, without too many noisy aeroplanes overhead.
Monty’s TV work includes five years of This Morning (Granada), and Real Gardens, Fork to Fork, Lost Gardens and Don Roaming (all Channel 4) as well as Gardeners’ World.
His books include The Prickotty Bush, The Weekend Gardener, The Sensuous Garden, Gardening Mad, Urban Jungle, Fork to Fork and The Jewel Garden.