This year marks Monty Don’s twentieth anniversary as the popular presenter of the BBC’s Gardeners’ World.
It was as a child at the family home in Hampshire that the seeds of his passion for gardening were sown. When the family’s gardener hurt his back and could no longer tend the five-acre plot, his mother put Monty and his brothers to work. Aged just seven, gardening then was a chore to the young Monty, but over the next decade it became part of his life.
He recalled in an interview for an episode of The Joe Gardener Show that he came home from school aged around 17 on a late March day and instinctively went outside to sow carrots. He could feel spring unfolding, and at the moment of pouring carrot seeds into his hand to plant into the soil he had just prepared, he was filled with a profound feeling of happiness. That night, he had a dream that he put his hands into the earth and his fingers grew into the soil like roots. He awoke feeling refreshed, at ease, and connected to the earth. “I’ve never really lost that feeling,” Monty says.
Monty’s ambition was to become a professional writer, although not specifically about gardens. Aged around 30, he and his wife Sarah were interviewed about their own garden for a newspaper, and he was soon offered the opportunity to write about other people’s gardens. One thing led to another resulting in an offer to be a
daytime television segment host.
Glorious gardens
With more than twenty books to his name, his latest publication – “Venetian Gardens” is a beautiful book and collaboration with acclaimed photographer Derry Moore, inspired by his recent BBC2 series, Adriatic Gardens. “Gardens always tell you as much about the people that made and care for them as their plants. However often you visit its beauty never wanes, never fails to intoxicate,” says Monty.
And the rest, as they say, is history…
Monty has been making television programmes for over thirty years and has been lead presenter of the BBC’s Gardeners’ World since 2003. From 2011 the programme has come from his own garden, Longmeadow, in Herefordshire.
Looking at Monty’s garden today, it’s hard to image it as the two acres he and Sarah purchased in 1991 when it was basically a barren field. “The best thing you can do when you take on a new garden is nothing. Instead, just pay attention. Learn which direction the rain comes from, for example, and where the garden is the warmest and coolest. You need that knowledge,” he says, “and then you start to create a space that is about you and your life in tune with what is happening.”
Venetian Gardens by Monty Don and Derry Moore (BBC Books) is out now, priced £40.
Photos © Derry Moore from Venetian Gardens by Monty Don and Derry Moore
