Monty Don

Name	Monty Don
Caption	Monty Don in 2007
Birth date	July 08, 1955
Birth place	Berlin, Germany
Occupation	Television presenter, gardener, writer
Spouse	Sarah Don (1983-present)
Children	2 sons, 1 daughter
Parents	Denis Don (deceased)Janet (née Wyatt, deceased)
Alma mater	Magdalene College, Cambridge
Years active	(1994-present)
Nationality	British
Ethnicity	White British
Residence	Ivington, Herefordshire, UK

Montagu 'Monty' Denis Wyatt Don (born 8 July 1955) is a British television presenter, writer and speaker on horticulture, best known for presenting the BBC television series Gardeners' World.

Life and career

Family background

Monty Don was born in Berlin, son of Denis Don, a career soldier posted in Germany and Janet (née Wyatt). Both parents died in the 1980s. Don has a twin sister, an elder brother David, and two other siblings. His twin suffered a broken neck and blindness in a car crash, aged 19. He determined to go to Cambridge out of “sheer bloody-mindedness”, attending Magdalene College, where he read English and met his future wife Sarah. They married in 1983, and have three children, Adam, Freya and Tom. The couple lived in Islington, north London while Don pursued postgraduate study at the London School of Economics, worked as waiter at Joe Allen restaurant in Covent Garden and later as a dustman, completing two unpublished novels. Sarah trained as a jeweller.

Career

In the 1980s, Don and his wife formed a successful company that made and sold costume jewellery under the name Monty Don Jewellery. The collapse of the company in the early 1990s prompted him to embark on a career in writing and broadcasting. He has written about the rise and collapse of their business in The Jewel Garden, an autobiographical book written with his wife. “We were lambs to the slaughter and we lost everything, [...] we lost our house, our business. We sold every stick of furniture we had at Leominster market,” he wrote. He was unemployed from 1991 to 1993. He is a keen proponent of organic gardening and the practice of organic techniques, to some extent, features in all of his published work. The organic approach is most prominent in his 2003 book The Complete Gardener.

Don was the main presenter on BBC Two's Gardeners' World from 2003 to 2008 succeeding Alan Titchmarsh. He was the first self-taught horticulturist presenter in the show's 36-year history, stepping down only after suffering a minor stroke. below two million for the first time in 2009, in January 2010, changes were announced to the programme in an attempt to entice viewers back. In December 2010, it was announced that Don would be returning to the programme as lead presenter for the 2011 series, replacing Toby Buckland. Reaction to the announcement was divided on the programme's blog. Since March 2011 he has been presenting the programme from his own garden in Herefordshire

Don featured in the BBC programme and book, Growing out of Trouble, in which several heroin addicts manage a Herefordshire smallholding in an attempt at rehabilitation. He presented My Dream Farm, a series which helped people learn to become successful smallholders (Channel 4, January 2010) and Mastercrafts, a six-part series for BBC Two, which celebrated six traditional British crafts. He has twice been a panelist on the BBC's Question Time (February 2009 and March 2010) and his family history was the subject of the fourth programme in the seventh series of the BBC genealogy programme Who Do You Think You Are? (August 2010). In April 2011 on BBC2, Don presents Italian Gardens, a four part series which will be accompanied by a book on the series.

In late 2008, Don became President of the Soil Association.

Personal life

Don has written of his struggle with depression since the age of 25 and Seasonal Affective Disorder.

He currently lives in Ivington, Herefordshire, England, and has lived in Herefordshire for the past twenty years.

Publications

1990: The Prickotty Bush

1995: The Weekend Gardener

1997: The Sensuous Garden

1998: Gardening Mad

2003: The Complete Gardener

2003: From the Garden to the Table: Growing, Cooking, and Eating Your Own Food

2004: The Jewel Garden (Hodder & Stoughton), with Sarah Don

2005: Gardening From Berryfields

2006: Fork to Fork

2006: Growing out of Trouble

2006: My Roots: A Decade in the Garden

2008: Around the World in 80 Gardens

2009: The Ivington Diaries

2010: My Dream Farm

2011: Italian Gardens

References

External links

Official Monty Don website

BBC pages

Who Do You Think You Are page

The Monty Project

Social Enterprise Ambassadors

Monty Don's Final Observer Column

Video Interview with Monty Don

Around the World in 80 Gardens.

Times Interview with Monty Don May 2007.

Category:1955 births Category:Living people Category:20th-century writers Category:21st-century writers Category:Alumni of Magdalene College, Cambridge Category:English garden writers Category:English gardeners Category:English people of Scottish descent Category:English television presenters Category:Old Malvernians Category:People from Herefordshire Category:Stroke survivors