Monty Don: The Gardening Mentor America Needs

While the COVID-19 pandemic has been horrible for the world, one of the blessings in this reset for my family has been the addition of a new mentor in our lives: Monty Don. While people in the US may not be familiar with Mr. Don, his is a household name in the UK. He has become a defacto member of our family. Often as we work in the garden we say, “Well, Monty says to do this…” or “On Gardener’s World they showed it this way…” Frankly, in our ongoing backyard and front yard renovations, we always ask ourselves, “What would Monty do?” And the whole reason we are building a greenhouse with gusto and enthusiasm: Monty Don. But how can a British gardener have so much influence on this Colorado family? Frankly, I would argue that Monty Don is without doubt the gardening mentor America needs. 

I first encountered Mr. Don, or as everyone calls him, Monty, on a show on Netflix a few years ago: Big Dreams Small Spaces. While I thought the careful garden renovations were lovely, I didn’t understand why the people featured on the show all seemed to be in awestruck reverence everytime Monty appeared. I knew I was missing something, but I didn’t pay much attention. 

However, two years ago as we turned to our own backyard projects -- the prospects of which overwhelmed and frustrated me -- I found myself needing a gardening mentor to help sort out the mess of our yard. In my late-night Pinterest searches, I found articles from Gardener’s World magazine and videos with this vaguely familiar, wild-haired, slightly rumpled man with a soothing voice and practical advice. I had found Monty Don, the gardener and teacher adored by millions in the UK. Monty once said that “gardening is British yoga.” It is a practice which my family has embraced, and it has fed us mind, body, and spirit.  

I will be honest: I haven’t watched HGTV in almost a decade. I can’t stand the instantaneousness and the hyper-promotional frenetic pace of the shows. And frankly, with the exception of unrealistic, over-dramatized makeover shows, there is very little G in HGTV anyway. 

Monty Don is the real deal. 

Monty hosts Gardener’s World on BBC, a venerable television show which spans more than fifty years as a weekly British institution. And Gardener’s World could not be more different from American gardening shows. With Monty at the helm and a host of other knowledgeable gardeners who happen to also be presenters -- as opposed to pretty faces who speak their lines well -- Gardener’s World holds court on Friday evenings from March through the end of October. Each week we get glimpses into Monty’s gardens as well as gardens large and small around the UK.

At his heart, Monty is a teacher. He isn’t selling anything. He is teaching his audience how to create a beautiful garden -- from preparing beds and mixing soils to cultivating from seed and appreciating the mix of color and texture at different times of year. His advice is cost-conscious emphasizing the savings of growing from seed and propagating from cuttings. And unlike HGTV shows, he is careful to model the years of work it takes to create a beautiful garden. 

Much of the show is hosted from his own home, Longmeadow Gardens, in Herefordshire, well west of London. He bought the five-acre estate in 1991 and set about creating a gardening paradise. In his writings and when he speaks, Monty is clear that Longmeadow is a never-done creation that has taken years to develop and evolves and changes over months, seasons, years, and decades. This isn’t instant gardening. It is a life-long passion and pursuit of not perfection but satisfaction which is something entirely different indeed. 

I started watching Gardener’s World in earnest after putting my garden to bed in the fall of 2020. An episode or two each night — watching week by week, finding a rhythm and balance from episode to episode. The show’s deliberate, beautiful slowness soothes and comforts -- an antidote to the frantic miasma of cortisol-soaked media in the world beyond Longmeadow’s hedges. Monty carefully contemplates the best soil mix for each seed. He gardens organically, inviting wildlife into his gardens, and preaches balance in all things -- even slugs and snails, bugs and birds. He advocates for ponds, for example, not as pretty show places, but as breeding grounds for dragonflies and frogs, dipping ponds for birds, and beautiful habitats for water plants, too. He demonstrates how to take cuttings in hopes that next spring he will have more salvia and roses and rosemary. And there will be a next spring, a summer, a fall -- for the seasons of the garden are sure and steady and drenched in color and hope. 

Perhaps the most important part of Monty’s teaching comes in his approach: gardening isn’t perfection. His huge, five acre gardens have -- gasp -- weeds! He has a small staff of three who help him garden, but it is clear from his dirty, unmanicured hands and smudged, slightly disheveled clothes, that this man spends as much time in the dirt and compost as he possibly can. Unlike Martha Stewart he is gardener first, presenter a distant second. 

When bindweed, the bane of my existence, invaded the centerpiece of his gardens -- the Jewel Garden -- he and his staff pulled out every single plant, rinsed their roots, and replanted the entire garden. No, I probably won’t be doing that. I’ll be doing battle with bindweed in other ways, but here’s the lesson: even Monty Don ends up with weeds in his garden. Even Monty Don has bare patches that need to be filled. Even Monty Don chooses the wrong plant sometimes and has to pull grasses out of his Paradise Garden and replace them with something less floppy. Even Monty Don has powdery mildew and pests in his vegetable garden. Even Monty Don. And Monty shares his failures as well as his successes as a good teacher does. At the heart of his work is an honesty and a genuine love which oozes from every pore. 

Monty has also been forthright about his personal battles with depression, something which has been particularly poignant during this pandemic. Having been honest with his viewers about his own mental health and the role gardening plays in keeping him healthy, he conveys genuine compassion when guests and viewer videos allude to their own mental health challenges. And as a guide for a nation which has suffered through the COVID-19 pandemic, Monty’s leadership, eloquence, and empathy often bring me to tears. For even at Longmeadow, the realities of COVID-19, lockdowns, sickness, and death are inescapable. Instead of ignoring them, Monty tenderly cares for his viewers with the same love he shows his dahlias and his sweet dogs.  

Having saturated myself in the goodness of Gardener’s World, I sought out Monty’s books. If Monty is my gardening mentor, his book The Complete Gardener, is my gardening Bible. I had never read a gardening book straight through. But when the new edition of The Complete Gardener came out last spring, I read it straight through -- twice. He is an elegant, careful writer. He even has a Writing Garden -- a retreat devoted to his craft. And his skill as a writer, teacher, and storyteller makes for a rich, elegant book 

The Complete Gardener is gorgeous, filled with beautiful photographs from his own gardens. But it is much more than a pretty book. Monty has written a textbook for gardeners in the northern hemisphere. Certainly it is UK-centric, and his intended audience is the home gardener in the UK. But the lessons therein certainly translate across the pond -- and beyond. He covers the basics from soil composition to propagation, his favorite tools, and tasks for different times of the year. He also includes lists of his own favorite cultivars. Longmeadow isn’t a secret laboratory -- his lessons from his gardens are there for us all to learn from. There is even room on each page for note taking. Was this intentional? I don’t know, but if not it is a happy accident as my copy has become the repository for a range of notes both from my own reading and from watching Gardener’s World -- plants to try next year, ideas for plant arrangements, and translations for our drier climate. 

I am so thankful to have found a gardening mentor in Monty Don. He may be 4,500 miles away, but I have learned so much about gardening, caring for our planet, and caring for myself. He has filled a chasm for American gardeners, and I am thankful for that. Now I am off to do my Jobs for the Weekend…

Books by Monty Don

Monty has written numerous books, and this is a sampling of his writing. He also writes regularly for Gardener’s World Magazine as well as the Daily Mail. The Complete Gardener (2020 revised edition) is the book about which I have written in this piece. My Garden World also debuted in 2020.

Shorter Series: Monty Don has also done several shorter series visiting gardens in different countries. These are an amazing education in varied gardening styles. They can be purchased on DVD and are also available to stream via Netflix and Amazon Prime. 

Website: MontyDon.com features his blog as well as information about his gardens, books, writing projects, and more.

Instagram: Monty has a beautiful Instagram feed -- largely of photographs of his gardens and his dogs, sometimes with gardening tips.