Monty Don – Bio, Net Worth, Wife, Job, Family, Awards, Age, Facts

George Montagu Don is a British horticulturist, broadcaster, and writer who is excellently known as Monty Don. He is well recognized as the lead presenter of the BBC gardening television series “Gardeners’ World”. He also worked for “The Observer” as a gardening columnist and hosted such Channel 4 programs as “Lost Gardens” and “Real Gardens”. He became interested in gardening and farm work in his younger years. Don started his TV career as a guest presenter on the “BBC” show “Holiday” in the 1990s. He was seen on shows such as “Tomorrow’s World,” “Fork to Fork,” and “Don Roaming.” Monty has also written several books such as “The Prickotty Bush” (1990), “The Organic Gardener” (2005), “My Dream Farm” (2010), “The Jewel Garden: A Story of Despair and Redemption” (2005), “Nigel: My Family and Other Dogs” (2016), and many others. Moreover, Don has written and produced several garden series of his own as the most recent was “Monty Don’s Adriatic Gardens” which aired in 2022.

Monty Don O.B.E. is the UK’s leading garden writer and broadcaster. He is known as the lead presenter of the BBC gardening television series Gardeners’ World.

What is Monty Don’s background?

Monty Don opened his eyes for the very first time on 8th July 1955 in Iserlohn, West Germany. His real name is George Montagu Don and his nationality is British as his family moved to Hampshire, England when Monty was one. Soon after his birth, Don’s parents changed the name on his birth certificate to Montagu Denis Don due to a family spat over the name. Likewise, he came from a mixed ethnic background. His religion is Christian and his race is white. Don celebrated his 67th birthday in 2022 and as per his birthdate, his zodiac sign is Cancer. He is the son of British parents Denis Thomas Keiller Don (father) who is a career soldier stationed in Germany at the time of his birth, and Janet Montagu (mother). He also has four siblings and his two brothers’ names are David Don and Alison.
Talking about Don’s education, he attended three independent schools: Quidhampton School in Basingstoke, followed by Bigshotte School in Wokingham, where at seven, he was asked to leave school for being too boisterous. Monty then attended Malvern College in Malvern. But, he failed his A-levels and while studying for retakes at night school, working on a building site and a pig farm by day. Later, he returned to England, determined to attend Cambridge University out of “sheer bloody-mindedness”, and passed the entrance exams. He studied English at Magdalene College.

What does Monty Don do for a living?

• Monty Don began his career by starting a business with his wife, opening Jewellery which is a London-based business that designed, made, and sold costume jewelry.
• The company became a success and in five years, operated from a shop on Beauchamp Place in Knightsbridge with hundreds of our workers and had secured as many as 60 outlets across the UK.
• But, the 1987 stock market crash caused an almost complete bankruptcy as it cut off American sales, their biggest market which prompted Don to embark on a career in writing and broadcasting.
• He was then unemployed from 1991 to 1993 and spent all of 1992 on the dole. Some of their jewelry is kept at the V&A Museum.
• Later he started writing several gardening articles by mid-1989 which increased exposure and led to Don writing a gardening column for the “Mail on Sunday”.
• He landed the spot in the show, “This Morning” and his first segment aired in October 1989, receiving £100 a show.
• After that, he work as a presenter on the BBC Television shows “Holiday”, and “Tomorrow’s World” and in November 1999, Channel 4 started to air the gardening series “Fork to Fork”.
• The BBC announced him as the new lead presenter of its long-running series “Gardeners’ World” in 2003, succeeding Alan Titchmarsh in September 2002 as he is the first self-taught horticulturist presenter in the show’s history.
• As well, he filmed episodes of “Gardeners’ World” in Berryfields and was frequently seen on screen with his Golden Retriever Nigel until the dog died in May 2020, shortly before its 12th birthday.
• Don apparently signed a contract with the BBC to continue presenting “Gardeners’ World” for three years in 2020.
• As well, Monty set up a 6-acre (2.4 ha) smallholding in Herefordshire so a group of young drug offenders could work the land in 2005. The project was documented for the BBC series “Growing Out of Trouble”, airing in 2006. 
• He also presented “My Dream Farm”, a Channel 4 series that helped people learn to become successful smallholders, and “Mastercrafts”, a BBC series that celebrated six traditional British crafts in 2010.
• He also presented an episode of “Great British Garden Revival” and in 2014, he became the lead presenter for the BBC’s flagship Chelsea Flower Show coverage, again replacing Titchmarsh.
• He presented the four-part BBC series “The Secret History of the British Garden” in 2015 as well as he presented three series of “Big Dreams, Small Spaces” in 2014.
• His next series was “Monty Don’s Paradise Gardens” in 2018 which was followed by “Monty Don’s Japanese Gardens” in 2019, “Monty Don’s American Gardens” in 2020, and “Monty Don’s Adriatic Gardens” in 2022.
• Besides, Monty has described himself primarily as a writer, “who happens to have lots of television work” as he had written two unpublished novels, “The Clematis Affair” and “An Afternoon in Padua” by the early 1990s. 
• Since 2004, he has also written articles for the “Daily Mail” and Mail Online and in 2005 Don and his wife Sarah’s book “The Jewel Garden: A Story of Despair and Redemption” which is a joint autobiography and the story of their home and gardens at Longmeadow was published by Routledge.
• In 2016 Hodder Books published an audiobook of Monty’s “Nigel: My Family and Other Dogs”, read by the author.
• Also, in June 2020 “Prospect” magazine declared Don “the nation’s gardener”.
• Furthermore, Monty has owned many dogs throughout his adult life. Two that he currently owns are Nellie, a Golden Retriever, and Patti, a Yorkshire terrier; both are seen on camera with Don on “Gardeners’ World”. 
• Nigel was a male Golden Retriever dog owned by Monty. Nigel made many appearances on “Gardeners’ World”, sometimes with Nellie.
• Monty said that he had chosen Nigel because the domestic dog signifies the good and bad in human relationships with nature; humans can prioritize fluffy animals over others.
• An autobiographical book entitled “Nigel: my family and other dogs” was published in September 2016, telling the story of Nigel and the other dogs in Don’s life, including the female golden retriever, Nellie.
• Unfortunately, he announced on 11th May 2020, through his Twitter and Instagram pages, that Nigel had died, six days before his 12th birthday.

Awards and Achievements

• Monty Don was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2018 Birthday Honours for services to horticulture, broadcasting, and to charity.
• He was awarded the Victoria Medal of Honour by the council of the Royal Horticultural Society in May 2022.

Who is Monty Don’s wife?

Monty Don is a married man who exchanged vows with his beautiful wife Sarah Erskine in 1983. The pair met each other while attending Magdalene College. They have two sons, Adam and Tom, and a daughter Freya. The couple lived in Islington, north London, while Monty pursued postgraduate study at the London School of Economics and worked as a waiter at Joe Allen restaurant in Covent Garden and later as a binman. Then they moved to the De Beauvoir Town area of Hackney where they made their first garden. In 1991, the Dons bought a home in Ivington, Herefordshire where they started to create a new garden named Longmeadow. They later moved into their Ivington home at the end of 1992. Concerning Monty’s sexual orientation, he is straight.

Who is Sarah Don, Monty Don’s wife?

How does Monty Don earn?

Monty Don has a net worth of between $1 million to $5 million as of 2022 whereas he also earns a handsome amount of salary which is around thousands of dollars per year. He has the access to all the world’s luxury and comfort. Don is a passionate and hardworking guy, so there is no doubt his net worth and salary will surely rise higher in the future days. In addition, his major source of income is his horticulturist, broadcaster, and writing career. 

How tall is Monty Don?

Monty Don stands at an ideal height of 5 feet and 4 inches with a balanced body weight of 58 kg. He has dark brown hair and eyes color. Don has an average body build with 42-32-18 inches of body measurements. Apart from that, he has suffered from depression since his mid-twenties. He also suffered from a bout of peritonitis in August 2007 which is an abdominal infection. His wife had found him unconscious on the floor and he was rushed to the hospital for emergency surgery. In February 2008, Don suffered a minor stroke at home and in May 2008 he put his career on hold to recover. Monty said in 2015 that years of gardening had left him with sore knees, one of which causes constant pain and needs replacing. Sadly, it was reported in May 2022 that Don had COVID-19 and had been bedridden for four days.