Monty Don

I discovered Monty Don about a month ago during a virtual event from the Hay Festival called, "A Night in with the Wordsworths." It was a series of poetry readings. Some of the readers were celebrities I was familiar with. But this guy? I had never heard of him, but I was stunned by his reading voice. It was gentle, it was deliberate, it was authentic.

Here you go.
Go ahead, listen. I'll wait.

:)

Anyway, to the Google I went, and found out that he's one of the UK's leading garden writers and show more presenters.
Now, this discovery just happened to coincide with my own newly embarked upon hobby of gardening. I'm doing way more with it this year than ever before, and enjoying it.
So downloading Monty Don's audiobook (which he reads himself!) and plugging in my headphones during my daily times of weeding and watering seemed like the perfect thing to do.
And it was.
Monty Don reads his own words with a conversational flair and a well articulated passion for the subject. He's my gardening guru now the same way Rick Steves is my travel guru. The book is a mixture of practical advice as well as slightly philosophical musings about how a garden feels at different times of year and how to approach your role in it.

But I also think even if you're not intensely interested in gardening, you would find this relaxing as an audiobook. show less

The thing that blows my mind about this book is that Monty Don introduces himself as a passionate amateur gardener -- I'm not sure I agree with that, but it may explain why I enjoy his advice so much. It always feels accessible, interesting, useful and insightful. That he is the reader for the audiobook is just one more plus in my book. Enjoyed it immensely, plan to look back on it/listen again in future.

This book was so readable and Monty Don writes so well and is such sympathetic person that I was carried along looking forward to the next chapter. I accompanied my reading by looking up Google images for the gardens he visits. I didn't agree with all his enthusiastic comments of some of the gardens but they were interesting nevertheless.

His analysis of what makes French gardens unique - their intellectual component - is interesting especially when one gardens in a British style.

The outside show more back cover says that this is the 'very best travel writing' and I agree. The final gardens are those of the soldier's cemeteries of Northern France and here he writes movingly about h s grandmother's brother who was killed at High Wood. show less

I do not care all that much about dogs. And I generally had no idea what Monty Don was talking about when he described his garden projects. And I got the impression that I was supposed to know a great deal more than I do about the BBC show Gardeners' World (for example, that it exists).
However, I really enjoyed watching two seasons of Big Dreams, Small Spaces, and got a kick out of how worshipful everyone on the show was of this gardening instructor, and I was charmed by this book for show more similar reasons: it vividly presents a life experience that is very different from my own, and it is supremely affable. show less