My Garden World: the Sunday Times bestseller

Product Information

A handful of full colour plates are included in small batches, including the very last one of that special one the book is dedicated to, succeeding in bringing a tear to the eye of many a reader, I think, as potentially will the closing chapter😢 coming just before the short but sweet ½ page of ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS.

There are full page colour photos for each season included in the book and Monty's descriptions and anecdotes are more than enough to bring to life the magic he sees and observes as a outdoors man submerged in nature. Monty Don observes with detail the animals, birds and wildlife that come and go throughout the year, encouraging us to help and preserve the world around us. We may be totally unaware of what is going on if we do not connect with nature using our own powers of observation.

In this book he talks more about the wildlife he observes both at his home and at the farm he owns in Wales. And I loved every page; I learned something new from just about every page, which at my age is no mean thing. Yet no other creature owns the sky more than the swift and they used to grace us with their supersonic, sleek version of the still ubiquitous swallows and martins.

Love a bit of Monty - his encyclopedic knowledge of the countryside and it's inhabitants took me back to the days of Jack Hargreaves and "Out of town". I have used the calendar months because these fit in with the rhythm of my gardening year ~ I always begin each January with a sense of hope and optimism because the garden is starting to wake up after the slow descent down to the end of the year. My Garden World is Monty Don's personal journey through the natural year, month by month, season by season, observed from the immediate world around him. I found the book incredibly informative and I applied several of Monty’s suggestions in my garden throughout the seasons.

He doesn't hold back from being blunt about the decline and endangerment of so many species, or about the reality of country life and pursuits like hunting or shooting but most of all, it is an ode to the natural world and the wonder and joy it so obviously brings to our lives, if we just take a minute to stop and look around us.

The book is insightful, personal, educational, amusing, inspiring, entertaining (is that enough adjectectives? Along with his home and garden in Long Meadow, there is a farm in Wales which provide endless opportunities to observe the comings and goings of plants and wildlife as the seasons change. The book is presented almost as a yearly diary annotating the events and interactions with wildlife - both flaura and fauna.But a joy to finish in January 2022 under a blanket with a cup of tea in front of the fire as the snow piles up outside. I struggled initially at the hard bare facts laid before me, virtually every creature mentioned is in dangerous decline, this I knew - but not how long we’ve known about it - from the 70’s and 80’s! Wildlife is not something that we watch happening in remote and exotic parts of the world on our screens, but right here in our own back yards and the more that we encourage it and learn to live with it, the more rewarding it becomes. A journey through the natural year , month by month, season by season, observed from the immediate world around him.

Already 400 pages in paperback, I suppose a possibly 1,200 page doorstopper if pictures were included might not have been possible though. Evocative for me because I grew up in the Welsh Marches and really, really miss seeing the changes across the seasons. This book is personal, selective, and based on my own particular interests rather than trying to be a reference book of any kind. he notices the little things that so many of us 'gardeners' and outdoor people notice and gives lots of interesting extra facts.

Monty never wrotes that he is for the hunting of any animal (and in fact often states otherwise), but simply tries to explaon that the situation of conservation is more complicated than a yes or no answer. I'm not comfortable with his ambivalence about huntin' and shootin', but then I don't own a large estate in Shropshire and a farm on the Welsh hills. Many of you, like me, will know Monty Don through his TV documentaries and Gardener's World - and viewers came to love his gentle golden retriever, Nigel who died the day after Monty finished writing this book. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. My only criticism is I wish it had been purposefully written in a