Montagu Denis Wyatt Don (born George Montagu Don; 8 July 1955) is an English horticulturist, broadcaster, and writer who is best known as the lead presenter of the BBC gardening television series Gardeners' World.
Born in Germany and raised in England, Don studied at Magdalene College, Cambridge, during which time he met his future wife. They ran a successful costume jewellery business through the 1980s until the stock market crash of 1987 resulted in almost complete bankruptcy. In 1989, Don made his television debut as a regular on This Morning with a gardening segment, which led to further television work across the decade including his own shows for BBC Television and Channel 4. He began his writing career at this time and published his first of over 25 books in 1990. Between 1994 and 2006, Don wrote a weekly gardening column in The Observer.
In 2003, Don replaced Alan Titchmarsh, at the latter's suggestion, as the lead presenter of Gardeners' World, only leaving the show between 2008 and 2011 owing to illness. Since then he has written and produced several garden series of his own, the most recent being Monty Don's Rhineland Gardens which aired in 2026.
Early life and education
George Montagu Don was born on 8 July 1955 in Iserlohn, West Germany. He is the youngest of five children to British parents Denis Thomas Keiller Don, a career soldier stationed in Germany at the time of his birth, and (née) Janet Montagu Wyatt. Soon after Don's birth, his parents changed the name on his birth certificate to Montagu Denis Don because of a family spat over the name. When Don was 10, he added his mother's maiden name, becoming Montagu Denis Wyatt Don.
On Don's paternal side he is a descendant of botanist George Don and the Keiller family, best known as the inventors of Keiller's marmalade. On his maternal side, he is descended from the Wyatt family of architects. Don has a twin sister, Alison, who at the age of 19 was nearly killed in a car accident, suffering a broken neck and blindness.
When Don was one year old, the family moved to Hampshire, England. He described his parents as "very strict". 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. He then attended Malvern College in Malvern, which he hated, followed by a state comprehensive school, the Vyne School, and a state sixth form college, Queen Mary's College, Basingstoke. He failed his A-levels and while studying for retakes at night school, worked on a building site and a pig farm by day. During his childhood, he had become an avid gardener and farmer.
In his late teens, Don spent several months in Aix-en-Provence, France where he worked as a gardener and played rugby in local teams. He returned to England, determined to attend the University of Cambridge out of "sheer bloody-mindedness", and passed the entrance exams. He studied English at Magdalene College, during which time he met his future wife Sarah Erskine, a trained jeweller and architect. Don took up boxing to impress his father, a former heavyweight boxing champion in the army, becoming a Cambridge Half Blue for boxing. He gave up after getting knocked out and suffering concussion.
Jewellery business
In 1981, Don and Erskine started Monty Don Jewellery, a London-based business that designed, made, and sold costume jewellery. The company became a success and in five years, operated from a shop on Beauchamp Place in Knightsbridge with hundreds of outworkers and had secured as many as 60 outlets across the UK, including Harrods, Harvey Nichols, and Liberty. Among their customers were Boy George, Michael Jackson, and Princess Diana. However, the 1987 stock market crash caused an almost complete bankruptcy as it cut off American sales, their biggest market.
The situation prompted Don to embark on a career in writing and broadcasting. Reflecting on the experience, he wrote: "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 was unemployed from 1991 to 1993, and spent all of 1992 on the dole. Some of their jewellery is kept at the V&A Museum.
Early career
By mid-1989, Don had written several gardening articles and his home garden was featured in various publications. The increased exposure opened doors: soon Don was writing a gardening column for the Mail on Sunday, had a book deal, and an invitation to screen test for a proposed weekly live gardening segment on the ITV television breakfast show This Morning. Don landed the spot and his first segment aired in October 1989, receiving £100 a show.
After 26 spots on This Morning, Don landed additional television work as presenter on the BBC Television shows Holiday and Tomorrow's World. Though he had some doubts about being a presenter, he took the jobs as he felt desperate for work. In November 1999, Channel 4 started to air the gardening series Fork to Fork, in which Don and his wife presented segments on growing and cooking organic vegetables. This was followed by three other series hosted by Don between 1999 and 2003: Real Gardens, Lost Gardens, and Don Roaming.
Gardeners' World
In September 2002, the BBC announced Don as the new lead presenter of its long-running series Gardeners' World from 2003, succeeding Alan Titchmarsh. Don is the first self-taught horticulturist presenter in the show's history. Don hosted the show until he put his career on hold to recover from his minor stroke in 2008, and the show continued with Toby Buckland filling in as host. During Don's initial stint, viewing figures fell from 5 million to 2 million, this fall being most frequently blamed on the BBC's decision to change the show's format soon after Don's arrival. After viewing figures fell below two million for the first time in 2009, the BBC announced further changes to the programme to entice viewers back. In December 2010, Don announced his return as host for the 2011 series. Reaction to the announcement was divided on the programme's blog.
Initially, Don filmed episodes of Gardeners' World in Berryfields, a rented garden in Stratford-upon-Avon. When he returned as host in 2011, Don began to present from his own garden, Longmeadow, in Ivington, Herefordshire. He was frequently seen on screen with his Golden Retriever Nigel until the dog died in May 2020, aged 11. In 2016, Don introduced viewers to his new golden retriever, Nell. This was followed by the addition of Patti, a Yorkshire Terrier, in April 2020. Nell died in October 2023 and Patti died in September 2026.
In 2019, Don appeared as himself in an episode of This Time with Alan Partridge, in which Partridge tries to entrap Don in a sting operation by offering him one billion pounds to agree to product placement on his TV show.
In February 2024, Don stated that he had no immediate plans to leave Gardeners' World, saying, "I'm now 68, I was going to stop when I was 65. I'll now go on till I'm 70 and then reconsider. The reason for that is that, apart from anything else, it's not so much wanting my garden back, although there's a strong element of that... It's just that, whilst I've still got energy, there are lots of other projects I want to do that mean I can't be here every week."
In May 2026, Don was given an official "reminder" of BBC impartiality guidelines after appearing on Gardeners' World wearing a navy blue Barbour jacket while simultaneously featuring in an advertising campaign for the same brand.
In September 2026, he announced that he would be standing down from presenting Gardener's World.
Own series
Don is also known for writing and presenting his own series. In 2005, he set up a 6-acre (2.4 ha) smallholding in Herefordshire so a group of young drug offenders could work the land. The project was documented for the BBC series Growing Out of Trouble, airing in 2006. This was…