Quite literally everything you need to know about gardening. Monty is king!

---

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #38967 in Books
• Published on: 2005-03-03
• Binding: Paperback
• 440 pages

Synopsis
Written with passion and packed with practical advice, Monty Don breathes new life into organic gardening. Monty's straightforward advice plus extraordinarily beautiful photographs taken over the course of a year in his own Herefordshire garden reveal the secrets of growing abundant flowers and vegetables, plants and produce while respecting the needs of the environment.

---

Customer Reviews

Looks great but confuses The Good Life with real life
I like this book. It looks good, it's interesting to read and seems to have all the "buy me" boxes ticked, but I wonder how much of it could really apply to the average back garden or allotment. I say this because Don uses his own garden as his example - his garden being a vast swathe of English countryside divided into various areas that themselves are larger than most people's gardens. With quotes such as, "the houses in my area are mainly built of oak" (page 14), and page after page of photographs showing Don in one of his many extensive gardens, he makes no effort to identify with his potential readers.

To expand on this a little, Don's Lime Walk (a leafy avenue of lime trees) is so large that he uses a gantry on a trailer to tend the trees (see photos on page 108). How many readers really have room for a lime walk or can afford more than a ladder? Then there's Sarah's meadow (yes, a meadow). What possible relevance can that have for anyone doing their back garden? (see page 189). For good manure he absurdly recommends keeping some livestock (page 46). In his meanderings on planting an orchard, he talks about buying fifty trees to start it off in a two acre field (see page 376). Again this is no more than a dream for most readers, so what's the point of mentioning it?

Don is clearly unacquainted with the average person's realities of budget, scale, time and council regulations (for example, prohibiting the keeping of livestock) and seems to have confused The Good Life with real life.

Don's text is charming but often preachy. His environmental beliefs pepper many pages, mostly with well-meaning but vacuous pap such as "By nurturing [...] tree seedlings that emerge in the garden, you are meaningfully countering the predations of the rain forests."

I said at the start that I like this book. I do like it - it's a great feel-good read, a very nice coffee table book with glimpses of Don's lovely grounds and pretty black and white Tudor mansion, set among rolling acres of fine words. Its problem is that its fanciful veneer overwhelms its practical allusions.

Another Monty Don favourite
I just adore Sarah and Monty Don's books - not the least for the wonderful glimspes they give us into their house and garden. Monty Don's The Complete Gardener is probably my favourite (although it has to compete with Fork to Fork). I am an experienced gardener (currently restoring an old Victorian agrden), but I still throughly enjoyed this book which covers many aspects of gardening from composting to eating: partly it is the prose (clean, helpful, non-condescending); partly it is the wonderful photographs; and very partly it is the information. For a novice gardener it will be extremely helpful ... for the experienced gardener it is just a delightful wander (once again) into the Don's garden.

My only quibble, and one which keeps me from giving this a 5-star rating, is the mention of global warming on every third page. I found that a little tedious. I'm well aware of the effects of global warming (in Tasmania, how can I not be?) but I didn't need to have it rammed down my throat quite so often. A point made less is a point made most.

Only a minor quibble, though, and it won't stop me rushing out to buy the next Monty Don book.

Inspiring and Practical
This is genuinely a good read. Although it is handy to dip in and out of, it also works well when read straight through. Monty writes really well - his written voice sounds exactly like his presenting voice, and he manages to fit a lot of useful information in simply and elegantly.
Perhaps best of all, however, is the fact that the whole book is firmly grounded in his own experience. Lots of gardening books give you masses of practical information, but Monty tells you how it all fits together, and how he organises his own garden and schedules his tasks. He also tells you about mistakes that he has made. This is useful not just because it means he can offer some useful advice, but also because it reassures the novice gardener (me) that even the experts get it wrong sometimes.