Born at St Bartholomew's Hospital[2] in the City of London to a Bornean father and a Welsh mother from Newport, Wong was brought up in Singapore and Malaysia.
Upon being awarded an academic scholarship, he returned to the UK in 1999 to study at the University of Bath, where he took a BSc in Business Administration.
[3] He then trained at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and the University of Kent,[4] gaining a Master of Science degree in ethnobotany, graduating with distinction.
In his first garden at the 2004 Hampton Court Palace Flower Show, he became the youngest-ever medal-winning designer at the event, and is currently the youngest five-time RHS medal winner.
In September 2015, Wong started writing a weekly column in The Observer;[9] in February 2023 he announced that he had resigned from the column, after writing to the editorial department and tweeting to describe as "completely unacceptable"[10] a column by Catherine Bennett whose headline likened politicians who support trans rights to alleged sex trafficker Andrew Tate in the context of the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill and which mentioned Rosie Duffield, Joanna Cherry and Miriam Cates by name, criticising comments by Lloyd Russell-Moyle and Ben Bradshaw.