Montagu Denis Wyatt Don OBE DL VMH (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, where 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 2003, Don replaced Alan Titchmarsh, at his suggestion, as the lead presenter of Gardeners' World, only leaving the show between 2008 and 2011 owing to illness.

[1] 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 Janet Montagu (née Wyatt).

[6] 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.

[citation needed] He failed his A-levels and while studying for retakes at night school, worked on a building site and a pig farm by day.

[5][2] 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.

[9][10] He returned to England, determined to attend Cambridge University out of "sheer bloody-mindedness",[3] and passed the entrance exams.

He studied English at Magdalene College,[8][11] during which time he met his future wife Sarah Erskine, a trained jeweller and architect.

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.

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.

In September 2002, the BBC announced Don as the new lead presenter of its long-running series Gardeners' World from 2003, succeeding Alan Titchmarsh.

[20] After viewing figures fell below two million for the first time in 2009,[21] the BBC announced further changes to the programme to entice viewers back.

In 2014, Don became the lead presenter for the BBC's flagship Chelsea Flower Show coverage, again replacing Titchmarsh.

[51] In January 1994, Allan Jenkins, then editor of The Observer, invited Don to write a weekly gardening column for the newspaper.

[9] In a piece from 2004 to commemorate the tenth year of the column, Don wrote: "It has been more life-changing than any other work I have done in my adult life.

Where an arts presenter might eschew the little black Armani suit and the dazzling white shirt for the crumpled linen, Don’s gear retreats into the manly rumpledon of a workman’s cotton drill.

He is not quite the Mr McGregor of the Potter books: real-life ancient gardeners wore mighty cords and moleskins, tweeds and flannels – and sacks if the weather was bad enough.

I guess that this is where we come up against the row within Monty Don, between the lightly earthy garden enthusiast and the grimmer unworldly hippy moralist.

The making of the garden there, and the subsequent loss of the house in the aftermath of the crash of their jewellery business, was the subject of Don's first book, The Prickotty Bush.

Two that he currently owns are Ned, a Golden Retriever, and Patti, a Yorkshire terrier; which are seen on camera with Don on Gardeners' World.

[69] The coppice at Longmeadow holds the graves of Dons' many pets, including dogs Nigel, Nellie, Beaufort, Red, Poppy and Barry, and cats Stimpy and Blue.

The dog was chosen as a seven-week-old puppy from a litter in the Forest of Dean on 1 July 2008,[71] and was popular with viewers who were concerned when he disappeared from the programme in September 2012.

He had injured himself after twisting sideways when jumping to catch a tennis ball and had ruptured an intervertebral disc in his spine.

[74][75][28][29] Don told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme that Nigel had been more than a companion and had helped him with his struggles with depression.

[9] Don recalled "great spans of muddy time" in his life and realised that gardening "heals me better than any medicine".

[2][19] In 2015, Don said that years of gardening had left him with sore knees, one of which causes constant pain and needs replacing.

[82] In July 2006, he appeared on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs, choosing an eclectic mix of pop and classical records; the Beatles' "A Hard Day's Night" was his favourite disc, his book choice was Collected Poems by Henry Vaughan and his luxury item the painting Hendrikje Bathing by Rembrandt.

[84][85] Don was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2018 Birthday Honours for services to horticulture, to broadcasting and to charity.