Down to Earth: Gardening Wisdom

Everything you need to know is inside this book.

I enjoy watching Gardener's World on BBC with Monty Don hosting. So informative. The book is like a conversation.Lots of ideas, tons of information.

I enjoy watching Monty's shows on BBC although I am in America. I always come away inspired and a little smarter about my garden. I bought this as a way to muse on ideas and enjoyed it so much. It felt like walking the garden with a friend and just discussing as we went. I am seeing my spaces from a new perspective and will come back to this for my good friend's advice more than once, I am sure. The only thing better would be actually pruning and talking in person! Really nice book, glad I bought it.

I have never seen or heard anyone who is as relentlessly positive about all things gardening as Monty Don.His advice is easy to understand and follow, and your garden will thank you.I wholeheartedly recommend anything he has to say on this subject, and I think you will, too.😁

Nice to have a book that focuses on real hands-on gardening advice the backyard amateur gardener can use. Excellent purchase.

Great information very useful. And Mr. Don’s voice is enjoyable and relaxing. He’s summarizes each chapter for you at the end to make it very simple

Love this book. I am about to renovate an old overgrown city garden and Monty is inspiring and makes me think about keeping it simple. His voice is authentic, knowledgeable and comforting.

I absolutely love this book. I read a little everyday and constantly find myself looking in here to answer certain questions. Since gardening, to me, isn’t a perfect science; I like to follow the advice of Monty Don! A total wealth of knowledge!

This is a great book.Ive designed 3 gardens now (moving house) and always done the same lawn and square border style that you see in most gardens.Im moving house next month or so and we are getting the biggest garden to date and after binge watching gardeners world (new to the show) I decided I want a nice cottage garden with small lawn and huge borders with paths and a veg patch.It may be more then I can chew but the learning is fun and this book is helpful. Im a young person so I smell the start of a great gardening life :-)

I love this book and I love Monty Don. He's so easy to watch and listen to on Gardener's World, and that easy listening is conveyed well in this book as well. It has jobs to do for each of the seasons (akin to jobs for the weekend that features on Gardener's World every week) and has good, general tips all around. I especially liked how the book was split into segments with ideas for a country garden, a tropical garden, etc, and tips on how to achieve these.This is my gardening bible, and I keep referring to it for information on what to do each month, and just general gardening queries. Great read, would recommend to gardeners and Monty Don fans.

Sometimes I struggle with Monty's writing as he seems to drift off subject or relates unrelated topics. This though was brilliant. Split into chapters on specific subjects, it was very much to the point. The chapters were short and punchy and easy to navigate. Plenty of advice and a nice sum up at the end of each chapter. A good read.

I was expecting this to be similar to Alan Titchmarsh's  How To Be A Gardener  and although I suppose it is, it's more an easier to understand book on what to plant where and why. It reads like a newspaper column which you would get in one of the Sunday supplements and it is more enjoyable for that. There is also a section at the back suggesting what to do in each month throughout the year, which will save on more expensive books like  The Gardener's Year .I like Monty's writing style and though I generally skip over the Latin plant names and sometimes skip over whole paragraphs, I generally find it a joy to read while sat in the garden on a summer's day.I also have his  The Complete Gardener  which is more in line with the Alan Titchmarsh book but is set out in sections rather than starting at the basics like a training course. How To Be A GardenerThe Gardener's YearThe Complete Gardener

The problem with gardening books is there really isn't anything new to be said so authors try to do it an a different way. Monty has a go by slicing and dicing by month, by task, by garden type, etc. This results in a 'Jack of all trades' of a book that doesn't deliver anything new or deliver established lore in an insightful way.The index is appalling. There are no entries for Latin plant names (or a separate index of plants names referred to in the book) yet the virtue of learning such names is extolled in the text. The entry for "cuttings" points to "Hardwood cuttings" yet there is a second level entry for "semi-ripe". The word "propagation" does not appear in the index. And so on.But for MD's celebrity, this is a gardening book that no one would miss.