Gardeners’ World star Monty Don shared how an unforeseen setback plunged him and his wife Sarah into financial difficulty before a major U-turn
Monty Don and his long-term wife Sarah once found themselves “penniless”, after a devastating blow. Before achieving fame, the Gardeners’ World presenter and his spouse ran a costume jewellery business in London.
With the help of 20 in-house staff members plus many more outworkers, they successfully stocked products in upmarket retailers such as Harrods and Harvey Nichols.
However, by the end of the 1980s, financial difficulties forced everything to cease and the couple had no option but to “sell everything”.
Reflecting on what his renowned Jewel Garden had taught him, the 70-year-old explained: “It began as a kind of celebration and sort of to confront a situation whereby Sarah and I had a jewellery business in the 80s. At the end of the 80s, the business collapsed because of huge interest hikes.
“We lost dollars in America and so we wound it down and in order to wind it down, we basically had to sell everything we had, and I mean everything we had.
“So, we were penniless and eventually, for a combination of circumstances, we got enough money to buy a ruin and an empty field which is Longmeadow.”
From that moment onwards, Monty said he and Sarah concentrated on transforming the ruin into a home and creating a garden they could treasure.
Once they’d settled in, he revealed on the BBC Gardeners’ World Magazine podcast: “We thought we should celebrate what was great about the jewellery business and there were a lot of good things, you know, we did a lot of stuff with pop music, rock, film and opera. The 80s in fashion was a a very sort of interesting, exciting time.
“So, we began this garden and we explored the idea. That’s what taught us about colour and colour schemes and how when you’re gardening you need to have defined parameters with colour, you can’t just chuck everything [in] it looks terrible!”.
Speaking about how he and Sarah crafted their dream garden as a team, he revealed that he primarily handles the “design, structure and physical planting” aspects, while his wife shines with the finer details.
“I’ve learnt [about] colour from her,” he shared. “She has perfect pitch when it comes to colour which is quite a rare thing.
“So, she can see a colour of any sort and go into another building and if there are thousands of swatches of fabric, she’ll choose exactly that colour and it’ll match.”
Thanks to this talent, the gardening expert said it’s enabled them to cultivate a desirable colour scheme with their plants – as viewers witness on the BBC programme.
Additionally, Monty joked that while Sarah’s precision is “really annoying”, it has contributed to the creativity.
“I planted a hedge, you know a socking great hedge, and she was out and she came back and I said, ‘What do you think?’ and she looked and she does this thing where she’ll go, ‘It needs to be moved one foot that way’. And she was right,” he added.
