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British Gardens: The Instant Sunday Times Bestseller
What do our gardens say about us?
Monty Don has spent many years travelling the world, from America to Japan, from Italy and the Adriatic to Spain and the Mediterranean, getting under the skin of a country through its gardens and gardening traditions. In British Gardens, he finally brings his focus to home, journeying from the northern tip of Scotland to the Cornish coast, seeking to understand what our gardens tell us about ourselves as a nation.
Encompassing historical gardens and public parks, mountains and seascapes, urban gardens and rural nurseries, glasshouses and community plots, each encounter is another link in a larger story of British marks of ingenuity, eccentricity, and adaptation to changing environments. From Northumbria’s Alnwick Gardens and Beatrix Potter’s Lake District farmhouse to the rewilded walled garden on the Knepp Estate and the story of Britain’s first garden gnome, Monty’s account brings in an astonishing range of British experience.
Accompanied by a landmark five-part series on BBC2, and illustrated by stunning photography from Monty’s long-time collaborator Derry Moore, British Gardens is a definitive, and uniquely British, account of a nation like no other.
Monty Don has spent many years travelling the world, from America to Japan, from Italy and the Adriatic to Spain and the Mediterranean, getting under the skin of a country through its gardens and gardening traditions. In British Gardens, he finally brings his focus to home, journeying from the northern tip of Scotland to the Cornish coast, seeking to understand what our gardens tell us about ourselves as a nation.
Encompassing historical gardens and public parks, mountains and seascapes, urban gardens and rural nurseries, glasshouses and community plots, each encounter is another link in a larger story of British marks of ingenuity, eccentricity, and adaptation to changing environments. From Northumbria’s Alnwick Gardens and Beatrix Potter’s Lake District farmhouse to the rewilded walled garden on the Knepp Estate and the story of Britain’s first garden gnome, Monty’s account brings in an astonishing range of British experience.
Accompanied by a landmark five-part series on BBC2, and illustrated by stunning photography from Monty’s long-time collaborator Derry Moore, British Gardens is a definitive, and uniquely British, account of a nation like no other.
- GenresNonfiction
453 pages, Kindle Edition
Published March 19, 2026
About the author
Monty Don
66 books347 followersMontagu 'Monty' Denis Wyatt Don is a German-born British television presenter, writer and speaker on horticulture, known for presenting the BBC television series Gardeners' World.
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Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review
August 1, 2026
The most exquisite book on British gardens. So inspiring and beautifully written. A fantastic coffee table book
Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review