Viewers of Gardeners’ World will be familiar with Monty Don’s brand of calm, confident advice, and the relaxed but expansive scale of his garden. These two elements come together in a new edition of the book he first wrote some 20 years ago as his last word on the subject of practical gardening, and although the nuts and bolts of plant selection and cultivation remain the same, an awful lot else has changed over the intervening decades. There are many different kinds of lettuce and scores of varieties within each of those types (see panel) but the secret - as with edible plants of any kind - is to find out what you like to eat and what can easily grow in your plot and then make the most of these. The line of least resistance always makes most sense. Lettuce

In 2003, Don replaced Alan Titchmarsh as the lead presenter of Gardeners' World, only leaving the show between 2008 and 2011 owing to illness. Since then he has written and produced several garden series of his own, the most recent being Monty Don's Adriatic Gardens which aired in 2022. The easiest way to do this is to return to a method that our parents and grandparents always used for any hardy seeds, which is to make a seed bed. The time to plant out sweet peas into the garden is mid April in the south and towards the end of the month further north. Don, Monty; Don, Sarah (1 March 2012). The Jewel Garden – Monty Don, Sarah Don, Monty Don & Sarah Don – Google Books. ISBN 9781444718782 . Retrieved 22 April 2016.Horton, Helena (15 June 2019). "Monty Don reveals his family's 170-year-old feud with the Royal Horticultural Society". The Daily Telegraph.

a b c "Digging Monty Don: TV's favourite gardener on turning 60". Belfast Telegraph. 6 May 2015 . Retrieved 22 April 2016. One word of caution. The aim is to grow strong, healthy individual plants so if you buy a pot with lots of seedlings I think it better to divide each pot into two or three. Then plant these sections at the base of each support so they have less competition and you should end up with more flowers. About the Author: Monty Don is the lead presenter of Gardeners' World. He is a horticultural writer and speaker, Sunday Times bestselling author, and has presented several programmes on gardening and outdoor living, including Around the World in 80 Gardens and Italian Gardens, for which he wrote the accompanying books. He was The Observer's gardening columnist from 1994 to 2006. His books include The Complete Gardener, The Jewel Garden and The Ivington Diaries. This is the ideal time to sow lettuce seed direct into the soil outside as the soil is now warm and they will grow fast - which is one of the secrets of really good lettuce. This April green is nature at its most potent. There is a sense that every cell of every living thing is burgeoning and growing and breaking into the freshest most vibrant green possible - regardless of ice, snow, wind or rain. As I get older this becomes more precious, more miraculous.

Longmeadow is also not a feasible garden for the vast majority of people to emulate anyway. First, it depends highly on having two acres to grow on in Herefordshire, which I guess is close enough for most readers in England, but really not useful for me at all here in the American Midwest (and with a much smaller piece of property). For example, Don mentions several times that he has roses climbing up his apple trees, and as far as I can tell, these are multiflora roses. He speaks of them glowingly, but I know that here in Ohio, they are a noxious invasive species, and that planting them to grow on your apple trees would probably be a bad idea. I rather naively hadn’t realized how organic a gardener Monty Don is – because the BBC must restrain some of this on Gardener’s World. This book though, Monty unleashed, has forever changed my mindset on the subject and I will always strive to be completely organic as a result. I wish I had read this sooner. If you are an amateur gardener like me, and interested in gardening even slightly, start here. Every sentence of The Complete Gardener is thoroughly enjoyable and life enriching as you learn. It’s a personal account of how to be a good gardener with rafts of real advice and guidance from one of our greatest gardeners and garden commentators.