Review: An Evening With Monty Don, at Oakengates Theatre, Telford
Monty Don is very much a glass half-full kind of man. That was what kept recurring as the BBC presenter regaled a packed Oakengates Theatre with anecdotes from his life and career as a gardening writer and broadcaster.
Much of An Evening With Monty Don revolved around the huge garden he constructed, over 23 years, out of an overgrown field at his home at Longmeadow in Herefordshire – which, since 2011, has been where Gardener's World is filmed.
When he and wife Sarah moved there, they had next to no money, having lost everything when their jewellery business collapsed – but that inspired them to get gardening and create The Jewellery Garden, which in turn inspired one of his earlier books.
He said the number and type of trees around Longmeadow was down to a terrible mistake when he went out with his last £200 to buy some in 1993 and accidentally ended up bidding for – and winning – 1,400 trees for £1,300.
"When you have bought 1,400 trees, you are going to plant 1,400 trees," he said – they now form stunning walkways and a copse at Longmeadow that brought audible gasps from the audience. He was philosophical about regular flooding of his painstakingly crafted garden – that inspired him to build a beautiful pond.
(that again flooded) – and most tellingly when his hedges, years in the growing, had to be ripped up and burnt due to box blight, leaving just unkempt grasses – "But I think they will be better," he said.
He even said his stroke in 2008 – which he described as "not great" – meant his son Tom built him a hut to write in "You'll still be crap of course," his son told him, "but you'll be crap in a hut."
The gardener's ability to create beautiful things out of near-disaster goes a long way to explaining his popularity, and delighted the Telford audience.
By Tom Morton
