Books

Books : reviews

Monty Don, Sarah Don.
The Jewel Garden: a story of despair and redemption.
Hodder. 2004

This is the story of a garden that has risen from the ashes of a catastrophic failure.

In the mid-Eighties, Monty and Sarah Don’s jewellery design business was the toast of fashionable London. But, like so many entrepreneurs during those heady days, they had overreached themselves and were heading for a fall. Soon they were plunging in a vortex of debt and depression. They lost everything. Monty and Sarah recall this traumatic period with unstinting honesty.

They also tell the magical story of their ‘jewel garden’, a part of their Herefordshire plot that is planted with particularly colourful flowers, and draws on their years in the fashion business. The jewel garden is Monty and Sarah’s means of making peace with their messy past, and a bold expression of their shared passion for life.