Monty Don Quotes

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Monty Don

Profession : Celebrity

Birth : July 8, 1955

Intellectually the French are wonderfully open, in a way the British just don't begin to be. You can question ideas in France, endlessly. In Britain, two things happen when you do that. Either you're branded an intellectual, which is fundamentally mistrusted, or you're branded a phony and pretentious, which people despise.

Monty Don

We know that gardening is good for you. It is fantastic, all-round exercise. That is easy to see and evaluate. It inculcates high levels of well-being. That is undeniable and needs little measurement.

Monty Don

We don't value food in Britain, so therefore the cheaper it is the better it is. We all eat far too much, we all pay far too little for our food. We have environmental problems, we have health problems, we have food transport problems.

Monty Don

I think that most people are aware that it takes so much oil and water to produce what they're eating. But the problem is inherent within the solution, in so much as you don't want to tell people what to do.

Monty Don

Organic is loaded with a sense of rightness, with a set of rules. I would much rather someone bought food that was local and sustainable but not organic than bought organic food that had to be shipped across the world.

Monty Don

Plant breeding has been going on for millennia and it's a gradual process.

Monty Don

My gardening apprenticeship was similar to the way a chimney sweep is pushed up a chimney. It was enforced by my parents, non-negotiable - it would be weeding the strawberries, mowing the grass.

Monty Don

I loathe nowheres - airports and bland hotels. I would rather be in an unpleasant, uncomfortable place rather than one just adrift, floating around.

Monty Don

There is a British assumption that you mustn't speak evil of anyone's garden because it is rude - it is like criticising their home, their children or their pets.

Monty Don

I don't think about being the Colin Firth of the gardening world. I live a very insular world based around my family and my home, and to them I'm not the Colin Firth of anything.

Monty Don

From the ages of 18 to 50 I ran, rowed and lifted weights at my home gym.

Monty Don

I'm bad at sleeping. I get somewhere between three and six hours a night.

Monty Don

Happiness is a by-product rather than an end in itself. It pops into your life unbidden, and then tends to pop out again. I'm on record as being depressive. It is related to winter.

Monty Don

It does seem to me that the British in particular, British horticultural literature and television programmes, focus a huge amount on how we garden and hardly at all on why we garden.

Monty Don

We are extremely uncomfortable with the spiritual aspects of gardening, and yet most people feel it in some form or other, even if it's a sense of connection to the greater world on a beautiful day.

Monty Don

I feel ashamed if my hands are too clean and untouched. It's a measure of how much time I've spent travelling and poncing around.

Monty Don

I wouldn't want to be known as Mr Depression, but I found that when I did dip a toe in the water and talk about it, the response from the public was incredible.

Monty Don

As you get older your own problems are not that interesting.

Monty Don

The thing I like to stress about TV is that it's a team exercise. You really can't have too much of an ego.

Monty Don

I often eat cakes while my fingers are caked in soil.

Monty Don