I particularly enjoyed his heartfelt tribute to his beloved Nigel,So very moving and the book contains some lovely photos too. My only criticism is I wish it had been purposefully written in a To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. Some creatures are present in his book on a number of occasions, whilst others fail to appear at all, although they might be the stars of somebody else’s garden.

Already 400 pages in paperback, I suppose a possibly 1,200 page doorstopper if pictures were included might not have been possible though. His lifelong enthusiasm and fascination with nature (the cute bits and the harsh bits) shines through.

As familiar as a cup of tea and similarly as heartening, Monty Don is something of a gardening legend. In this book he talks more about the wildlife he observes both at his home and at the farm he owns in Wales. I'm an avid watcher of Garden's World and while I like gardening, I know little about it which is why this book was ideal - I know perhaps I should read a boo about gardening. I have used the calendar months because these fit in with the rhythm of my gardening year ~ I always begin each January with a sense of hope and optimism because the garden is starting to wake up after the slow descent down to the end of the year.

Monty never wrotes that he is for the hunting of any animal (and in fact often states otherwise), but simply tries to explaon that the situation of conservation is more complicated than a yes or no answer. This was slightly different to his usual flower/plant based books, about his gardening endeavours at Longmeadow.I found the book incredibly informative and I applied several of Monty’s suggestions in my garden throughout the seasons. The book is insightful, personal, educational, amusing, inspiring, entertaining (is that enough adjectectives? The details about the decline and increase of certain birds, bugs and four legged creatures kept me wondering what it was like in the US. Along with his home and garden in Long Meadow, there is a farm in Wales which provide endless opportunities to observe the comings and goings of plants and wildlife as the seasons change. Recent times have given us the enforced opportunity to learn more about the fascinating natural world around us.

Monty has sectioned the book into the four seasons with a month by month observations of what he may or may not have been seen in the garden and up at the farm. The chunky dark orange hardboard cover with colourful dust-jacket opens to 422 matte finish pages, split over the months of the year within the 4 seasons (image below refers). Evocative for me because I grew up in the Welsh Marches and really, really miss seeing the changes across the seasons. And I loved every page; I learned something new from just about every page, which at my age is no mean thing. After lending this to a couple of people who I know will love it, I will keep it as a source of reference about animals and plants.

This is not sentimental but rooted in the lived experience of the last thirty years or so based in Herefordshire. I also found his way of talking about hunting/killing a bit brutal, but then he is a farmer - and living in Devon, I know that death is a part of farming and most farmers talk about it as they would any other part of life. Dedicated to ‘Nigel, 2008-2020’, it pensively follows with the opening lines of ‘Afterwards’, by Thomas Hardy. He doesn't hold back from being blunt about the decline and endangerment of so many species, or about the reality of country life and pursuits like hunting or shooting but most of all, it is an ode to the natural world and the wonder and joy it so obviously brings to our lives, if we just take a minute to stop and look around us.

Love a bit of Monty - his encyclopedic knowledge of the countryside and it's inhabitants took me back to the days of Jack Hargreaves and "Out of town".I regard this book as a treasure trove of all the many wonders of the natural world that surround us. I really enjoyed this book as it was a revelation into the personality of Monty as well as a wonderful account of the nature he encounters throughout the year in his garden. Having only started watching Gardener's World in the last year or so, and succumbing to the calm, soothing tone of Monty Don's voice and demeanour at a time when the world seems even more chaotic than normal, I had to see if it translated to the written word. If I’m honest, I’m not sure I’d have chosen this book for myself, but I was given it so felt obliged to read it.