Monty Don's rollercoaster career has seen him struggling against economic and personal crises to become one of the faces of the country's longest-running and best loved gardening shows, Gardeners' World.

Born in Germany in 1955, Montagu Don earned himself a degree from Cambridge University before working at various jobs that included being a dustman, a labourer and a waiter.

In 1981 he founded the jewellery company Monty Don Ltd with his future wife Sarah, making and designing his own costume jewellery which sold all over the world. The business brought them fame, high living and a huge country house, all of which disappeared in the economic crisis of the end of the decade. But in the 1990s, they picked up the pieces and abandoned the Eighties "aspiration to aristocratic living'" returned to the land, and raised their family together. The couple moved to Herefordshire where they started their first large garden and Monty embarked on a career in television and newspaper journalism.

Monty's TV work includes five years of This Morning, Real Gardens, Fork To Fork, Lost Gardens and Don Roaming, all for Channel 4.

His books include The Prickotty Bush, The Weekend Gardener, The Sensuous Garden, Gardening Mad, The Complete Gardener, Urban Jungle and Fork to Fork. Monty and his wife have also co-authored The Jewel Garden, a biographical account of the creation of their garden in Herefordshire and the rebuilding of their lives.