Meet Sarah Don. wife of The Gardener’s WorldHost Monty Don. In 2022, he chatted with The Gardener’s World magazine podcast with editor Lucy Hall and revealed that he is “totally supportive” when it comes to their Herefordshire garden, Longmeadow. The host revealed that they have disagreed on a number of occasions but they are very supportive of each other.
During the interview, Monty shared and reminisced about a time in 1993 when he accidentally bought 1,100 trees at an auction instead of 12. Lucy asked Sarah about the reaction to the 1,100 trees. He said, “She wasn’t entirely happy about it, mainly because we couldn’t pay for it and it took a long time to raise the money. But of course at that time it was all paid by cheque and I did it on a Saturday so there was no risk of the cheque bouncing before Wednesday. So I had three days to raise the money, and I did it.”
Monty then praised his wife, saying, “Sarah has always been a completely supportive partner in crime. One of the things I have always said privately, and I should say publicly at every opportunity, is that her garden is as much my garden as it is my garden. It is not my garden, it is our garden. It is always ‘We’.”
“Every major decision, and quite a few minor ones, are made by consensus between the two of us, and we have a principle that we both have veto power over everything,” he added. “That’s a very good way to run a system because what it means is, if you don’t agree, and we do a lot, you can’t do it and say, ‘Live with it.’”
Monty concludes, “You can have terrible arguments, you can have a lot of convincing, it means negotiating. It may take two years before that tree is planted, but when it is planted, you have agreed. But generally we usually agree and sometimes it happens that you agree to live a peaceful life and then, really annoyingly, you realise that they were right all along.”
Below you will learn about her age, job, maiden name and ex-husbands.
Meet Sarah Don, wife of Monty Don
The Gardener’s WorldPresenter Monty Don has been married to his wife Sarah Don for 39 years after meeting at Cambridge University before tying the knot in 1983.
Talk to Reader’s MagazineMonty shares, “Soon after we met, she needed help with her small backyard garden, so I said I would mow her lawn—it wasn’t big enough to afford a lawnmower. She let me do it, but the only thing I could find to do the job was a pair of scissors. I knelt down and was almost done when she came back. I’ll never forget the look on her face—a look I’ve grown accustomed to over the past 37 years. It was a mixture of utter disbelief and, dare I say, approval.”
The gardening couple shared a sweet throwback photo of him and Sarah on their wedding day on July 28, 2022. Monty captioned the post: “We got married 39 years ago – the photo is a little faded, a little wrinkled, like us but the love is still as green and strong as ever.”
He had previously described how he used a pair of kitchen shears to trim Sarah’s entire lawn as a way to seduce her. Monty claimed that he couldn’t find his shed keys at the time of the romantic gesture and had to improvise. He was willing to spend hours mowing the lawn by hand to impress his future wife. Monty revealed at the time that Sarah thought he was a “romantic fool”.
Monty added, “I met my wife and I wooed her by cutting her lawn with her kitchen shears because I couldn’t find the key to the shed with the lawnmower. She thought then, as she does now, that I was a fool. But a romantic fool. We were only 25 but we bought a house with the biggest garden we could afford,” he said at the Edinburgh Literature Festival in 2013.
The couple have three children, Tom, Adam and Freya, and are even proud grandparents to George and Daisy Rose.
Sarah Don First Husband
In Monty Don’s book The Jewel Garden, he revealed that his wife was “the one.” Sarah was married at the time when they met and had to get a divorce “to work things out.” Monty added, “It took a little time and a divorce to work things out, but I was right.”
Sarah has also opened up about how she left her first husband. Gardening World host. She met Monty, a college student and her ex-husband was a graduate student at the same university.
“In 1979, I left my wealthy husband for a poor student,” she admitted. “In an attempt to escape the inevitable mess we had created, Montagu and I ran away together to the North York Moors, where we were given rooms in a house to stay in for the winter.”
Sarah, who refused to call her husband by his initials, remembers that they paid their rent by riding the landlord’s horse every day and repainting all the windows to pay for it. Despite the fairytale love story, she admits that after they eloped, they struggled financially.
“We look back on that time now as an enriching experience,” she said. “But it was definitely a challenge.”
It was also later revealed that Monty and Sarah’s first husband were related. Another discovery was a royal connection – that Sir Alexander Erskine of Gogar, guardian of James VI & I, who had been King of Scotland for 36 years when he became King of England and Ireland, was one of Don’s ancestors.
“I had a direct relationship with my wife’s first husband,” Monty said. “I didn’t find out until I did the show. It was incredible.”
The fact that her husband was in Nepal at the time and had not been in contact with her for three months worked in Monty’s favor.
Sarah Don’s age
As of September 2022, Sarah Don is 68 years old.
What is Sarah Don’s date of birth?
Sarah Don’s exact date of birth is unknown. However, she was born in February 1954.
Where is Sarah Don from?
As of 2022, Sarah Don is currently residing in Herefordshire, England.
Sarah Don Jobs
Sarah Don, after meeting her husband Monty, started a costume-jewelry business. Monty shares, “We employ 20 people in the company and employ hundreds of workers in the manufacturing. We have a store in Beauchamp Place, SW1 and we sell in 30 countries, with 60 stores in the US.”
Vogue has given them their stamp of approval, and Harrods, Harvey Nichols and Liberty all carry their products. “Costume jewellery is valued purely for its design and appearance, not its material cost. Our jewellery is still in the V&A.”
Diana, Princess of Wales, Boy George and Michael Jackson were their patrons, and Monty and Sarah were even welcomed to Downing Street. Although she tries to keep a low profile, Sarah is a skilled jeweller and contributes 75% of the creative ideas. Her husband accounts for the remaining 25%, is a super salesman and very passionate.
“When we flew, we really flew,” Monty added. “At our best, we were the best in the world at what we did. But we were never as successful as our advertising convinced others—and ourselves—that we were. We were hopelessly undercapitalized and constantly in debt.”
Because the US was their main market and their stores had cancelled orders that the Dons had previously hired their own suppliers for – and taken on debt – they were completely destroyed by the Wall Street crash of 1987. “Our collapse was spectacular. We had always pretended to be businessmen and now our cover was blown.”
They can only pay off their debt by selling their house.
“The jewelry business has been a joy for three of our nine years,” Monty said. “I got to work with someone I loved. And I loved the tools and skills that came with it. We definitely learned a lot from the whole experience.”
Although the company was a team effort, Sarah revealed in her book The Jewel Garden that she often felt overlooked by customers when compared to sales superman Monty. “I would spend months working on a creation, drawing, tweaking, going back and forth to the factory, checking samples, public grading,” she writes. “It was always a collaboration, although the owner of our jewelry factory only seemed to listen to Montagu (Monty’s name).”
“I was invisible,” she added.
Sarah currently helps her husband with gardening. She has also worked for companies such as Flux Media Limited as a designer and secretary at The Monty Project Limited. She has also co-written a few books with her husband.
Sarah Don Net Worth
By 2022, Sarah Don’s net worth is expected to reach over £500k.
Related FAQs
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What is Sarah Don’s birthday?
Sarah Don’s birthday is in February.
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What is Sarah Don’s maiden name?
Sarah Don’s maiden name was Erskine.
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Is Sarah Don on Instagram?
No, it looks like Sarah Don is not on Instagram.