This book was first published in 2004 and since then Monty Don has been really quite ill after suffering a stroke which he has made a good recovery from. I can only hope that it acted as a wake up call to him, but suspect that it hasn’t as he seems to be a person who doesn’t learn from his mistakes.

There isn’t much about gardening in this book and I think that it would be of most interest and use to people who suffer from depression as he does speak about his experiences and things which trigger his bouts of depression and how he tries to cope with it.

Monty Don is of course the presenter of BBC’s Gardeners’ World at the moment and I quite liked him in that mode although I don’t think he’s a patch on the late great Geoff Hamilton. According to this book though Monty Don has done all sorts of television work, including working on holiday programmes which I never watch as I have no interest in jetting off to hot places. He seems to spend a lot of time away from home, garden and family in pursuit of money and he hasn’t realised that if only he would rein in his spending and cease the delusions of grandeur, then he would be able to stay at home more and do what he claims he most wants to do, which is gardening.

Don is good at doing that gentleman gardener pose, but that is all it is and I wasn’t far into the book when I realised that for me anyway he’s really quite unlikeable. He’s one of those people who sees something and is determined to get it, whether it’s a woman or a property. It doesn’t matter that the woman is another man’s wife – I can get all Presbyterian about it I warn you, but I can’t help thinking about the poor husband.

The Dons seem to suffer from a sense of entitlement which causes them to get into financial difficulties. They did have a thriving jewellery making business in the 1970s but evidently assumed that the good times would last forever and didn’t save anything for a rainy day. When a recession hit them the whole thing went belly up and they ended up penniless and homeless. What amazed me though was that after that experience they put themselves in another financially precarious position, and as soon as Monty Don was left some money he used it as a deposit for a house and got a mortgage, despite the fact that he was unemployed!! – many porkies must have been told I think. Queue more depression triggered by money worries. I don’t think this couple did anything that I approved of, and I know I shouldn’t be judgmental – but what the hell, sometimes I just can’t help it.

The most annoying thing though is Monty’s treatment of that woman that he was so determined to nick from another man. Sarah seems to be designer, chief cook and bottle washer as well as his carer and I doubt if he even bothered to read the parts of this book which she wrote. She gets the sticky end of everything while he swans off around the world. I got to the end of the book and felt truly grateful that I’m not married to someone like Montagu Don – as he prefers to be called. But for all I know they might deserve each other.

Oh and that jewel garden from the title of the book is not good, and that’s me being kind. As I said before, The Jewel Garden might be a help to people who suffer bouts of depression, but a good doctor would help a lot more I’m sure.