Five-minute Interview with Monty Don

Could you sum up for us how your garden's looking today?

MD WET! at least a quarter of it is under water and all surrounding land is flooded. I've never known the ground to be so sodden - it is literally saturated.

What looks best in your garden at the moment, and was it planned or a happy accident?

MD The hedges all look good and the best bit of the garden is what we call the Hopkiln yard which is made up of 64 large box balls set in cobbles. This comes into its own when everything else is sodden and dying down. Very much planned. Oh and the bamboos, Phyllostachys nigra and Phyllostachys bambusoides 'Holochrysa' (golden-yellow stems) are loving this awful warm, wet weather!

What's your most thumbed gardening book?

MD I use about a dozen again and again but - at random - Hilliers Guide to Trees and Shrubs, The English Apple by Roseanne Sanders, RHS A-Z Encylopedia of Garden Plants, and The New Organic Grower by Elliot Coleman.

What plant (plants) couldn't you bear to be without?

MD Primroses, old roses, box hedging, oaks, hornbeam hedging, clematis, hellebores, Cosmos atrosanguineus, violets, all veg, all herbs, apples, tobacco plants, figs, fennel, yew, Verbena bonariensis, all poppies - and a thousand others!

What was your best new discovery this growing year?

MD Soil blocks, made from coir, sieved loam and perlite – the perfect growing environment for seedlings, and they transplant beautifully. And no pots.

Are you planning anything radically new for next year?

MD I shall be filming a travel/investigative programme for Channel 4, visiting 37 different places around Britain (as yet unnamed) and writing a book about it. Also I’ll start a definitive guide to organic gardening.

If you had the day off (!) what garden would you visit?

MD My own. But I am not a great garden visitor now - I have seen too many, both privately and professionally, to want to see another garden more than I would like to spend that time in my own. But top of my list is my friend Sarah Raven's in Sussex - which I haven’t seen for ages.