Monty Don has opened up about a time he and his long-term wife Sarah found themselves "penniless", following a dramatic business U-turn. Before rising to fame, the Gardeners' World star and his spouse had a thriving costume jewellery business located in London.

Over time, they built a team of 20 in-house employees and hundreds of outworkers, and eventually their stock appeared in luxury stores including Harrods and Harvey Nichols.

By the end of the 1980s however, financial pressures brought everything to a halt and the pair were left with no choice but to "sell everything".

Discussing what his famous Jewel Garden had taught him, the 70-year-old shared: "It began as a kind of celebration and sort of to confront a situation whereby Sarah and I had a jewellery business in the 80s. At the end of the 80s, the business collapsed because of huge interest hikes.

"We lost dollars in America and so we wound it down and in order to wind it down, we basically had to sell everything we had, and I mean everything we had.

"So, we were penniless and eventually, for a combination of circumstances, we got enough money to buy a ruin and an empty field which is Longmeadow."

From that moment on, Monty said he and Sarah focused on making the ruin a house and turning the garden into one they admired.

Once settled, he recalled on BBC Gardeners' World Magazine podcast: "We thought we should celebrate what was great about the jewellery business and there were a lot of good things, you know, we did a lot of stuff with pop music, rock, film and opera. The 80s in fashion was a a very sort of interesting, exciting time.

"So, we began this garden and we explored the idea. That's what taught us about colour and colour schemes and how when you're gardening you need to have defined parameters with colour, you can't just chuck everything [in] it looks terrible!".

Discussing how he and Sarah created their dream garden together, he said he mostly tends to the "design, structure and physical planting" side of things, while his wife excels at the finer details.

"I've learnt [about] colour from her," he explained. "She has perfect pitch when it comes to colour which is quite a rare thing.

"So, she can see a colour of any sort and go into another building and if there are thousands of swatches of fabric, she'll choose exactly that colour and it'll match."

With this skill, Monty said it's helped them develop a desirable colour scheme with their plants - as seen on the BBC show.

Sarah's eye for precision however can be "really annoying," Monty joked.

"I planted a hedge, you know a socking great hedge, and she was out and she came back and I said, 'What do you think?' and she looked and she does this thing where she'll go, 'It needs to be moved one foot that way'. And she was right."

Gardeners' World continues tonight at 8pm on BBC Two.