Don has described himself primarily as a writer, "who happens to have lots of television work." By the early 1990s, Don had written two unpublished novels, "The Clematis Affair" and "An Afternoon in Padua". He later described them as "excruciatingly bad". In January 1994, Allan Jenkins, then editor of "The Observer", offered Don to write a weekly gardening column for the newspaper. The column began in February of that year and lasted until May 2006; Jenkins was his editor for seven years. In a piece from 2004 to commemorate the tenth year of the column, Don wrote: "It has been more life-changing than any other work I have done in my adult life." Don has written articles for the "Daily Mail" and Mail Online since 2004.