Grandad taught me the value of gardens

THE TV gardener and novelist, 69, has homes in Hampshire where he lives with his wife Alison.

My one unfulfilled ambition is to make people realise the true value of gardeners and gardens.

My grandfather, Herbert Hardisty, introduced me to it. My earliest memory is of walking between the rows of sweet peas on his allotment by the River Wharfe in Ilkley. He was a ‘ganger’ – a kind of foreman in the council highways department – and his allotment was his hobby as well as a means of growing flowers and vegetables to help with the household economy.

There is too little respect for our surroundings.

My blood boils at the sight of litter on the roadside. As someone whose life is devoted to beautifying the landscape, it breaks my heart. I would introduce punitive fines for dropping litter.

Heroes come in all shapes and sizes.

When I was a child it was Percy Thrower – for obvious reasons. Later in life, Alan Bennett for his wit, wisdom and friendship; Jilly Cooper for her encouragement when it came to novel-writing; and the Duke of Edinburgh for daring to be himself. Each of them, in their own way, lived up to my expectations when I met them.

We should all start work at an early age.

I got a milk round when I was 13 and then had a paper round for a couple of years – one of my shoulders is still lower than the other as a result. Then, at 15, I became a gardener. I left school and never looked back.

I was thought of as a bit odd as a child.

I was a bit of a loner who had strange interests: gardening, classical music and old things – to call them antiques would be to exaggerate their value.

Small talk is the overture before the

opera of life.

Everyone should have the skill of small talk. I have little patience with those who have no time for it – it indicates they are self-absorbed.