Don’t prune us – Alan

ALAN TITCHMARSH has called on the BBC to leave gardening alone over fears it could now turn its cost-cutting attentions to horticulture – having recently announced it is scrapping the BBC Good Food website as part of a £15million savings plan.

“Gardening hardly costs anything, it is a pack of seeds,” says the 67-year-old Daily Express columnist, who fronted the Beeb’s Chelsea Flower Show coverage for 30 years before stepping down in 2014. “I am a television gardener, there is never enough gardening on TV. I have been doing it for 40 years now on the box. I think there is room for a show on TV like Gardening Bake Off where people can get their hands dirty to improve their own lives. Gardening improves our lives. It is the sharp end of conservation. It is very relaxing too. It can be a challenge but it is also huge fun. It changed my life and I would do it all day, every day.” And the man who did his Horticulture diploma at Kew Gardens feels gardening has become undervalued because people no longer appreciate the importance of aesthetic qualities in terms of improving our quality of life. “Gardening is not involved in the world of celebrity. It is involved in the world of doing stuff and making a difference

and beautifying the landscape. William Morris once said, ‘Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.’

“The need to be ‘beautiful’ seems to have fallen away a bit now, we are all down to utility and cost and we need to remind ourselves that beauty gives us everything.”