Still growing strong… six decades on
Television gardening guru Alan Titchmarsh is celebrating 60 years in horticulture. Marion McMULLEN finds out what makes his garden grow
EVERYTHING has been coming up roses for Alan Titchmarsh in a gardening career spanning 60 years He was once asked what he sees when he looks in a mirror and replied “someone who thinks he is b ***** lucky”.
The broadcaster and author left school at 15 with just one O level in art and began working as an apprentice gardener with Ilkley Council in 1964.
He went on to study at Hertfordshire College of Agriculture and Horticulture before working at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew.
Gardening books followed and he made his first appearance on the BBC’s magazine news programme Nationwide before presenting the Beeb’s Chelsea Flower Show coverage for the first time in 1983.
Alan, who turns 75 this week, has been a TV regular ever since.
He did seven years of Gardeners’ World, six years of Ground Force, 10 years of Pebble Mill and seven years of his chat show The Alan Titch
marsh Show.
He now fronts ITV’s Love Your Weekend with Alan Titchmarsh and Alan Titchmarsh’s Gardening Club and says: “I’ve always been a man of the land, ever since I was little boy, and I grew up in the Yorkshire Dales, so the wider open spaces are my territory.”
The son of a textile mill worker, Bessie, and plumber, also called Alan, he made garden decking popular in the 1990s with shows like Ground Force with Charlie Dimmock and Tommy Walsh.
Decking and other recreational features became popular, as more people made barbecues and patio tables and chairs the focus of their outdoor space.
Alan once laughed about the BBC show: “It’s always on. My wife turned it on the other night. I thought, ‘Oh, crumbs. I was about 12. I looked at it and thought ‘Was that really me?’”
The Yorkshire broadcaster and author is vice president of the Royal Horticultural Society and has not used chemicals in his garden for 40 years. He says: “Garden shows generate trends. They are the Paris catwalks of the horticultural world.
“You see something there and you think, ‘That’s a bit weird,’ and it gradually filters down and – I hesitate to mention decking – but you get things which have their time and which settle in.”
He adds: “When people say, ‘I don’t agree with makeover programmes,’ gardening is making-over and working hand in hand in nature to produce something beautiful. It is not backing off and saying ‘I’m not getting involved,’ it is handling it carefully, thoughtfully, responsibly and with a view to making something more beautiful.
“You can’t talk about the importance of mental health and then stop gardeners who get great solace and satisfaction out of creating something beautiful by working with nature and adjusting things.
“The great thing about the last half century in horticulture is the huge amount of plants that we can choose from, with new ones coming along all the time. It means we are all able to have individual gardens and things that we like.”
Alan has even been censored by North Korea’s state TV channel for wearing jeans. The clothing item has been banned in the country since 1990 and is seen as a symbol of Western imperialism. A 2010 episode of Alan Titchmarsh’s Garden Secrets was broadcast with him blurred from the waist down as he knelt in a garden bed tending to plants.
“It’s taken me to reach the age of 74 to be regarded in the same sort of breath as Elvis Presley, Tom Jones, Rod Stewart, “laughs Alan. “I’ve never seen myself as a dangerous subversive imperialist. I’m generally regarded as rather cosy and pretty harmless, so actually, it’s given me a bit of street cred, really, hasn’t it?”
Alan has a two-acre wildflower meadow and garden at his Hampshire home and lives in a Grade IIlisted Georgian farmhouse with his wife Alison.
He has undergone operations on both knees and said: “I’ve got bad knees as a result of a lot of kneeling over the years from gardening and it has got a bit frayed in there but I am
a spring chicken again now.”
Alan believes the pace of change in gardening has become much more rapid in the last 10 years and is encouraged to see people looking at cultivating their gardens responsibly.
“We’re led to believe things are going to change over the centuries ahead, so we need to have the widest range of plants available to us to make sure not only that we can beautify our landscapes, but also that those plants will sustain the wildlife which is dependent upon them every bit as much as we are in our own little pattern of islands.”
Alan was once voted the second sexiest man – narrowly beaten by Geroge Clooney – and said he was grateful to be mentioned in the same paragraph as the Hollywood star.
But he has also turned down offers to take part in BBC’S Strictly Come Dancing saying: “I’ve been asked three or four times, but my wife Alison says my knees wouldn’t be able to cope with the lifts”.
Alan will be taking part in a Gardeners’ Question Time Live and talking about his career at the forthcoming RHS Malvern Spring Festival. The festival takes place at Three