Tales from Titchmarsh

Alan considers pretentiousness in gardening and reveals what’s hot and what’s not in horticultural haute couture

Alan reveals what’s hot and what’s not in the world of gardening

About 30 years ago I wrote a book on garden snobbery. It was called Alan Titchmarsh’s Avant Gardening. It was a tongue-in-cheek look at fashionable gardening and poked fun at those who loved hellebores and hostas, clipped box and lime allées. I was reminded of this recently when I met the author and broadcaster Victoria Glendinning, whose perceptive biography of Vita Sackville-West is well worth a read. I thanked Victoria (only three decades late) for the good review she gave my book and she replied that it had landed on her desk at a time when she was just beginning to garden and had not realised until that moment that the world of horticulture was affected by fashion and snobbery. So, have things moved on since then? Well, we are still in thrall to the classy and the upmarket. Hellebores still reign supreme, while poor old French marigolds, lobelia and alyssum have yet to make a comeback. Hostas are hanging on in there, even though slugs and snails continue to treat them like five-star hotels, but the in-crowd go bananas over restios – those South African reed- and sedge-like plants that squirt ever upwards like a more respectable form of mares tail. Ah yes, our capacity to take to our hearts the weird and wonderful has not diminished. Melianthus major and Cerinthe major ‘Purpurascens’ occupy the borders of the cognoscenti, but we must now refer to these gardeners as ‘The Henley-onThames Set’ rather than ‘The Chipping Norton Set’ since Mr Cameron has moved on and Mrs May has made the Bucks and Berks section of the Thames Valley the place to be seen. (Her opinion of French marigolds has yet to be canvassed, but then she does like leopard-print shoes). Thanks to the late gardening writer Christopher Lloyd at Great Dixter, dahlias are now acceptable in certain colours, though the purple and white ‘Edinburgh’ still divides opinion, rather like the Duke. And what is one to think about all these useful heucheras that have come over the pond from Oregon? There are hundreds of them – almost as many as there are varieties of hosta. The answer is to choose your varieties carefully – nothing too strident please. And those frilly lime green ones? Only if you have a knitted loo roll cover. When it comes to summer bedding, nicotianas are in (but not if you call them ‘nicotinas’) and the fashionistas will be mightily relieved that a particularly virulent strain of mildew saw off those ghastly busy-lizzies, which many used for adding colour in the shade. Those same people now adore the wonderful new ‘Illumination’ begonias that will flower their socks off from June till October. Lovers of restios would rather have root canal work. Hanging baskets? Best outside pubs. Window boxes? Only on town houses and if filled with clipped box and white cyclamen in winter. That’s WHITE cyclamen; not the cerise and magenta ones – colours best reserved for lipstick. Swirly-backed Lutyens-designed benches are still in (you’d think that no other shape had ever been invented) but lime allées have been superseded by those made of hornbeam which is less of a martyr to sap-sucking insects that coat everything beneath the canopy in a sticky goo. In the personal fashion stakes, the Barbour is now rivalled by the Belstaff jacket, and Hunter wellies have been superseded by those of Le Chameau (so much warmer and more flexible and less likely to leave your feet resembling a pair of Cornish pasties after a day’s work clipping the box parterre). Of course, the parterre and the potager are now surrounded with Ilex crenata, the box having fallen prey to blight and most of us having failed to learn to love teucrium, even though The Prince of Wales has used it at Highgrove. Your Felco secateurs are still to be treasured, even if some smart gardeners have transferred their loyalty to those Japanese ones made by Niwaki. They cut beautifully but they do make a racket. Still, it’s nice to be a cut above the rest, isn’t it? All of which places me in a quandary. Which side of the fence am I on? Straddling it I fear. Always an uncomfortable position.

French marigolds, lobelia and alyssum have yet to make a comeback. Hostas are hanging on in there