Titchmarsh: Garden decking all my fault
Alan Titchmarsh spent much of the Nineties encouraging the nation’s gardeners to deck over their lawns – but has now admitted he feels “a bit bad” about it. The television presenter, whose Ground Force programmes set the tone for British gardens for several years, said that when he passed away, “they will deck my grave”. He blamed the trend on the constraints of his gardening makeover show, saying it was impossible to transform gardens properly in just two days.
IT WAS the Nineties trend that took over the gardens of middle England – but the man who encouraged the nation’s gardeners to deck over their lawns has admitted he feels “a bit bad” about it.
Alan Titchmarsh, whose Ground Force programmes set the tone for British gardens for several years, said decking had become his “Achilles’ heel” and confessed he does not have it at his own Georgian farmhouse.
He blamed the trend firmly on the constraints of the BBC show Ground Force, claiming he had warned programme-makers it was impossible to transform gardens properly in just two days.
As such, he disclosed, the team had to rely on quick fixes such as decking to make an on-screen impact.
Speaking at the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature in Dubai, he was asked about the craze, which left swathes of perfectly good grass covered in budget-friendly wood. The influence of the programme, he disclosed, was such that annual sales of decking at B&Q went from £9,000 the year before Ground Force first aired to £8 million in its aftermath. He added: “Decking I do feel a bit bad about but you’ve got to remember we’re talking about the mid-Nineties.” He told an audience he had learnt about decking while at Kew from a “great landscape designer” called John Brookes, who taught him how it was used in the United States in the late Sixties. He said that despite his initial doubts about the time constraints involved in the programme, he was eventually won over by the challenge, conceding: “Oh go on then, I’ll have a go.” “The thing about doing a makeover programme is that it’s the reverse of painting a picture, because you have to do the frame and paint the picture in it rather than painting a picture and finding a frame for it,” he said. “If you’ve only got two days, decking is economical and you can do it quite quickly.
“And if you slip and fall over on it you only bruise yourself rather than break your hip, which you do on stone.
“So those were my reasons. And on a modern house, decking works.” He concluded: “So I have no doubt that when I’m put in the ground eventually they will deck my grave … But then Chanel didn’t apologise for her little black dress, did she?”
He now has some decking at his home on the Isle of Wight because the modern build means “it’s suitable, it fits the surroundings”. But his second home, an old Georgian farmhouse, has “not an ounce” of it. First broadcast in 1997 on the BBC,
Ground Force starred Titchmarsh, Charlie Dimmock and Tommy Walsh.
In its heyday, 12 million viewers tuned in.
‘Decking I do feel a bit bad about but you’ve got to remember we’re talking about the mid-Nineties’
Alan Titchmarsh thinks he has much to answer for. The success of his TV show Ground Force, in which unkempt gardens were given a makeover, was partly responsible for the popularity of a phenomenon that caused greater change to the landscape than anything since the Enclosure Acts: decking. Across the nation, suburban lawns, borders and stone patios were given over to the more easily managed wooden boards. The expansion of decking has been blamed for all sorts of possibly related events, from the decline of hedgehogs in towns to the disappearance of some songbirds and butterflies.
Now Titchmarsh has acknowledged his part in the great garden cover-up. “They will probably deck my grave,” he says, wistfully. Why not host a new TV programme called Turfing It Over?