Titchmarsh shuns leaf out of his own book
Cameras ignore the mess in gardening specialist’s four acres and he makes same mistakes we all do
‘Why have some shrubs not been planted? Because I’m not really sure where they should go’
IF YOU wish your garden looked as perfect as those on television gardening shows, don’t despair. Alan Titchmarsh does, too.
Titchmarsh has confessed that he does not always follow his own advice, and makes the same mistakes as the rest of us.
Photographs of his four-acre garden in Hampshire show not a blade of grass out of place, but Titchmarsh said the mess is just out of sight of the cameras.
The broadcaster said he was guilty of letting potted plants stack up beside his shed and leaves shrubs sitting in their containers for years rather than planting them out.
Nor is he immune to the impulse purchase of plants that have no place in his garden.
Writing in BBC Gardeners’ World magazine, Titchmarsh said: “Although I spend a lot of my time explaining what should be done and when, I will come clean and confess that there are times in my own garden when I fall short of my own recommendations.
“In April, time simply romps away and those things I ought to have done, in some cases, have been left undone.”
Titchmarsh said that each year he vows to keep on top of things but ends up being “less than assiduous”.
“Take those plants in various-sized pots that sit by the shed. A couple of dozen of them. I mean, look at them.
How long have they been there? Too long.”
Titchmarsh admitted that he regularly advised viewers of his television programmes and readers of his columns to buy plants from nurseries and garden centres only when they have identified a space that needs filling.
He said: “There are one or two shrubs that have sat sorrowfully in their containers for two years now. Why have they not been planted? Well, because I am not really sure where they should go.”
Like all gardeners, Titchmarsh said, he falls victim to impulse buying. But he has an additional problem with fellow gardeners keen to share their cuttings.
“I can’t just say, ‘No thank you, I just don’t have the room,’ can I? I must make amends in this regard and go through them, planting some of them, passing on others and – yes – consigning a few of them to the compost heap,” he said. Titchmarsh urged people to extend their horticultural spring clean beyond weeding paths and pressure-washing pavements, and to get rid of plants which have had their day.
He said: “I know we get sentimental, but there are times when we need to grasp the nettle and have a clean sweep, rather than just snipping away at this and that, putting off the inevitable.
“So if you’ve been staring at that border for years now and finding that yearon-year it just seems to get more stagnant, for goodness’ sake take the bull by the horns and have a go at it.”
Titchmarsh lives in a Grade Ii-listed Georgian farmhouse in Hampshire, where he tends what he describes as a “romantic English garden”. It includes a wildflower meadow and a more formal area with a terrace and water feature.
He allowed it to be filmed for the first time in 2019, as part of an ITV programme, explaining: “It’s only now that I’ve been happy to let the cameras in.
“It’s here to impress me, really, and to please me and my family and to be a place I want to go out into and to be in.”
Tidying up the garden presents another problem, namely what to do with the plastic pots and trays once their contents have been planted.
Titchmarsh did not address that in his column, but Monty Don has previously advised gardeners not to throw them away.
“All seed trays, plant plugs, pots and commercial containers are plastic. The best thing gardeners can do with current plastic pots is to use and reuse them as much as possible,” he has said.
Don also advocates a less neat and tidy approach to gardening, urging people not to cut the grass but to turn the lawn into a wildflower meadow.