GARDENS
GREENFINGERS… with Alan Titchmarsh Horticultural inspiration, accomplished gardener, talented novelist and much-loved presenter, Alan Titchmarsh, talks to Village People about his favourite things in the garden.
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ardens are evolving, emerging, changing entities in almost every week of the year, so when it comes to choosing my favourite plants, flowers and sights, it’s a difficult thing to judge and very much dependent upon the season. I think if a cross-section of people are asked to name the thing in a garden that gives them joy and a feeling of admiration beyond anything else, a good number will choose the rose.
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Think about it, is there anything else that offers such a breadth of colour, such a contradiction of beauty and danger (in the sense of a seductive flower and the prickly thorns that linger just a few inches down), or that offers a bouquet that has melted the hearts of a thousand romantics?! Okay, so yes, a rose sometimes can seem so-so, perhaps because we embrace them so fully in our lives, and I accept there is something perhaps even a little cliched about the simple rose
these days. However, I will be so bold as to say this – a garden without a fragrant rose isn't much of a garden at all! For other times of the year, I will pick out certain things that give me incredible satisfaction. I look forward to these coming around, and their emergence is always very special. The first snowdrop in January; the first daffodil in February. These are the types of flowers that mark a change in or a progression of the season, and that always fills me with hope and expectation. You know these beautiful elements will always arrive, but still, it’s a relief when they do! As for others that feel special, I regularly point people towards penstemons. I think there’s always an expectation that in a professional gardener’s back yard you will have the highest grade of plants and the most difficult to bring to flower, but we all like to
