“But what saddens me more than anything else is that a well cultivated, well tended, well grown garden is getting disparaged – which is a nonsense.To learn your craft as a good grower of plants, to produce plants which look beautiful and are good for wildlife, is key for me. I’m not embarrassed about being a gardener.”
Can a plot be too manicured?
Titchmarsh adds that he “takes issue” with the word ‘manicured’.“Because it’s not necessarily manicured, it’s just controlled, it’s cultivated. It’s learning what plants need to grow well and giving them it,” he explains.“A well-managed border, which looks beautiful, will be awash with animal life, creatures, insects, invertebrates and birds – every bit as much as a bit of old weedy ground that you’ve just left, thinking you’re doing more good.” Single flowers are key, he believes.“Double flowers lack the essential floral parts.They have much less nectar and far fewer stamens and pollen in them.
Photo: Mark Harrison/PA.
“But if you want a double rose bush, I’m not going to slag you off for having one beautiful double-flowered rose in the middle of a border that’s awash with other flowers. [It’s about] proportion and moderation in all things.” Titchmarsh, whose Hampshire garden incorporates a two-acre wildflower meadow filled with native species, adds: “I’ve been organic for 40 years, there are no sprays, I grow plants that are well suited to my soil, two enormous compost heaps that I pile back into the ground.”
What about non-native species?
Gardeners also shouldn’t feel guilty about planting non-native species, according to Titchmarsh.
“That’s why we call it gardening.We’ve had plant collectors going out and bringing plants back from foreign countries for centuries. It enriches our lives – and it enriches the lives of bees and butterflies.They don’t know what they’re taking nectar and pollen from. I don’t see why we should always feel so guilty now.There’s this huge tendency to beat ourselves up all the time. “Yes – we need to be responsible.Yes – we need to have a sustainable piece of land.Yes – we need to look ahead and leave it in better state for our children than it is when we inherit it, but don’t imagine that you have no right to be here.You have a right to enjoy it as well.”
What does he think will happen to the face of our gardens if the trend continues?
“You can rewild your garden for a couple of years if you want, then you keep looking at it and think,‘It’s really boring.There’s not much colour, I can’t see that many insects. What I can see is a lot of cola cans, which people have thrown over the wall, and dog mess bags because they thought it was just waste ground’. “There is nothing more useful to life than a well-grown garden,” says Titchmarsh. “That little bit of total wilderness in front of your house in the suburbs will not be better for insects.A well grown garden with a diversity of plant material with greater biodiversity in it will be much more sustainable for wildlife.”
The Gardener’s Almanac by Alan Titchmarsh is published on October 27 by Hodder & Stoughton, priced £14.99.
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