Alan Titchmarsh is one of the best-known horticulturalists in the country.
Since starting as a gardening writer in the 1970s, he’s become a mainstay on the BBC’s Gardeners’ World, a presenter at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show, and most recently, President of the National Garden Scheme, taking over from Dame Mary Berry.
But have you ever wondered what tricks the illustrious gardener employs in his own plot?
In a recent column for Country Life, Alan revisited a gardening hack he wrote about in one of his early pieces of writing.
In a column titled ‘Sow these for summer loveliness’, he wrote for Amateur Gardening magazine, he described a technique he loved using in his garden that allowed him to grow a beautiful bed of flowers in a way that requires little money and little effort.
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Alan Titchmarsh in 1989
“It was a column devoted to the hardy annuals that, at the time, I was enjoying sowing in my well-drained Surrey soil, where they germinated freely and (with adequate ministrations courtesy of the watering can) provided superb floral value for money,” he writes now.
“To a newly married couple, they represented a vital saving in household expenditure. For the price of one hardy perennial, I could have half a dozen packets of seeds and quite literally hundreds of plants.”
Back then, Alan would sow a colourful mix of purple corncockle, deep pink Agrostemma githago ‘Milas’, the annual cornflower varieties ‘Blue Diadem’ and ‘Black Ball’, and “good old” pot marigolds, with bright orange blooms.
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To get the best results, Alan recalls, he would sow the seeds in early April, when the temperatures are typically mild, picking a spot where they would get plenty of sunlight.
“There is no point in committing them to an early burial in cold, wet earth,” he writes. “They will germinate and grow far more rapidly if you wait for the ground — and the air — to warm up, but they will also stand lowish temperatures once they have started to grow.”
Having rediscovered his own delightfully simple sowing trick, Alan says, his kitchen garden is “as pretty as I have ever known it”.
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Wanda Sachs is the Daily Writer for House Beautiful and Country Living, exploring the latest in interior design, home trends, property news, wellbeing and sustainable living. With a keen eye for style and a passion for storytelling, she previously served as an Associate Editor at The Berliner in Berlin, where she launched and led the magazine’s monthly style vertical, covering emerging fashion trends. Wanda holds a combined BA in English and German from Goethe University Frankfurt.