Alan Titchmarsh shares heartbreaking garden tribute and says ‘she would have liked that’

Gardeners’ World host Alan Titchmarsh has opened up about his late mother Bessie, and the tribute he created in her honour after she passed awayAlan Titchmarsh(Image: (Image: ITV))

Alan Titchmarsh has shared a touching tribute to his late mother, Bessie, intertwining his passion for gardening with her love for the outdoors.

The Gardeners’ World icon was raised as an only child in Ilkley, West Yorkshire, by his father, plumber Alan Titchmarsh Sr, and textile mill worker Bessie.

Despite his rise to fame as one of the UK’s most recognised TV personalities, he frequently reflects on his modest upbringing and the principles his parents instilled in him.

In his memoir, Knave of Spades, Titchmarsh fondly recalls his mother’s affinity for fresh air and open windows, never content indoors with doors shut.

“She would never be in the house without a window, and preferably the back door as well, wide open. She did not like, as she put it, ‘being fast’, meaning stuck or unable to get out,” he penned.

Alan Titchmarsh has shared his £4 trick to transform your garden(Image: Getty Images)

Sixteen years after the loss of her husband, Bessie suffered two strokes, and the father-of-two acknowledged that “she was unlikely to pull through”.

Titchmarsh recollects sitting by her hospital bed as she smiled at him. “Her hair was still dark, even at 78, though she had never in her life coloured it. Hair dye would be for ‘that dame’,” he noted.

Before departing that evening, Titchmarsh held her hand and expressed his love for her. “She squeezed it back, with as much strength as she had. ‘Not as much as I love you,’ she responded.”

As he exited the ward, she winked and waved at him. “It was the last time I saw her. Two days later she died peacefully in her sleep.”

Using the inheritance she left him, Alan constructed a pale blue hexagonal summerhouse in his garden. “Sitting in the sunshine across from where I write,” he revealed.

Alan has shared some key advice to gardeners(Image: PA)

Alan confessed that his mother showed little enthusiasm for his novels, which she playfully mocked as being “a bit saucy”, but noted that she was passionate about gardening, books, and television programmes, and most importantly, spending time outdoors.

To celebrate that passion, he commissioned a plaque for the rear wall of the summerhouse, which remains open on three sides, “just as she would have wanted.”

It reads:

In happy memory of Bessie Titchmarsh 1924–2002 who loved being outside.

Contemplating the memorial, Titchmarsh remarked: “I think she would have liked that.”