Alan Titchmarsh says he has always wanted to be a gardener and still gets excited growing plants as his daughter had a firm career warning for him
Alan Titchmarsh says his daughter had a ‘very firm’ career warning for him(Image: ITV)
Alan Titchmarsh admits his daughter “was right” after she sent him a firm warning. The 76-year-old has been a popular face on television screens since launching his broadcasting career in 1977.
It came as Alan joined BBC Radio 4’s You and Yours and The Today Programme as a gardening expert. Before then he had spent his career writing and editing gardening books as well as working as a gardener.
Alan lives in Hampshire, where he films his popular Love Your Weekend, with wife Alison, a retired teacher. The couple share adult daughters Camilla and Polly together.
On the Lessons From Our Mothers podcast Alan says it was Polly who had a word of warning for him. He said: “My elder daughter became a teacher, like her mum, Alison was a teacher, and her younger sister now does interior design and property searches, stuff like that, but Camilla became a classroom assistant for a while but Polly told me quite firmly that I’m very patient with plants but wouldn’t have the patience to deal with children.”
Alan explained that he believes he found his calling when he discovered gardening. He added: “I love being with my children and grandchildren, I adore them all, but I think she’s right. I do have more patience with plants than with people. Plants aren’t wind-up merchants.”
Alan’s daughter says he is more patient with plants than people(Image: UK Press via Getty Images)
Alan developed his passion for gardening as a youngster, admitting that he would take his pocket money to Woolworths to buy packets of seeds. He says he would usually opt for nasturtiums because they were “just right for my small fingers to press into the ground”.
Eventually he graduated to a polythene lean-to before graduating to a greenhouse at his family home in Yorkshire. Speaking to the Daily Mail he explained that gardening is all he has ever wanted to do.
He left school, aged 15, in 1964 with a single O-level, in art. He then decided to take an apprenticeship at Ilkley Council, studying horticulture on day release.
Alan’s broadcast career began in the 70s(Image: ITV)
In 1968 Alan left Yorkshire for Hertfordshire and later found himself working at the Royal Botanical Gardens in Kew. However in 1974 he decided to pursue a career in horticulture journalism.
Alan however says that even in his seventies his “excitement for growing flowers, trees, fruit and vegetables” is as “feverish as it ever was”. Alan recently admitted he finds time can “slip away” now when he’s “out there pottering”.
Writing in Gardeners’ World Magazine, he said: “There are those who become maudlin about the increasing speed at which ‘time flies’ and, true enough, the older one becomes, the faster the hours, minutes and seconds seem to slip through one’s fingers.”
Alan explains it was previously clarified to him that a seven-year-old perceives a year as a “seventh of their life,” whilst for someone who is 70, a 70th of their existence is considerably smaller.
Alan returns to screens with Love Your Weekend from 9.30am on ITV One. This week he will be joined by Great British Bake Off judge Prue Leith and actor Robert Bathurst.
Comments are closed.