Picture Alan Titchmarsh’s garden and you imagine perfect order: clipped borders, luscious lawns, and not a plant pot out of place. But the TV presenter and gardening legend has confessed to a surprising mistake that still haunts him to this day.
Writing in Gardeners’ World Magazine, Alan recalled the time when he welcomed two horticultural heroes, Pam Schwerdt and Sibylle Kreutzberger, to his home. He was touring them around his Holybourne garden when he realised he had forgotten to label a bed of tulips — only for them to notice, to his horror.
‘The most embarrassing [mistake] for me was when a friend asked me 20 years ago if she could bring a couple of her own friends to look at my garden,’ he wrote.
‘The only thing that worried me was that I could not locate the label for the tulips that shone brightly from the narrow borders on either side of the greenhouse path. Not to worry, there were plenty of other plants that would catch their eye. You can probably guess the outcome. We toured the garden with me casting an arm out to right and left, pointing out this and that – things I thought would impress.
‘And the only plant they asked the name of? Yup. The errant tulip.’
In the article, Alan noted he is a ‘born labeller’ and loves order in the garden, so you can imagine how he felt when his visitors questioned the tulips. He also added that Pam and Sibylle later wrote a thank-you note for their visit, praising his wife’s baking, but left out any mention of the garden.
He also explained that before their arrival, he had a scout around the garden and was relieved to see nearly mowed lawns, describing everything as ‘bright and fair’.
Courtesy of Savills
Alan and his wife Alison put their sprawling Hampshire home on the market last September, after wanting to downsize to another village home nearby to be closer to their daughters and grandchildren. Highlights include oak beams, sash windows, five well-sized bedrooms, a vaulted 16th-century wine cellar, and, of course, breathtaking gardens.
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