GARDENS
REE ERS with Alan Titchmarsh Horticultural inspiration, accomplished gardener, talented novelist and much-loved presenter, Alan Titchmarsh, talks to Village People about his favourite things in the garden.
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ardens are evolving, emerging, changing entities in almost every week of the year, so when it comes to choosing my favourite plants, flowers and sights, it’s a difficult thing to judge and very much dependent upon the season. I think if a cross-section of people are asked to name the thing in a garden that gives them joy and a feeling of admiration beyond anything else, a good number will choose the rose.
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Think about it, is there anything else that offers such a breadth of colour, such a contradiction of beauty and danger (in the sense of a seductive flower and the prickly thorns that linger just a few inches down), or that offers a bou uet that has melted the hearts of a thousand romantics ! Okay, so yes, a rose sometimes can seem so-so, perhaps because we embrace them so fully in our lives, and I accept there is something perhaps even a little cliched about the simple rose
these days. However, I will be so bold as to say this a garden without a fragrant rose isn't much of a garden at all! For other times of the year, I will pick out certain things that give me incredible satisfaction. I look forward to these coming around, and their emergence is always very special. The first snowdrop in January the first daffodil in February. These are the types of flowers that mark a change in or a progression of the season, and that always fills me with hope and expectation. ou know these beautiful elements will always arrive, but still, it’s a relief when they do! As for others that feel special, I regularly point people towards penstemons. I think there’s always an expectation that in a professional gardener’s back yard you will have the highest grade of plants and the most di cult to bring to flower, but we all like to
