Alan Titchmarsh

Many gardens have shady areas, where sun-loving plants won’t thrive. The good news is that there’s plenty of plants that can tolerate or even do better in a shaded position.

Six DVD’s in a boxed set ‘A Year at Kew – The Collection’ (Series 1-3) with Alan Titchmarsh is available from Amazon  in time for a Christmas gift. Over 1000 minutes of gardening in a month-by-month journey via the BBC through the world’s greatest botanical garden.

Join us on Tuesday 9th July 2024for an exclusive tour of Highgrove Gardens, the private home of TRH King Charles III and The Queen Consort, followed by a Prosecco and canapés reception, a seasonal three-course lunch and a talk by BBC Gardeners’ World host, Alan Titchmarsh.

Pots and containers offer the gardener great versatility and are a fantastic way to experiment with planting and design. From short-term bedding displays to permanent features of small trees and topiary, planting in pots adds another dimension to the garden, softening corners, brightening dull spots and providing instant, yet easily changeable, results.

Listen up as Alan Titchmarsh, Kate Bradbury and the team at Gardeners’ World share some of their garden favourites. From plants for vibrant winter flowers, to the best Christmas gifts for gardeners and wildlife to spot in your garden this winter.

Encouraging your children to get into gardening is a great way to introduce them to the wonders of the natural world and kickstart a love for the outdoors. Especially in a world where entertainment for kids is often dominated by screens, getting children engaged with nature is a great way to keep them moving.

In this No Fuss Guide, Alan Titchmarsh runs through the essential kit you need for vegetable growing. He recommends 10 pieces of basic equipment that will help you create a productive vegetable plot with ease.

What would us gardeners do without dahlias? If your garden needs more colour in summer: plant some dahlias. If it needs more colour in autumn: plant some dahlias. If it needs some tall plants to make the back of the garden more colourful: plant some dahlias. If you’re looking for some easy cut flowers to grow that come back year after year: plant some dahlias. If there’s a colour missing in your garden (except blue!): there’s a dahlia for it.

Join us for an exclusive conversation with presenter, broadcaster and author Alan Titchmarsh. Recorded at BBC Gardeners’ World Live, and Hosted by presenter and broadcaster, Nicki Chapman, the audience listened in as Alan discussed what it means to be a good gardener… You can buy tickets for the next live show, BBC Gardeners’ World Autumn Fair here.

Many of the worst garden weeds can quickly take over your garden during the growing season. Weeds start growing earlier in the year than many garden plants, in early spring – so be sure to get on top of them early before they get out of hand.

Ground cover plants are naturally low-growing plants that form attractive mounds or carpets. They cover the ground quickly, covering bare soil. They are often low-maintenance and often evergreen.

Slugs and snails can wreak havoc in the garden, demolishing seedlings and decimating the leaves of larger plants such as hostas. While slug pellets are an effective deterrent, those containing metaldehyde can harm hedgehogs and other wildlife, while other forms of slug control can be time consuming and aren’t guaranteed to work.

Shrubs growing in shade perform a variety of functions – from serving as a leafy foil to other plants, to lighting up dark areas with bright flowers or impressing with dramatic foliage. Small or low-growing shrubs can even be used for ground cover.

A couple of weeks ago, I was looking for some statistics about the average UK garden size, and I found some interesting ones. According to the 2015 media pack for the RHS The Garden magazine, a document that is aimed at attracting advertisers to the publication, the 380,000 RHS members the magazine is sent to have gardens that are 10 times larger than the UK average, covering over half an acre.

A few weeks ago I received a press release from Waitrose about their new Alan Titchmarsh gardening range. It’s a fairly routine set of offerings, all nicely packaged up. The one that caught my eye was their ‘Broadfen’ horseradish thong, which they said is a “heritage variety first grown by the Egyptians (1500 BC).”

The idea that we should be gardening without using peat is not a new one, at least here in the UK. I have a copy of ‘Gardening Without Peat’, published by Friends of the Earth in 1991. It explains that our exploitation of peat bogs is using up peat faster than it is being formed – we should consider it a non-renewable resource. The destruction of the peat bogs is causing a decline in biodiversity and allowing carbon dioxide to escape into the atmosphere to add to our climate woes.

We asked you what pest, disease and plant problems you’d like Alan Titchmarsh’s advice on. Hundreds of you responded with questions about a host of problems on a wide range of flowers, fruit and veg.

In Yorkshire we are lucky to have several gardens designed using the theme of a Himalayan Garden. The Hut near Ripon at Grewlthorpe is   ‘The Himalayan Garden’ with all the plants you would expect in such a setting including

For less than £5 you can buy ‘Container Gardening’ by Alan Titchmarsh from Amazon. Just click on the picture above

There are several annual plants I would recommend to new gardeners who want to cover an unsightly mess but do not want permanent plants that could impede house maintenance.

If you want your garden to keep looking good throughout the months ahead, then these fabulous plants are sure to bring a boost of colour throughout late summer and autumn. There are options to suit every colour scheme, and plants that will thrive in pots as well as your borders. Our choices include recommendations from the Gardeners’ World team and familiar faces from across the gardening industry.

Evergreen shrubs keep their leaves all year round and are a must in any garden. They’re an especially welcome sight in winter, when their fresh green foliage and distinctive shapes stop the garden looking bare. Evergreens are often described as the ‘backbone’ of a garden, as they bring important structure – some can be clipped into balls, mounds, columns and pyramids. They also act as a foil to more showy plants, such as summer-flowering perennials or shrubs that have lovely autumn colour.

Back in early May I mentioned that I was making big changes out front, well, I never did say it was to our garden!

Is Your Garden Gorgeous? If so, Alan Titchmarsh would like to know. To mark his 50th year in horticulture he is on the lookout for thirty of the nations best private gardens to feature in a programme being made by ITV.

If you love gardening then you must watch these Best Garden Shows on Netflix that will surely give you more idea on how to do it right along with detailed insights on plants!