Alan Titchmarsh solves your gardening problems

Resilience. It’s one of the buzz words everyone’s talking about right now, part of the zeitgeist. And it’s true. We do need resilience in all walks of life – emotional, physical, spiritual, psychological. And the planet needs resilience, too, although a glance to any news bulletin will confirm that we’re not doing too well on that score.

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.

I am bored of rain. Fed up with cloudy days. Sick of the grey drip-drip-drip of this cool, showery, sun-starved, stormy summer, and the monotony of a weather forecast that only predicts more of the same. But even so, I’m forced to admit that the silver lining to what’s been a very sodden growing season is that many of our most beautiful, late summer-autumn flowering garden perennials and shrubs are loving the biblical quantities of rainfall in recent months, a high note to what’s otherwise been a forgettable year.

Header image: <a href=«https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/pink-water-lily-lake-goldfish-142067443?src=» http:>NagyDodo/Shutterstock

There are many ways you can keep your slug population under control without resorting to toxic slug pellets:

I met the Duke of Edinburgh a few years ago. Shame I was stuck in front of a computer at the time, and not somewhere more exciting like the Chelsea Flower Show. Meeting human royalty might be a rare occurrence for most people, but you can surround yourself with royal plants and get that regal feeling every time you step into the garden. To illustrate my point, let me share with you an old joke….

Apparently more Brits watch gardening programmes than tuned in for Game of Thrones. I can see why – in the penultimate season of GoT the action was so slow that it would have been more interesting to go outside and watch the plants grow. I didn’t bother watching the latest season (but yes, I know who died, thanks).

Here in the UK it’s traditional to take a couple of weeks off work over the summer and head off to somewhere with better weather – or at least somewhere that you can get away from it all for a little while. It’s one of the ironies of life that this takes you away from the garden at a time when it really could use your help. If you have a gardening neighbour then you can rely on them to take care of your garden while you’re away, but if you don’t and don’t want to come home to dead plants, weeds and giant marrows then there are a few things you can do to prepare your garden for your absence.

Header image: *Psyche Delia*/Flickr, CC BY-NC

Interviewers always seem to ask fiction authors “Where do you get your ideas?” and I suspect they then have to come up with an answer than doesn’t make them look like a loon. Because the truth is that, although inspiration can come out of the blue, once you start writing on a regular basis ideas come thick and fast – there just isn’t enough time or energy to turn them all into stories. Or that’s my experience anyway, writing non-fiction.

Continuing with my goal of reading one of the unread gardening books on my shelf every month this year, I choose Salad Plants for Your Garden by Roger Phillips and Martyn Rix as my book for May. It has been in my possession for two years since I bought it in a charity shop; it was originally published in 1998.

Emma White, University of Surrey and Sarah Golding, University of Surrey