Why I Lust After Woodland With Rhododendrons

AS a gardener, I cannot help but feel excited at the prospect of spring; a book I was given as a teenager proclaims in its rather simplistic and optimistic title: Every Spring is a New Beginning.

- Alan Titchmarsh

It’s as if every March I am offered a chance to wipe the slate clean, to do better, to grow things more skilfully and to try plants that have hitherto escaped my clutches. This year offers a particularly exciting prospect.

For the past 37 years, I have gardened on Hampshire chalk— first in my previous garden, which was the setting for seven years of Gardeners’ World television programmes set at the fictional name of ‘Barleywood’, and for the past 15 years at our current garden just a couple of miles down the road from there.

The setting is wonderful— four acres at the foot of the rolling Hampshire Downs surrounding a mellow brick Georgian farmhouse that was known to Jane Austen, who lived just a couple of miles away. The house was owned, but not lived in, by Sir Thomas Miller, of whom Jane wrote to her sister Cassandra: ‘Sir Thomas Miller is dead. I seem to be bringing you news of a dead baronet with every letter.’ A poignant association, perhaps, but an association nevertheless.