Tales from Titchmarsh

Horticulture is about the craft of growing plants, says Alan, a fact often ignored by those who laud hands-off gardening

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We are now well into 2023. The excitement of crossing the threshold into a new year has settled and we gaze ahead wondering what the next 12 months will offer. I've lost count of the number of times I have been asked what the next gardening trend is likely to be and the answer is always the same: "I haven't a clue." But I know what I would like to see happen - a truer appreciation of gardening skills and cultivation techniques, and the passing on of such knowledge rather than some faux-holistic attempt to get 'back to nature', the very implication of which implies a hands-off rather than hands-on approach.

I've been saddened and profoundly irritated over the past year at the move towards 'letting nature have the upper hand' in the garden. Nature has always had the upper hand in my garden, but I have always worked with her. My passion is 'gardening' and that means intervention, but it is intervention in the interests of helping a wide range of plants to grow better, of making sure that the wildlife in my garden is treated as an equal, but that my own presence is both legitimate and advantageous to all forms of life, including my own.