Plants that make me smile

You could put my enduring love of pelargoniums down to a lack of imagination. They were, after all, the pot plants of which I was put in charge on my first day at work in the Yorkshire parks department nursery back in 1964.

- Alan Titchmarsh

If anything, my ongoing encounters with them should have put me off. After all, who would be happy being part of a team of three or four gardeners who were charged with taking 15,000 cuttings of them every summer to make sure that the flowerbeds in the town would be every bit as brilliant the following year? Well… me.

Granted, I was happy to move on to a more varied and challenging horticultural career, but my love of 'geraniums' has continued unabated. My affection is predicated on several of the plants' characteristics: they are bright and cheerful, there are varieties with aromatic or intriguingly variegated foliage, they don't mind drying out at the roots if I'm away for a few days and they are easy to grow and propagate, provided a few simple factors are borne in mind.