'Daunting, liberating and exhilarating': Alan Titchmarsh on the move 'that's given me a new lease of life'

'Oh, Adam was a gardener, and God who made him sees / That half a proper gardener’s work is done upon his knees.’ Rudyard Kipling wasn’t wrong, as I know to my cost over these past few months of planting beds and borders. The knees have definitely taken a battering, but I’ve come to love that position on the edge of a border, committing new charges to newly dug and newly enriched earth, not least as the planting is undertaken on sandy soil.

There is an intimacy to planting when it is carried out in a kneeling position (with a cushioned kneeler). It’s rather like tucking a small child into bed and I mutter at my botanical offspring from time to time and offer encouragement.

After the unsettling upheaval of moving house — and garden — in the hottest, driest summer on record, I seem to have found a kind of equilibrium and a new lease of gardening life. Caring for four acres of garden that took a quarter of a century to create and to cherish was quite some responsibility. ‘How could you bear to leave it?’ I am asked regularly. ‘With difficulty’ is the reply.

I have learned to move on, however, mentally as well as physically, and to relish the chance to start again from scratch on a more modest scale and on acid sand instead of chalk, clay and flint. At least that’s the right way round. I can only imagine what it’s like in one’s seventies moving from friable sand to intractable clay and flint: Goodbye speedy planting, hello osteopath.

I have always felt a surge of optimism when replanting any garden border — ripping out things that are past their best and creating new pictures with new plants — but in such a situation one can keep a nucleus of established trees and shrubs to act as a framework. Here, I am planting from scratch and, although that can be daunting, it is also liberating and exhilarating.

I have not sat down and drawn up a paper plan, but then I never have. I start by carving out borders and shaping them; eyeing them up from all angles, then adding trees, shrubs, perennials and bulbs in that order. I begin nearest the house — that way, when I come indoors I can look out on what I have achieved so far and the garden springs off the shape and character of the building. Start at the far end of your plot and a) the garden does not complement the dwelling and b) when you gaze out of the window you cannot see what you have achieved as it is too far away to have maximum impact. It’s dispiriting.

I add to my borders bit by bit. I have a list of plants I know I want, but I also like to be inspired by something I spot in a nursery or garden centre that I think I can find a home for. (I have vowed that this garden will not have a holding area — that expanding collection of container-grown plants that never diminishes.)

New loves? Chinese dogwoods and magnolias. A visit to Exbury in Hampshire last spring fuelled my passion for rhododendrons and those showy Kurume azaleas that I would once have thought far too garish. I have come to realise that spring on acid soil is legitimately far more colourful than the slowly unfurling spectacle on chalk downland. I am also less concerned about what others think of my taste.

Camellias are replacing some of the rampant laurel, which is the talismanic shrub in this part of Surrey. Ferns I have always valued for their ability to thrive in dry shade, but now, having a garden that is blessed with an acre of woodland, I am adding to my pteridological vocabulary. The crested forms of Dryopteris, and the finely cut, glossy-fronded Polystichum setiferum ‘Herrenhausen’ are especial favourites.

The borders next to the house feature a mixture of magenta-flowered Geranium ‘Patricia’, Nepeta ‘Walkers Low’ and Alchemilla mollis, perforated by sentinels of Thuja occidentalis ‘Smaragd’ — tall and slender, but less prone to falling open than the classic Mediterranean cypress. They have been a great success in their first year.

At the age of 15, I pleaded with my parents to let me leave school and become a gardener. They were concerned that it might be nothing more than a flash in the pan. I’m glad they said ‘yes’. My enthusiasm for growing things and creating gardens has only grown over the years. Lucky chap.

'Chatsworth: The gardens and the people who made them' by Alan Titchmarsh is out now (Ebury, £35).

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This feature originally appeared in the October 21, 2026, print edition of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.