Alan Titchmarsh: You wouldn't think it, but Surrey is the most wooded of all England's counties — and its Scots pines are as beautiful as any of its trees

Pine trees have always confused me.

The confusion dates back to my days as a student at Kew Gardens when, every Friday for three years, we would be faced with 20 plant specimens to identify with their family, genus species and variety. They would be drawn from what must rank as the largest and most comprehensive plant collection in the world, so the canvas was pretty broad. Trees, shrubs, perennials, annuals and bulbous plants, from equatorial rainforest to Arctic tundra and mountain scree, were all fair game and, after a year or two, our plant vocabulary was of a breadth and depth that few outside that august institution could match.

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One particular Friday saw most of us stumped, however. Each of the 20 glass specimen vases contained a different species of pine. The dwarf Pinus mugo was an easy one to tick off and the soft and feathery Bhutan pine, P. wallichiana, was a bit of a shoo-in, too, but that left 18 whose identity had to be narrowed down by the number of needles carried in each cluster — two, three or five. Shirley Conran had yet to opine that ‘Life is too short to stuff a mushroom’, but the sentiment was shared.

Growing up on Ilkley Moor in West Yorkshire in the 1950s, the modest cluster of gnarled Scots pines, near the 18th-century spa bath of White Wells, was the nearest I ever came to the Caledonian Forest. Having spent the past 45 years on chalk downland, these acid-loving giants have not been my daily companions, but, this year, I have renewed my acquaintance with a group of plants that recolonised our islands 10,500 years ago after the last Ice Age. It has given me tremendous pleasure.

Visits to Scotland always leave me in awe of Pinus sylvestris, the Scots pine, which can live for up to 400 or 500 years, although half that is more the norm. This summer, on a visit to the Côte d’Azur in France, I encountered groves of the umbrella pine, Pinus pinea, which I remember from that venerable specimen at Kew Gardens — now, alas, no more — which was felled in 2022 due to its dangerous state. It was about 250 years old.

As its name implies, the umbrella pine holds its branches in an elegant dome, vibrant green against an azure Côte d’Azur sky. Beneath these Mediterranean coastal trees, the blowsy crimson, pink or white flowers of oleanders — the rose laurel — replaced our native laurel, alongside foaming banks of pale-blue-flowered plumbago, the Cape leadwort. Sipping my morning coffee on the terrace and gazing up at the huge verdant lollipops that framed the view of a glittering Mediterranean sea has left me with a lasting memory of a very special family holiday.

Returning home and visiting my daughters who live in Surrey, I was struck by the beauty of the Scots pines that surround their gardens. Here, the oleanders and plumbago are replaced by rhododendrons and camellias.

Surrey, although probably thought of by those north of Watford as just another of the Home Counties, is the most wooded of all English counties, with tree coverage of 22.4%, much of it ancient woodland. Here, the Scots pines have tall and often torturous trunks that glow amber in the afternoon sunshine. The bark of the pine tree is one of its most attractive attributes, heightened to burnished copper at sunset.

I am glad I have re-acquainted myself with the pines that once frustrated me. It is just as well. Soon, we will be moving from the Hampshire Downland where we have made two homes and gardens over the past four decades to be closer to our daughters just across the border in Surrey. Leaving the garden I have created and tended for 23 years will be a fearsome wrench, but the time is right and the pines are beckoning. We are only ever custodians of our patches of earth and I am happy to hand over my four acres for others to enjoy and to cultivate.

I like to think that I have one more garden in me. Excitement has taken over from the prospect of leaving my favourite patch of earth behind. I have plans to plant more pines — Scots and umbrella — to do my bit to keep Surrey wooded and to remind me of happy times on the moors, at Kew and basking in the Mediterranean sunshine.

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

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