An Interview With Alan Titchmarsh
Celebrity Gardener, TV Show Host and Writer Talks About his Passion
Alan, who will be 60 in May 2009, said some of his most inspirational memories growing up were watching Percy working in the Blue Peter garden.
“My childhood hero was Percy Thrower and he was a great friend in the end as well,” he said. “Like so many people I grew up watching him on TV in the Blue Peter garden and he was a great inspiration.
“Looking at people who have been allowed to do what they enjoy in life, they are very lucky. The great thing is to be able to have a go at things you’ve got a passion for in life. I’ve just followed in dear old Percy’s footsteps and I’m very lucky to do so. It was a great honour to take over from the old man on Gardeners’ World.”
Alan said he thought it was “nice” that there was a permanent memorial to the great gardener in his home county of Shropshire. The memorial sits in the Dingle garden in the Quarry, Shrewsbury, which was designed by Percy.
Alan Titchmarsh Still Finds Time to Work in his own Garden
Despite Alan’s extensive list of commitments - which includes gardening, hosting The Alan Titchmarsh Show, writing novels and gardening books, and writing for magazines and newspapers - he said he still has time to work in his own garden.
“I do garden all the time. I’ve never been able to do anything half-heartedly,” he said. “People think that if you’re not doing it on TV you’re not doing it at all, but I still write about it every week for my newspaper columns, and every month for Gardeners’ World magazine.”
In between recording for his television and radio shows, Alan, who was born in Ilkley, West Yorkshire, still finds time to write his gardening columns for national British newspapers and to answer gardening questions that fans have sent in to his website.
New Projects
He has also managed to find time to start recording a new television series to be broadcast later in 2009. “Seasons is a big show for ITV and we’ve started filming it. It will be coming out next October,” he said. “It’s four episodes looking at the natural world in each of the four seasons.”
And Alan also finds time to fulfil his duties as patron of the Cowes Inshore Lifeboat association and a trustee of the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, London.
He was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2000 New Year Honours for services to horticulture and broadcasting, and in 2004 he was awarded the Royal Horticultural Society's Victoria Medal Of Honour, the highest award the RHS can bestow.
Alan Titchmarsh - How To Be A Gardener
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