Alan Titchmarsh talks about his latest novel The Gift which explores a profound and special connection with landscape and nature

The latest series of his popular ITV series Love Your Garden, which has been running since 2011, is currently on air and he also presents the channel’s Sunday morning programme Love Your Weekend, as well as a regular radio show on Classic FM. He has written more than 40 gardening books, four volumes of memoir and 11 bestselling novels. His latest novel – his 12th – The Gift was published last month.

Set on a farm in the stunning landscape of upper Wharfedale, it tells the story of the Gabriel family – farmers Luke and Bethany and their son Adam who, it gradually transpires, has a gift for healing which is both a blessing and a huge responsibility. It is the kind of storyline for which Titchmarsh is known – thoughtful, warm, generally uplifting, very human – and which has brought him a legion of fans. “I write gentle novels but they are not without a bit of grit,” he says. “I write about ordinary families who are put into extraordinary situations.”

His first foray into fiction writing was in 1998 with Mr MacGregor, about a Yorkshire amateur gardener writing a column for his local newspaper and helping out at his father’s garden centre and nursery. Since that debut most of his novels have been set outside Yorkshire so it is interesting that for The Gift he has returned to the county and specifically to a part he knows well – having grown up in Ilkley on the banks of the River Wharfe.

“Because I haven’t been able to get up to Yorkshire as often as I like to for a couple of years due to the pandemic, I think maybe I have been pining for it but I just knew I wanted to set the story in Wharfedale,” he says. “Whenever I write novels, place and setting is very important to me – for me, it is not just the background – and I also wanted to write about someone who is connected to the land, as I am. All those things came together, so I knew I wanted the book to be about someone who was working on the land, who had a particular affinity with the landscape and that their connection was unusual and not necessarily understood by everyone.”

It is a kind-hearted, lyrical story about difference and tolerance, about accepting that there are some things in life that can’t necessarily be explained. “I find this whole cancel culture quite difficult to get to grips with,” he says. “Just because we don’t agree with someone or don’t understand something doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. I think there are many things in life and the world around us that we don’t understand, so I wanted the story to include that and to feature someone who didn’t quite fit in.”

He is candid about the way in which this connects to his own personal experiences at school, which he has described in his 2006 memoir Nobbut A Lad: A Yorkshire Childhood as not without its challenges, writing “to claim my school days were miserable would be overstating the case but… they weren’t a high spot”. He tells me: “In a way, although I really tried, I just didn’t fit in. I was small and sensitive and I liked gardening – I was made to feel a bit weird because of that. So, with this novel I wanted to write about somebody who was a bit of an outsider.”

The fact that he was not terribly happy at school may have been a factor in his decision to leave school before sitting his O-levels. Instead, he took up an apprenticeship as a gardener with the local parks department. “It was quite an unusual thing to do at the time but it was so wonderful for me to go into gardening,” he says. “And I really want to encourage the next generation to look further than the obvious jobs. I am a firm believer that everyone is good at something. It might be off the beaten track but that’s fine.”

It was while he was an apprentice gardener that he really began getting interested in literature and reading. “Daphne du Maurier was an early inspiration. In fact, I first read Rebecca a long time ago when I was with the parks department and I was working down at Ilkley tennis club for a bit of extra work; it poured with rain every single day I was there so I had nothing to do and I read Rebecca. I was very impressed with Du Maurier and I love PG Wodehouse – his humour and wonderful use of vocabulary, so there is always a Wodehouse by my bed for bedtime reading. A more recent novel that I have loved is Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens.”

With the various strands to his working life, Titchmarsh has a very busy schedule and clearly loves what he does. “I think what drives me is curiosity – I am interested in everything and I like people,” he says. “Doing Love Your Weekend on a Sunday morning is an absolute joy, just chatting with people and finding out about their lives.”

He does, however, hint that he might like to perhaps begin to take things a bit easier. “I am committed to quite a lot of television this year but I’d like to do a little less after that,” he says, before adding that he has more writing to do. “At the moment I’m working on a non-fiction book which combines poetry, music and nature and then I have two more novels to write. I love writing, whether that is about gardening or fiction – it is about sharing passions and sharing the enjoyment.”

He is, of course, a brilliant advocate for the joys and benefits of gardening and says he was “so heartened” by the rise in numbers of people taking up gardening for the first time, and connecting with nature and the landscape more generally, during the lockdowns over the past two years. “My fervent hope is that people keep that connection with the natural world going,” he says. “Because I firmly believe that being outside in the landscape or just in your garden can offer real solace.”

Despite the depth and breadth of his interests and talents, Titchmarsh knows where his heart lies. “I am very lucky that I have found the right jobs, but I do still think of myself first and foremost as a gardener – basically I am a gardener who has been allowed to do all these amazing things.”

And it is still in the garden and working on the land that he is most at home and where he finds his own peace. “I was planting some trees for my younger daughter in her garden the other day,” he says. “I was on my own, digging away, and I found myself saying out loud: ‘I am never happier than when I am doing this’.”

■ The Gift, published by Hodder & Stoughton, is out now.