Alan Titchmarsh: How Alan sowed the seeds that grew and grew

Looking back to the 1950s, the decade in which young Titch spent his first years (he was born in 1949), he harks back with fondness to a long-disappeared Britain. He rambles down high streets and through farmyards, describes school life and working habits, social pecking orders and the magic of the village hall Saturday night dance. He wallows in memories of the conventions that ruled 1950s Britain, and the rituals of the public bar for working men to wet their whistle after a tough day at work, and the lounge bar, where a couple would dress up nicely to drink a beer and a schooner of sherry. They were the days before unseasonal fruits were flown in from Africa to sate the appetite of a generation that gorges itself on instant gratification.

The 1950s were an age of comparative quietude, when the country began to relax into peacetime and learn to enjoy itself again. Titchmarsh may enjoy a big house in Hampshire these day – the well-earned fruit of a 45-year career as a gardener who made gardening not just fashionable but a televisual event – however, he looks back fondly on simpler times, from tales of rag and bone men to the thrill of family holidays in Bispham, the excitement of the coming of mass air travel and the moment when a greyish life captured on a Box Brownie began to turn into glorious technicolour for ordinary people.

In the book he finds everything to praise about the decade he says has been forgotten, falling down the crack between the drama and privations of wartime and the cultural and social revolution of the 1960s.

Born in 1949, the Alan Titchmarsh who grew up the son of a plumber in Ilkley was a sensitive and under-achieving child. Bullied during his schooldays, he left the classroom at 15 with an O-level in art, and became an apprentice gardener with the local parks department. He did his City and Guilds qualifications on day release at college in Shipley, where he was top of the class.

A taste of success made him hungry for more. He says discovering he was good at something was his way out of a lifelong inferiority complex. He spent pocket money on packets of seeds and experimented in his parent's garden.

"My dad did things with his hands, and I found I had a similar talent but with gardening. I still have a workbench and make things myself rather than going to the shops to see if I can find the ready-made article. Very few men do things with their hands any more, and I think it's a shame. It's a pleasure that's been lost."

While not obviously given to introspection, Titchmarsh has spent a good deal of time in his autobiographies looking back to his childhood and how it shaped him. Blanking out darker moments, he seems to see only the happiness of days spent playing out by river and woodland and the remembrance of plain cooking, drooping woolly swimming trunks, and the smell of washing as it steamed by the fire in winter.

But he clearly dislikes the idea that he might not have any hidden depths: "I went to a wonderfully uplifting exhibition at the Royal Academy, which was written off by some critics as having 'no inner depth', a view based on something only having value if it is about angst and darkness."

Titchmarsh is the first to admit he's led a fairly charmed life since coming to the notice of the media via his work at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, where he did further training for five years and rose up the ranks before branching out into horticultural journalism. Radio and television came knocking, looking for a gardening expert to do small slots that started with a fortunate (for him) plague of greenfly. It was the brilliance at gardening combined with an affable character that would never frighten the horses that insinuated Alan Titchmarsh into the national consciousness and engendered an affection that has kept him there for 30 years, while more strident personalities with no particular expertise have come and gone.

"I suppose that's true," he says. "Certainly, where gardening was concerned, no-one could ever say I didn't know my craft." Shows like Pebble Mill at One and Ground Force took him from Gardeners' World to a wider audience, and he has filled in his waking hours by presenting other shows like Songs of Praise and Antiques Roadshow.

He seems to be more in demand than ever, and has a new gardening show, the four-part Alan Titchmarsh's Garden Secrets, starting next Tuesday evening. For great tranches of the year he's resident from 5pm-6pm on ITV1 with The Alan Titchmarsh Show, and Sunday nights see him entertaining Radio 2 fans with Melodies for You.

He writes regular newspaper columns and in between the chat show seasons has turned out several light novels as well as a library shelf of gardening manuals. Yes, he can certainly make things with his hands.

When do Alison, his wife of 30-odd years, and their grown-up daughters see him, I wonder? "Well, Alison sees me in bed," he says ruefully. Titchmarsh says he feels terribly aware of what a fortunate life he's had and doesn't take it for granted. He seems to worry about offending anyone ("I don't want to sound like a grumpy old man"), but he does lament the loss of values held dear back in the 1950s. In When I Was A Nipper, he points out the solid social hierarchy of village or small town society, and comments on the way children back then gave proper respect to their "elders and betters". "Today we as a society tend to disparage the elderly, turning on its head the old belief in respecting and honouring the tribal elders. When I was growing up respect and manners towards older people were inculcated in all of us, and now they are seen as expendable.

"Many children live their lives through one kind of screen or another, whether the TV, films, DVD, computer, games, or phones. They don't participate, they watch. There's something lonely, sad and insular about this spectatorial existence, and it means they grow up with no social graces. They have so much information thrown at them of a certain kind that they show no curiosity about anything outside. Now I sound like an old fart."

Ask Alan Titchmarsh about his own garden, and he'll happily indulge himself, describing the joy of waiting three years for asparagus to sprout, and finally seeing the first crop this year. He'll also throw in a freebie lesson on the identification of pine trees.

Whatever values Titchmarsh represents, they ring a loud bell with a wide chunk of Middle Britain. No wonder the BBC has been after him for years to take part in Strictly Come Dancing. He's a showman at heart, he says – he met Alison at an amateur operatic society – but he's too busy being the British media's Everyman to give the paso doble a go.

"They've asked me three times, but it takes three months out of your life. But I watch it and I'd love to dance with Ann Widdecombe. I'm a big fan. And of course she can have the time of her life on the show and still be a serious person, even though some people think otherwise."

When I Was A Nipper is published by Ebury, 20. To order from the Yorkshire Post Bookshop call 0800 0153232 or go to www.yorkshirepostbookshop.co.uk. An Evening with Alan Titchmarsh will be held at The Majestic, Harrogate on Friday, Nov 19. Details from Margaret Brown 07731 690163 [email protected].