Grow Your Own at Home with Alan Titchmarsh, review: the perfect encouragement for gardening novices

Isn’t it fun to have a nosy around other people’s gardens? In Grow Your Own at Home with Alan Titchmarsh, a show filmed in lockdown, the team from ITV’s Love Your Garden broadcast from their own homes.

So we learned that David Domoney has acres of space for the kids to run around, Frances Tophill has a tiny paved backyard, and Katie Rushworth – well, I didn’t actually notice Katie’s garden because bloomin’ ’eck (as Alan might say), what a kitchen! Just the place for adorning a pizza with herbs from the “pizza garden” (rosemary, thyme, chives, basil) and mixing a drink with ingredients from the “gin and tonic garden” (lemon verbena, mint, fennel). If we’re all now following our instincts when it comes to lockdown, mine are to move in with Katie tomorrow.

Alan’s garden is glorious, obviously. But lockdown has made us all realise how vital even the smallest patch of outside space can be. This three-part series is about using that space to grow fruit and vegetables. It is aimed at the novice, and communicated its message with such enthusiasm and simplicity that even I, a hopeless gardener, was filled with confidence that I could grow some radishes. I don’t know anyone who really likes radishes, but we all have to start somewhere.

If you are an accomplished gardener then this might have been a bit like teaching your granny to suck eggs. But for beginners, it made everything seem wonderfully straightforward. Katie’s basil plant was from the supermarket, as was the ginger root Frances advised us to stick in a pot. I’m not sure how easy it really is to knock up some raised beds – David didn’t even have to go to the garden centre, but had £80 worth of wooden bits dropped off on his doorstep – but it didn’t look too daunting.

Alan’s camera operator was “Mrs T”, his wife, and she made a decent job of it. It was a lovely, sunny programme. “Hands in the soil are good for the soul,” he said, and the show was too.

I just hope everyone will eat the radishes.