Alan Titchmarsh takes us for a tour around his vegetable garden. Growing vegetables and fruit remains, for many, an unfulfilled aspiration. Oh, the intention is there, but so many caveats come into play before the dream can become reality that inertia often sets in and a cellophane packet of pre-washed lettuce becomes a more realistic option.
Which is a shame. Envy may be one of the seven deadly sins, but I know of few gardeners whose epidermis is immune to a verdant flush when gazing upon a walled kitchen garden such as The King’s creation at Highgrove in Gloucestershire. Yes, the provision of homegrown produce is a laudable aim, but when those comestibles are cultivated in the shelter of tall stone or brick walls, furnished with espaliered apples and pears and perhaps even a lean-to vinery, there is something altogether more romantic in their production.
I have never forgotten the first few lines of a poem written by Daniel Pettiward: I want a kitchen garden With box to line the routes; Where things go soft and harden And cling to people’s boots. My own kitchen garden is not, I confess, in the Highgrove league. The ‘walls’ are replaced by a simple picket fence, with stout chicken wire buried at the base to keep out rabbits.
But the picket gate has a satisfying catch and a little shed sits in the centre, painted a fetching shade of Farrow & Ball and fronted by a metal plant stand on which sit terracotta pots offering seasonal interest. Right now, pink pelargoniums pr.
