IF YOU’VE ever thought it a little bizarre that a gardener has become one of the UK’s most successful and popular broadcasters, not to mention an author and a heart-throb, with a career that has spanned some 30 years, you wouldn’t be alone.

Alan Titchmarsh admits that he feels the same way.

“I’m constantly surprised that anyone lets me do it!” laughs the 63-year-old in his Hampshire home.

“Whenever anyone says ‘oh, not him again!’, I’m quite sympathetic really. I get asked to do these things and as long as they get decent viewing figures I’m happy to do them. I don’t mind annoying people but I don’t want to embarrass everyone.

“Nobody’s loved by everyone but as long as some people get pleasure out of it, it’s a great treat. It won’t carry on forever. I’m knocking on a bit now and I expect it to peter out any day. But while it carries on and I carry on being interested in doing it I’ll have a go.”

Alan might be constantly expecting his career to fade away but it’s still going from strength-to-strength.

He has a new TV show on ITV, Love Your Garden, and is working on his latest book, My Secret Garden, which is about his own garden here in Hampshire, and comes out later this year.

And he is also the president for this year’s New Forest and Hampshire County Show, which takes place from July 24 to 26 in Brockenhurst.

He says he was delighted to be elected the 92nd president by members of the show’s society.

“It’s a great honour. It’s got a great reputation,” he says.

“I’ll be there every day and I’m looking forward to it enormously. I’m judging the President’s Award for the best area – it can be anything really, a marquee, an exhibit or whatever. It’s down to me so the pressure’s on!”

Alan believes that the show and other events like it play an important role in helping to connect people with the countryside.

“I think people are too disconnected from the countryside now and I think it’s a great sadness that children are growing up glued to technology. There’s nothing wrong with technology if it achieves an end bit when they’re connected to a screen 24-seven they don’t get out and the nearest thing is watching a television programme about it, it’s not enough.

“They don’t understand the countryside and become frightened of it so it goes to rack and ruin.”

He adds that he has a sense of responsibility to do something about what he sees as a worrying trend.

“I think it’s up to our generation now – people like me who have a job of relating people to the countryside and talking about it. We’ve got to do our job properly to get people out there.

“I think the important thing to get over is that it’s not just about preserving old crafts, it’s also about the way we live today. The countryside is as vital today as it was 200 years ago.”

Alan has a strong connection to the countryside.

He grew up in the Yorkshire Dales and has spent most of his adult life in rural Hampshire.

“I’m a Dalesman so where I live couldn’t be flat,” he says.

Alan is, of course, a celebrated gardener and he believes gardening is an excellent way of connecting people to the land and by extension the countryside.

“It’s right there on their doorstep,” he says of gardening.

“I want to get people to stop thinking of gardening as a chore, like tidying their sock drawer, and think of it as a therapy, which it is.”

Alan is still as passionate about gardening as ever and builds it into most days.

“I write a lot so I tend to get up relatively early, 6.30am to 7am, and write until 1pm-2pm. Then to reward myself for working all that time I go out to the garden.

“At the moment I’m writing a book about my garden called My Secret Garden, which comes out in the autumn.

“I’ve got the layout of the garden sorted now so the structure is all there but borders are always there to be picked and unpicked. The garden is never finished – it’s a journey. Some bits may look great for a couple of years then start to go awry so it’s a constant period of adjustment. That’s the pleasure of it really.”

He adds that he is very pleased with his garden at the moment.

“If the garden doesn’t look good at this time of year it’s never going to look good,” he says.

“It looks lovely and I’ve got a wild flower meadow which I’ve just been walking in and it’s wonderful – perhaps even more beautiful than the garden.

“I don’t do it all myself, I have help,” he adds.

“As well as the four acres here I’ve got another 35 acres which we run as a kind of nature reserve. It’s part woodland, part meadow, with wildflowers of all kinds.

“I can’t write and do all my other work and look after all that on my own.”

Alan also enjoys visiting public gardens in the area.

“I love (National Trust Property) Hinton Ampner and the twin herbaceous borders of Bramdean House, Victoria Wakefield’s garden. I do like a traditional English garden. As well as good lines and focal points, I always like billowing generosity of planting.”

Alan’s enthusiasm for gardening is infectious and through his books, public talks and television shows, especially Gardeners’ World and Ground Force, he has helped get more and more people out, hoeing out their weeds and pruning their roses, or going for full-on makeovers.

And the green-fingered audiences weren’t limited to the UK.

“I have no desire to be big over the pond,” he says of his career.

“But when we were filming Ground Force I did find people in New York would shout to me across the street because it was broadcast there, so my anonymity had gone. I have no desire to make it big in America at all. Big in Hampshire is big enough!”