Alan Titchmarsh sobs with grief at heartbreaking farewell

Much-loved TV star Alan Titchmarsh has explained why he is leaving behind a garden he spent decades creating

Alan Titchmarsh has admitted he sobbed when he had to say goodbye to his beloved garden after 23 years of looking after it.

The much loved TV gardener76, said his eyes were “full of tears” as he said goodbye to the grounds he has nurtured and cultivated for a quarter of a century when he moved out of his new house.

Titchmarsh said that he would never love a garden as much as the beautiful country grounds, but that the ‘weighty’ responsibility of its maintenance became too much as he grew older. Speaking for the last time at his Georgian home, just before he moved, Titchmarsh said that although he feels “forty-and-forty”, it is time to go before he is forced out by circumstances beyond my control.

He admitted he had cried over the loss of the picturesque garden where his two daughters had grown up and where he had loved spending time with his grandchildren. Titchmarsh has previously said that he and his wife Alison have found a new modern property, set on an acre and a half, much smaller than his current home.

Titchmarsh and his wife put their home in Holybourne, near Alton, Hants, on the market in September for £3.95 million. The couple bought the Grade-II listed Georgian manor house in 2002. The stunning property dates back to 1690 and Titchmarsh has carried out significant renovations.

“To part is such a sweet sorrow,” wrote William Shakespeare. He’s right, especially when the parting involves a garden you’ve created over nearly a quarter of a century,” Titchmarsh wrote in July. BBC Gardener’s World magazine.

“I would be a heartless soul if I did not feel that it was a wrench to leave the old place—the garden more than the house, though our home was as beautiful as a picture: Georgian and looking like a doll’s house from the front—almost as if you could open it on its hinges and look inside.

“I designed (the garden) little by little – formal close to the house and more woolly in the outer rows. A groove, a meadow, a thicket, a wildlife pond – all were created over the years and they all delighted us season after season.

“And now I say goodbye as the sun beams down on the clouds from the white-blossomed cherry trees and glints on the ripples created by the fish that came unbidden to the pond.

“It was Her Late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II who reminded us that grief is the price we pay for love. I cannot imagine loving a garden as much as the one I am leaving, which has seen my children grow up and echoes to the sound of grandchildren.

“And now, as I come to write these words, I freely confess my eyes are full of tears. But I will recover. The new garden will be my refuge. But oh, I will miss my garden on the Downs, and the cow and the cherry blossom and the rill and the old-fashioned roses.

“Farewell, my dear old garden. Here’s to your bright and glorious future.”

He said that while he has had help maintaining his former garden, managing a workforce “however small and reliable” is difficult.

Speaking about why he had to move, Titchmarsh said: “Then there’s the ‘age thing’. There’s no doubt I’m in denial.

“I think of myself as a 40-year-old. While I may be fit and healthy at the moment, I can’t count on that kind of luck indefinitely. It’s time to leave while I have the choice, instead of being forced out by circumstances beyond my control.

“Right now I have the energy and enthusiasm to start another garden: smaller, about one and a half hectares.

“I need help to get started – dig new beds, build a greenhouse and the like, but if there is a push later, I will be able to handle it myself.”

In January this year, Titchmarsh let the Gardeners World cameras into his garden, which he described at the time as “20 odd years in the making”.

In the video on YouTube he explained: “I said to my wife and daughters, okay, this is for us, I can do here exactly what I want to do, lay it out how I want to grow the plants that I want to grow for me, and that’s exactly what I’ve done, but gardens are for sharing, so it’s nice to share it with family and friends, and it’s nice today not to share it, the joy and passion with you, but the joy and passion. upliftment that plants and flowers can give us everyone.

“I don’t believe in inheritance gardeningexcept when you plant a tree, you hope it will be there long after you’re gone. But if by having a garden like this I can inspire my own family and my grandchildren with the love of the outdoors and the love of things that grow and the love of beauty, then this garden and me, I have done my part.

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