Alan Titchmarsh - How To Be A Gardener - Series 1 [VHS] [2002]

Titchmarsh's easy-yet-passionate manner is well known, and his calm enthusiasm is genuinely infectious, bringing the subject alive and making even the most black-fingered of people want to get outside. His trick is to keep the language and humorous tone as simple as possible. In fact, the only thing the show was criticised for was attempting to lure the youth market with trendy music (Moby!) and flashy direction. But if that encourages more generations of beautiful gardens, so what? Starting at absolute basics (what type of soil do you have?), this series is a veritable visual dictionary of gardening lore derived from a lifetime of practical experience. --Paul Tonks

I had no interest in gardening before. This has certainly changed. Depending on how it works out with my girlfriend, I'll either help her with designing her garden or buy a house with a garden of my own.

Perhaps I can become a professional gardener?


Back to basics with encouragement and inspiration   April 24, 2002
23 out of 24 found this review helpful

This is a down-to-earth yet uplifting series, both literally and figuratively. Alan Titchmarsh is like a Zen master, leading us on a vivid and visually appealing path to enlightenment.

How To Be A Gardener, the series, is thematically structured and each programme takes you loosely through a typical year, using time-lapse filming to give a real sense of how alive gardens really are. The virtue of this is that in a few seconds you can see, for example, how the (seemingly vicious) pruning of a rose in March leads to a beautiful display just a couple of months later. Equally, you can see what a few weeks without water does to a plant!

Alan (you see, the programme encourages first name terms) gently guides us to see that gardening doesn't have to be hard work, frightening, or difficult to understand. It is just encouraging the natural cycle of green things growing with sun, soil and water. The gentlest, most encouraging and inspirational of introductions - it made me overcome my fear of the green woody bits outside my back door! Can we have it on DVD please?


Green Light for Green Fingers   April 23, 2002
Paul Wilcox (pjw1607@aol.com) (Leeds, UK)
10 out of 10 found this review helpful

I bought this video for my mum's birthday and it's quite easy to tell that she is glad I did.

Every sunny weekend, she has spent the mornings watching the video and the afternoon implementing some of the ideas in our garden.

As a compilation of the television series, it is a vital reference for any hobbie gardener or even a gardener wannabe.

It's simple style coupled with the knowledge and general calm brought to the series by Alan Titchmarsh is a refreshing change from other do-it-in-a-day gardening shows and televsion programs.

Well worth a look if you (or your mother) is interested in improving the small terrace garden or the lawn of a stately home.