The Gardener's Almanac: A Treasury of Wisdom and Inspiration through the Year

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It’s a case of balance – there’s room for both – but rewilding is not the answer to making our country a green and pleasant land. What I can see is a lot of cola cans, which people have thrown over the wall, and dog mess bags because they thought it was just waste ground’. That little bit of total wilderness in front of your house in the suburbs will not be better for insects. The Gardener’s Almanac is a beautiful giftbook, and a treasury of wisdom and inspiration through the year, with illustrations by Alan Titchmarsh himself.

The Gardener’s Almanac pre-order prize draw | Hachette UK The Gardener’s Almanac pre-order prize draw | Hachette UK

Here is seasonal advice on what to grow and sow, projects to engage in, as well as wildlife to spot, gorgeous gardens to visit, birds and flowers to celebrate, weather notes, and nature to reflect on in poems, music, and books. The books featured on this site are aimed primarily at readers aged 13 or above and therefore you must be 13 years or over to sign up to our newsletter. Gardening legend Alan Titchmarsh has warned that the trend towards rewilding – letting nature take care of itself to encourage wildlife and biodiversity – should not displace traditional gardening. There’s a misconception abroad that the only way to get more wildlife into your garden is to rewild.One friend who has done a survey of his wildflower meadow and of his garden found more wildlife in the garden than in the wildflower meadow. One cannot go on, on one hand saying how important gardens are for mental wellbeing, and then knocking somebody for having stripes on their lawn, because it makes them feel good to have stripes on their lawn. Yes – we need to look ahead and leave it in better state for our children than it is when we inherit it, but don’t imagine that you have no right to be here.

Alan Titchmarsh: ‘Rewilding is not the answer to making our Alan Titchmarsh: ‘Rewilding is not the answer to making our

We have cowslips in March and it goes through to moon daisies in April and May, and then scabious and knapweed and one or two orchids coming through. To learn your craft as a good grower of plants, to produce plants which look beautiful and are good for wildlife, is key for me. It [rewilding] has caught on in a way which I feel a bit sad about, if people aren’t being realistic. National treasure and presenter of ITV's hugely popular Love Your Garden, Alan Titchmarsh brings us his month by month almanac of garden knowledge, facts, advice and inspiration. But what saddens me more than anything else is that a well cultivated, well tended, well grown garden is getting disparaged – which is a nonsense.Therefore it’s doing them good, and it’s also doing the blackbirds, the thrushes, the starlings good, who can get worms out of lawns but can’t get them out of long grass, and solitary bees, who can burrow into lawns. A well grown garden with a diversity of plant material with greater biodiversity in it will be much more sustainable for wildlife.

This 7 garden tools gardening tool kit comes with everything you need to take care of your garden including a spacious canvas tote bags and stainless steel tools : hand trowel, hand transplanter, hand cultivator, 5-tine hand rake, root weeder, and bypass pruner. You can rewild your garden for a couple of years if you want, then you keep looking at it and think, ‘It’s really boring. It should not and does not need to replace a well cultivated garden which has a wide range of species in it, which is equally as good and in many cases better for wildlife – and it’s beautiful too. There are plenty of places where it is important – headlands and farms, the countryside in general, woodland and riverbanks, roadside verges.I have a wildflower meadow, which we cut in early September when the seeds have fallen, and taken all the hay and clods of grass off – you have to or it kills what’s underneath – and it won’t get cut again ’til next year.

It was seeded as a wildflower meadow with a seed mix that’s good for chalk downlands, which we’re on,” says Titchmarsh. What saddens me more than anything else is that a well cultivated, well tended, well grown garden is getting disparaged – which is a nonsense. Titchmarsh, whose Hampshire garden incorporates a two-acre wildflower meadow filled with native species, adds: “I’ve been organic for 40 years, there are no sprays, I grow plants that are well suited to my soil, two enormous compost heaps that I pile back into the ground. Alan Titchmarsh: ‘Rewilding is not the answer to making our country a green and pleasant land’ The gardening guru and broadcaster has mixed views about the rewilding trend, he tells Hannah Stephenson.