WHAT I'VE LEARNED FROM TV

0 Comments | Sunday Herald, The, May 25, 2008 | by BETH PEARSON

OH, Alan. Get up from that sofa and grab me with your soily hands. Push me against a securely-fixed trellis. Kiss me with the sureness of a petite border spade. Crumple that chunky pinstripe suit jacket and lose the striped red tie - it's a stripe too far, you preppy horticultural teddy bear, you.

Well, I tried - and not for the fi rst time. Watching the annual Chelsea Garden Show coverage (BBC Two, various days and times) is a good opportunity to try to fancy Mr Titchmarsh. He is on telly for several nights in a row in dapper clothing, wearing the best job the BBC make-up department can do.

He's doing seamless links, handling difficult questions about the judging in a diplomatic way, and sitting next to Joe Swift, who appears a boisterous 14-year-old by comparison.

Titchmarsh is, in short, a man in control - so why am I kneeling six inches from the television screen and frowning? Well, it looks to me as if either he has shaved his chops at an angle to create a cheekslimming effect or he's got a lot of blusher on. He's no Monty Don (I say this on behalf of my mother; I prefer Dan Pearson, except that there's always the risk he could be a distant relation).

But if I can't learn to love the man, can I at least educate myself in gardening trends? Oh, if I must.

Watching Chelsea is like reading Vogue: it's nice to know what the cutting edge is doing, but it doesn't necessarily inspire any desire to wear harem pants (or the garden equivalent). So I have a ready-made fi lter for certain garden fashions: generally most hard landscaping, most water features, any highmaintenance tropical planting, most contemporary statues and sculptures, and anything with too many straight lines.

In short, I'm a bit of a traditionalist when it comes to landscaping, but not when it comes to planting.

Here, then, are the trends that made it through the filter.

First, Tom Stuart-Smith's "wiggly" garden. Beds with wonky edges and cartoon-like cloud-pruned hornbeams provide the curves above and below, while fairly monochrome planting (ie all green with occasional white flowers) provides the restraint.

Lovely, though, predictably, I don't like the oblong zinc tubs of water.

Second, "green walls". These are terribly fashionable. Growing plants on a vertical bed is counter-intuitive, which is part of the fun, but it can also look great - particularly the knobbly, vibrant green mossy walls of The Green Door garden.

Third, fluid planting is still popular. Cleve West has done a naturalistic planting of salvias, poppies and alliums, which, frankly, looks like my front garden is supposed to in a few weeks' time. Please let it look like that.

Lastly, Diarmid Gavin is still making gardens that look like they've been sponsored by the Early Learning Centre. And the new strawberry variety to order is Chelsea Pensioner. No wrinkles, but it does enjoy a daily lapsang souchong.