There’s a misconception abroad that the only way to get more wildlife into your garden is to rewild. What saddens me more than anything else is that a well cultivated, well tended, well grown garden is getting disparaged – which is a nonsense. It was seeded as a wildflower meadow with a seed mix that’s good for chalk downlands, which we’re on,” says Titchmarsh. 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.

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

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. 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. 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. 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. 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.

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. 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. 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.

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

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. 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. The Gardener’s Almanac is a beautiful giftbook, and a treasury of wisdom and inspiration through the year, with illustrations by Alan Titchmarsh himself. 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.It [rewilding] has caught on in a way which I feel a bit sad about, if people aren’t being realistic.