Alan Titchmarsh said he sobbed as he said goodbye to the garden he had tended for 23 years, calling time on a place he had shaped bit by bit with his wife Alison. At 76, he said the upkeep was becoming too much and that the move comes before circumstances force the decision.
Holybourne and £3.95 million
In September, he and Alison put their home in Holybourne, near Alton, Hants, on the market for £3.95 million. The couple bought the Grade-II listed Georgian manor in 2002, and the property dates back to 1690.
That long run explains why this is more than a house move. Titchmarsh wrote in July's Gardener's World magazine that he had designed the garden bit by bit, with a formal area close to the house and a woollier area in the outer reaches. A rill, a meadow, a copse and a wildlife pond were added over the years, turning the plot into a private project that grew alongside family life.
July and full of tears
He said the garden had seen his children grow up and echoed to the sounds of grandchildren, and he wrote that his eyes were full of tears. He also said, “Parting is such sweet sorrow,” and added, “I would be a heartless soul if I did not feel that leaving the old place was a wrench - the garden more than the house, though our home was as pretty as a picture: Georgian and looking like a dolls' house from the front - almost as if you could open it on its hinges and peer inside.”
The age issue is the part that makes the move harder to dismiss as simple downsizing. He said, “I think of myself as 40-something,” but also wrote, “While I might be hale and hearty at the moment, I cannot count on such good fortune indefinitely.” That is the practical calculation here: keep going while the work is still manageable, rather than let the garden become an obligation that controls the household.
Alison and the new plot
He and Alison have found a new modern property set in one and a half acres, and he said, “But I will recover. The new garden will become my sanctuary.” For readers following the move, the real story is the handover from a quarter-century of personal design to a smaller, later-life reset that he is choosing on his own terms rather than waiting to be pushed into it.
