Alan Titchmarsh has encouraged gardeners to cultivate one particular plant in their outdoor spaces, calling the well-loved perennial a dependable summer performer that will 'flower its socks off right the way through the summer'. The television gardener championed Verbena bonariensis while showing how to transform a basic patio into what he termed an inviting outdoor room brimming with colour, scent and wildlife-attracting plants.
'It's so easy for a patio to become a forgotten space. A few tired old pots, a bench, maybe a table,' he told his Gardening with Alan Titchmarsh YouTube channel. 'I'm going to show you how to turn that small space into a really useful outdoor room.'
Utilising raised wheeled planters finished in a warm clay tone, Alan began crafting what he described as 'floral and foliage walls' surrounding a dining space.
'I want height. I want to create sort of floral and foliage walls, something which gives you a kind of stained glass window effect that you can look through and still see a bit of structure,' he explained.
The gardening specialist incorporated evergreen plants including Ilex crenata and pittosporum to ensure year-round appeal, while summer blooms were introduced to deliver colour throughout the warmer months.
Among his key suggestions were foxgloves, which he noted are perfect for establishing a natural screen while maintaining visibility. 'Foxgloves are really useful plants in either sun or dappled shade, and here they're making this sort of semi-permeable wall that we'll be able to look through,' he said.
Yet when it came to selecting tall flowering plants, Alan advised gardeners to avoid certain well-loved classics. 'You can use lots of tall plants in situations like this. I wouldn't choose delphiniums or lupins because they're fairly short-lived in terms of their flower and also pretty brittle in the wind.'
Instead, he highlighted Verbena bonariensis as a superior choice, owing to its lengthy blooming season and its appeal to pollinators. 'Another plant to use is Verbena bonariensis – the thin wiry one with little pom-poms of purple flowers on the top that butterflies and bees love. They will flower their socks off right the way through the summer.'
With its tall, slender stems, the plant is especially well-suited to smaller gardens, delivering impressive height without overwhelming or cluttering the space.
Alan was equally enthusiastic about lavender, declaring it an ideal choice for sun-drenched patios and raised containers. 'Lavender is perfect for this situation because it loves full sun. It adores sharp drainage,' he said. 'And when you brush past it and come for your morning coffee, afternoon tea, or whatever, ah, you get that glorious fragrance rising to your nostrils.'
Having combined the blooms with structural plants, the presenter declared that the previously neglected patio had been utterly transformed. 'So now we have an outdoor room where it was just a piece of rather inconsequential paving that you walked across,' he said.
Visibly delighted with the outcome, Alan added: 'I'm really rather chuffed with that. Everybody will want to come and sit here and enjoy it. And if this is all the garden you've got, you've extended the house outdoors and made another room.'
