Modern man has a very abstract idea of what a wood is. I guess that if you stopped anyone on the street and asked them what a wood actually was, they would see it as a place where big trees grow.

The truth is that wreaths have never really been part of my creative life. I like them and want them and know how to do them.

Tony Blair is a dreadful man; really truly dreadful.

We know that gardening is good for you. It is fantastic, all-round exercise. That is easy to see and evaluate. It inculcates high levels of well-being. That is undeniable and needs little measurement.

You get older, you slow down. Failure feels like less of a humiliation and more of a balanced return.

The thing I like to stress about TV is that it's a team exercise. You really can't have too much of an ego.

Gardening is inevitably a process of constant, remorseless change. It is the constancy of that process that is so comforting, not any fixed moment.

By having a direct stake and involvement with the process of plants growing, of having your hands in the soil and tending it carefully and with love, your world and everyone's else's world too, becomes a better place.

There is a British assumption that you mustn't speak evil of anyone's garden because it is rude - it is like criticising their home, their children or their pets.

Coppice management depends upon the chosen tree being cut when the shoots are straight, vigorous and, critically, not shading out new growth.

What I love about French gardens is the combination of formal elegance and intellectual questioning.

Intellectually the French are wonderfully open, in a way the British just don't begin to be. You can question ideas in France, endlessly. In Britain, two things happen when you do that. Either you're branded an intellectual, which is fundamentally mistrusted, or you're branded a phony and pretentious, which people despise.

The thing the British hate more than anything else is people who are getting above themselves. There are a hundred different expressions for it all around the country, but it comes down to the same thing: this inherent mistrust of authority, and trying to topple people off a pedestal.

In my teens I wanted to be a rock star, I really did. At that time there was nothing I wanted more.

I just think that gardening is about the future, a slow thing, that is deep and spiritual as well as spiritually rewarding.

I had a difficult relationship with my parents, who died young, but they instilled self-discipline and a sense of honour and loyalty and accountability. I'm grateful for that.

I think that's my strength, that I am an amateur gardener who loves gardening. I've read about it, I've written about it, I've done it all my life but at heart, I'm just a passionate amateur gardener.

Blackthorn has wicked spikes that are highly brittle and tend to snap off under the skin and then fester horribly. This means that they can only really be part of a hedge that you do not want to get too close to.

I was brought up a strict Christian. My father was a lay preacher, my mother a church warden. The rhythm and ritual of the Anglican Church was part of our lives.

We don't value food in Britain, so therefore the cheaper it is the better it is. We all eat far too much, we all pay far too little for our food. We have environmental problems, we have health problems, we have food transport problems.

I live in the middle of country so I walk a lot.

My basic philosophy is never do anything with the word 'celebrity' attached to it. Without being overly pompous, if you have worked hard to have an audience trust you a bit, why blow it? That is my currency.

I don't think about being the Colin Firth of the gardening world. I live a very insular world based around my family and my home, and to them I'm not the Colin Firth of anything.

My favourite thorn belongs to the rose with a name like a mouthful of broken teeth, Rosa sericea pteracantha. It is grown almost entirely for its astonishing ruby-red shark's fin thorns that are at their lapidary best in early summer, especially when backlit by a low setting sun.

Bamboos can go from shining health to shabbiness in weeks. The problem is too much wind, too little water and tired compost.

Some plants become weeds simply by virtue of their success rather than any other factor. You merely want less of them.

I do wear gloves for things that sting a lot or prick a lot. But I just like to feel with my hands. I find gloves cumbersome and uncomfortable and I've got tough old hands so the old cut doesn't matter.

My gardening apprenticeship was similar to the way a chimney sweep is pushed up a chimney. It was enforced by my parents, non-negotiable - it would be weeding the strawberries, mowing the grass.

The key to our oldest woodland is that it has been cut down and regrown, in some cases as often as 50 or 60 times. It is one of the most perfectly sustainable resources and ecosystems known to man.

I like dogs because they are not humans.

The farm uses up a lot of my creative urges. It's a sort of rough and ready space, I don't film there.

I see myself as a writer who happens to garden.

I loathe nowheres - airports and bland hotels. I would rather be in an unpleasant, uncomfortable place rather than one just adrift, floating around.

From the ages of 18 to 50 I ran, rowed and lifted weights at my home gym.

It does seem to me that the British in particular, British horticultural literature and television programmes, focus a huge amount on how we garden and hardly at all on why we garden.

I feel ashamed if my hands are too clean and untouched. It's a measure of how much time I've spent travelling and poncing around.

The biggest obstacle to good gardening is the desire to know the answers and not the questions.

I often eat cakes while my fingers are caked in soil.

When our jewellery business went into receivership we avoided bankruptcy by selling our houses and possessions.

Visiting gardens is bad for you. Not only does it encourage too much eating of cake but sets up all kinds of false notions that are ruinous to your garden back home.

We know that gardening is good for you. It is fantastic, all-round exercise.

Earth heals me better than any medicine.

I love high summer as well, but nothing beats a perfect May morning.

I think we put far too much interest in trying to get ten to 20 year olds interested in gardening. I think you should do everything you can to try and get them interested up to the age of 10.

When you're 15 whatever your parents tell you you should do, you're not going to do it.

A column is a curiously intimate affair. For a start, you know by default that you will have regular readers, so it gives the writer the privilege of continuing a running conversation with them.

A weekly column is not always a treat. It can be a tyranny. There are times when I have very little to say. There are times, every year, when I am weighed down with depression. At these times it takes days of slog to force the words on to the page.

I myself did not officially become organic until 1997, although I was always hopeless at using chemicals.

The horticultural industry is unimaginative and dominated by vast, supermarket-like outlets. But the small nurseries and growers remain - praise them with your wallets, not your memories.

You don't criticize or critique your teammates if they're having a hard time. You try to encourage them just like you hope that they'll encourage you.