David Dodd of The Outdoor Room is bowing out of a third series of ITV’s Love Your Garden presented by Alan Titchmarch.
Love Your Garden follows Titchmarsh and co-presenters carrying out garden transformations for deserving people. It launched in June 2011 with a respectable 3.6million people watching the first episode.
The Outdoor Room, based in Billingshurst, West Sussex, was responsible for designing and building a total of fourteen gardens for the last two series.
“I’ve said for years that TV still doesn’t seem to get gardening and it’s certainly been out of love with it for a long time” said managing director David Dodd, who worked on every episode of Love Your Garden from start to finish including surveying, designing and constructing each garden.
“Most gardening programmes still oversimplify the process of designing and building a fantastic garden. How can something that takes weeks, months or even years, become condensed into a half hour or hour long entertainment show? Good quality garden design and build quite rightly comes at a cost and TV seems to avoid this subject” added David.
However David Dodd has nothing but compliments when it comes to working with Alan Titchmarsh:
“Alan was terrific to work with. He really grafts, even when he’s not on camera. He is a proper gardener, and is prepared to listen to other people’s ideas. At the end of every build, just before the ‘reveal’ we would walk around the garden together and he would check I was happy with everything. Alan was also brilliant with my younger staff, giving tips and advice on horticulture. I still think he is a great ambassador for the industry.”
Having won two more BALI (British Association of Landscape Industries) awards this year, The Outdoor Room was approached to build six gardens at the RHS Chelsea Flower next year. They have agreed to do three.
“This is much more along the lines of the sort of quality work we like to produce, so turning ITV down has been quite an easy decision” said David.
“We’ve really enjoyed doing two series of Love Your Garden and it’s been great fun working with Alan, Frances and Katie. I wish whoever takes over from us the very best of luck.”
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