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As the nation’s favourite gardener, Alan Titchmarsh of course has plenty of sage advice to offer. And one of his most useful tips to fellow gardeners is to remember to enjoy the results of all your hard work: “Don’t journey out totally in work mode,” he says. “Take time to enjoy what you’ve achieved.”

Alan shares: “It’s nice to enjoy things as well and say, you know, that’s so much better than it was before. And that way, you stay positive.” However, Alan, who is getting to grips with his new garden after moving to Surrey with wife Alison, admits that, sometimes, reviewing the overall look of your outdoor space can bring some tough decisions to light: “In every garden,” he says, “there are occasionally big decisions to be made, and this is one of ours.”

Alan explains that a group of holly “lollipops” that help divide his garden are clashing with the holly hedge beneath them – leading to one stretch of hedge dying altogether: “The rest of it now sort of sits there, getting progressively worse.

“You get these ‘bite the bullet moments’ where you think, ‘we’ve got to do something about that’. We do have to do something about that,” Alan adds. “But I’m not quite sure what.”

It’s reassuring for amateur gardeners that even the great Alan Titchmarsh doesn’t know what to do sometimes. It has been a particularly tricky summer for British gardeners, Alan concedes: “Hot and sticky weather, water shortages, challenges everywhere.”

But the TV star is determined to remain positive, saying: “You’ve got to stop and smell the roses every now and again. They are amazing.”

When it comes to roses, in particular, Alan has some valuable tips on pruning: “Not all roses stay looking beautiful. They start to go over and that’s when you feel you need to do something about them.”

He recommends cutting back at the thicker parts of a rose stem: “Cut back to one that’s about pencil thickness, always just above a leaf, and that will send up a shoot which is more vigorous and capable of producing more bigger flowers.”

While blooms will take a little longer to come through from those thicker stems, they will be more plentiful when they do emerge, Alan says.

He adds that with roses, and with most other flowering plants, you should never overlook the leaves: “I want to leave as much foliage as possible,” he says. “If you snip them off with the shears, leaving the foliage, that can then photosynthesise and feed the rootstock below.”