I have noticed that I am increasingly referred to in newspapers, online and, for all I know, in conversation, as a ‘horticulturist’. This grates. Not so much because it is wrong – I will come to that in a moment – but because I absolutely do not think of myself as anything but a gardener.
It is a word that I had not come across until five years ago when I was filming gardens in America. We were about to interview a brilliant