A famous gardener and a now-exotic London outing make this birthday/anniversary special

My husband is not typically a creative gift giver. Like many men, he likes the safety of working off a list provided by the recipient, and loved the efficiency of having something delivered direct from Amazon ... not minding if it’s sans card or gift wrapping. Thus it was quite a shock this year when, for my birthday and our anniversary ... which happen on the same day ... he came through with a customised surprise to make the most romantic gesture seem trivial: a 45-minute private garden consultation by Zoom with Alan Titchmarsh.

American readers may need some context here. Imagine hanging out with Martha Stewart to get home style tips, receiving batting coaching from Albert Pujols, or rap instruction from Lin Manuel-Miranda. Titchmarsh is the UK's favourite gardener, a humble, working-class lad from Yorkshire who went from flower beds to horticultural journalist to TV star. When I moved to the UK in the late '90s he was omnipresent, hosting the annual Chelsea Flower Show coverage, running a wildly-popular garden makeover show called Ground Force and hosting the weekly broadcast (and national institution) of Gardeners' World. Now 71, Titchmarsh has moved solidly into national treasure territory, and is in theory semi-retired though he still hosts a radio show on ClassicFM, writes garden columns, produces the occasional novel, pops up on TV and promotes charitable causes.

It's the combination of charity and ClassicFM that provided the opportunity for my birthday present. He'd donated the consultation to the station's charity auction and my husband spotted his opportunity to procure a gift to make his wife swoon.

My call was far more than just a brush with fame. Titchmarsh's experience is abundant and he delivers it with the skills of a master consultant. He manages to tell you what's wrong without implying an ounce of criticism to your gardening skills. In fact, his praise of my efforts thus far made me bloom with pride at the same time he was able to tell me exactly what I'd done wrong and how to fix it. It was all terribly appropriate, since much of the knowledge I used to design and take care of my garden has come from his broadcasts and columns over the years. He also radiates a genial kindness that marks him out as one of the true good guys in this world, a hunch confirmed by a friend who used to work with him at the BBC.

So what's wrong with my garden? The same thing I've been hired to fix at work. Too many things competing for attention. I need to do more with less. It's ironic that I can see and attack the problem so clearly in my professional life, but didn't spot it in my own herbaceous borders. But, as my new best friend and horticultural coach consoled me, when you truly love plants and don't have a lot of room, you try to pack in everything possible. 

This autumn will see me stripping out about a third of my plants and making a few tweaks to create bigger blocks of colour. The same applies to my pond, which already looks better after sending armloads of reeds, water lilies and oxygenating plants to the compost heap. My least successful bed (pictured below) lacks a strong focal point; I'll be digging the whole thing out, investing in the recommended Japanese maple and planting around it. And while there's no rescuing my espaliered apple tree (planted in too shady a spot and now too established to move), the west-facing wall I've ignored until now could support three carefully-chosen fruit trees.

My date with Alan Titchmarsh took place several weeks before my birthday, leaving the day itself for other treats. I went up to London for the first time since the world shut down in March to meet a friend for lunch (in a nice parallel, the same one who used to work with him at the BBC). The experience was a bit surreal, at once both familiar and alien. I long ago lost count of the number of times I’ve gone from Basingstoke to Green Park station, and the Wolseley is one of London’s most comforting, long-running, establishment venues for a business lunch. And yet the trains running 1/3 full, the empty, echoing corridors of Underground stations, the blank advertising spaces and the closed up shops felt like I was walking through the zombie apocalypse. London without foreign tourists is an oddly alien place and, frankly, glorious. But not economically sustainable; at least not as it was at the year’s opening.

The Wolseley, always a favourite with a traditional English crowd, was having no issues. Every table was packed, with a time limit to prepare for the flip to afternoon tea. They might have moved the tables a bit further apart, but one of the advantages of the Wolseley for business meetings has always been the generous space between tables so it was hard to tell. The most obvious signs of these plague times were an airport-security style contraption you had to face off to have your temperature taken before preceding to your table, and the individual portion of hand sanitiser waiting atop the crisp linen napkin. 

This is one of the grandest dining rooms in London. A glorious testimony to the madness of boom and bust cycles in the 1920s, it was originally built as a car showroom. The opulent Venetian/Florentine palazzo inspiration is a reminder that motor cars were originally the preserve of the super-rich. The black-and-white marble floors, black marble columns, white vaulted ceilings, shining brass railings and grand chandeliers are properly palatial. Wolseley Motors went bankrupt in five years, however, so Barclays took the building on as its Mayfair branch. The original architect returned to update the decor with Japanese lacquer and other Oriental gewgaws that were high fashion by the late ‘20s. It’s a bizarre but merry combination that works particularly well in the afternoon when the place is functioning as a high class tea room. 

Food here is inspired by the grand cafes of Europe, with a menu very similar to that of sister restaurant The Delauney. They’re particularly known for their oyster and shellfish bar and for having breakfast favourites like eggs benedict and kedgeree on the menu 24/7. My friend swears by their chopped salads (hers did look tempting), while I opted for a classic steak tartare. Schnitzel is always on the menu as is a proper baked cheesecake. 

One of the reasons the Wolseley has remained so popular with punters since it opened in 2003 is its pricing. The prix-fixe menu is only £19.95 for two courses and £24 for three, and main courses tend to be in the mid £20s. Sure, you can have a blow out with lobster, chateaubriand and champagne, but you can also enjoy grand elegance and feel like you’ve had proper value for your money with most choices. Which is actually far truer to the English establishment who once dominated Mayfair than the Ritz across the street, which has pumped up the gold gilt, escalated prices to the stratosphere and targets cash-splashing conspicuous consumers. Who are rarely English, and seldom old establishment.

Back home, my husband celebrated our anniversary by cooking dinner ... the next night. The breakfast bar in the kitchen where we normally eat might fall short of the Wolseley’s decor and our plating is too generous to be called fine dining, but I think our black and white granite counters are a bit grand and Mr. B’s salmon en croute with a lemon cream sauce wouldn’t be out of place in a grand European cafe. 

Yes, he’s a keeper. Even before the Titchmarsh consultation. Maybe I should take him to the Wolseley.

The show must go on ... and West Green makes it happen

England's legendary country house opera season is yet another victim of the COVID-19 crisis. From internationally-acclaimed productions at Glyndbourne and Longborough's renowned Wagner interpretations, to many small, humbler efforts, everyone got shut down this year. As prohibitions loosened some outdoor performances became possible, and while full operas couldn't be rehearsed and organised (or made to break even) in the circumstances, venues sprang into action to take advantage of any opportunity they could.

Our nearest, West Green House near Hartley Witney, Hampshire, managed to whip up a six-concert summer season in August and September, of which we took in the last: Mozart in Love.

It's hard to overstate just how glorious is was to hear live music again, surrounded by the soft murmur of an appreciative crowd. Even if that music was limited to one singer and a pianist, and the pre-booked attendees had been channeled into appropriately sized boxes chalked onto the lawns, socially distanced from their neighbours. 

Soloist Kirsty Hopkins (who also co-developed and directed the whole series) delivered an hour-long programme of 10 of Mozart's best soprano arias, from the heart-wrenchingly poignant Dove Sono I Bei Momenti to the enraged passion of Ah. Chi mi Dice Mai! Each came with anecdotes and back stories from Hopkins, adding context to the simple but powerful performance. She returned with an encore of the Alleluia from the Exsultate Jubilate, the music we used for the registry signing at our marriage. It always turns both our knees to jelly, but was particularly powerful in this rare event for 2020, just days before our anniversary, with the sun shining and swans gliding across the nearby lake.

With gates opening at 11am, music at noon and the ability to linger in the gardens until 4pm, the concert series allowed for one of the raisons d'etre of country house opera: elegant picnics. We were actually slumming it a bit, as many others had shown up with tables, cloths and full place settings, while we made due with plates on laps. But I'd wager our bbq chicken, arancini, barley salad and lime tarts were on par with anyone else's culinary efforts.

Of all the country house opera venues I've explored, West Green has the finest garden. (Yes, better even than Glyndbourne.) That's probably because opera here is a recent addition to venerable and well known horticultural efforts. At its heart is an enormous Victorian walled garden, with outlying paths, a lake, water features and follies. It's not a big place, but one where thoughtful design has given every section impact and clever vistas and borrowed landscape make it seem larger. Its most distinctive feature, however, is a light-hearted sense of humour.

Vegetables grow side-by-side with flowers. The palatial chicken coop has an Imperial Chinese theme, including willow-pattern water bowls.

A section of grassy mounds along a pathway looks like a recently-abandoned hobbit village. Classical portrait busts lurk at ground level amongst the greenery. 

Most amusingly, if you’re made aware of the joke or if your Latin is particularly good, there’s a column with a Latin inscription noting “this monument was built with a great deal of money which otherwise someday would have been given into the hands of the tax collector.”

The snarl against excessive inheritance tax came from former owner Alistair McAlpine, a Tory grandee in the 1980s responsible for the initial renovation of the garden. These days credit goes to Marylyn Abbott, an Australian immigrant who’s both a keen gardener and the former marketing manager of the Sydney Opera House. It’s she who started the opera tradition here. 

Both leased the house from the National Trust, which still owns the place and allows members into the gardens for free. (Others £9 and extra charges for events, of course.) It’s not the typical NT property, however. The lovely, Georgian brick house isn’t open to the public and is relatively modest in size, more like the places you see for sale in Country Life than the sprawling historic piles of the tourist trail. The Abbotts are regularly present for events and take a very personal hand in running the place. This also means there’s a more creative run of events than the usual NT property, with apple festivals, a car show, craft workshops and Christmas illuminations all on offer later this year. 

If COVID-19 allows, of course...

Fancy cocktails with the aristocracy? Keep an eye on the real Downton Abbey

Our recent holiday to Yorkshire and Northumberland glittered with visits to notable film sets. Much to our surprise, we continued the trend when we got home. 

Inspired by Harewood and Alnwick, we’d started streaming Downton Abbey ... filmed at both ... from our hotel room on holiday evenings. Highclere, “the real Downton Abbey”, is local to us. While familiarity certainly has not bred contempt, we haven’t given the place the hallowed ground status our American visitors accord it. For us, it’s most notable for its annual Battle Proms, sadly cancelled this year. (I’ve mentioned the event several times in this blog; here’s the best overview.) But with Downton and film set tourism on my brain, I thought I’d check out Highclere’s website to see what else we could appreciate at this local gem. 

Which is how we ended up quaffing cocktails with the earl and countess of Carnarvon on their lawns on Friday night. Compared to the thousands thronging the grounds for their Battle Proms, there were only about 20 of us at the event, and we’d swept up the drive to park immediately in front of the house rather than queuing to occupy the pastures. Yet another surprisingly delightful opportunity thrown up by the oddities of COVID-19.

Highclere Gin sparked this one. By now we’re all familiar with the sad stories of people who’ve launched products or businesses in the past year to have their whole plan ... and sometimes life savings ... endangered by the global pandemic. Here’s another. More than a year of development preceded last year’s Highclere Gin launch and 2020 should have been filled with marketing events; particularly in America and to its visiting citizens. The idea came from an American gin producer who the Carnarvons then worked in partnership with, and they’ve prioritised US distribution channels.

Not only are the Americans still obsessed with Downton Abbey but, as the earl pointed out on Friday, their gin market is far less saturated. A visit to our local (Basingstoke) Majestic validates his point, with three shelves of gins from Hampshire and Surrey on offer. It’s a tough market to attempt to penetrate with something new, especially when the pandemic eliminated the promotional possibility of live events, bars and restaurants.

The Carnarvons responded with Facebook live broadcasts on Friday nights during lockdown (photo above), inviting viewers into rooms so familiar from Downton to share virtual cocktails. Our event evolved social media into the real world, offering guests the chance to try the gin and chat with the earl and countess face to face. (With proper social distancing, of course.) 

The videos that inspired the parties ... especially the early ones ... are charmingly authentic. No slick marketing production, no obvious edits, just two very authentic people and the occasional dog talking about what they’re drinking and sharing cocktail-related stories. As a cocktail lover, I’m entertained by their videos and have found the recipes on their Facebook page a real treasure trove. As a marketer, I’m impressed and more than a bit amused that an earl and countess in a venerable stately home ... people you’d think would be the last to grasp the power of peer-to-peer marketing and social media .... are embracing it in a way that many corporate execs in cutting edge companies with abundant marketing resources at their command are not. Most business pundits agree that it’s the people who flexed their business models quickly and tried new things during the COVID-19 crisis who will come out ahead; the team at Highclere certainly deserves to. 

At £75 per ticket and a cash bar after the first drink this wasn’t a cheap night out. But I still haven’t normalised not needing to commute, so the £150 weekly “bonus” I’m getting from not paying Southwestern Railway logically transfers to treats like this. 

Entry included the first cocktail from a varied menu heavy on classics from the ‘20s and ‘30s, a light dinner and a copy of the countess’ At Home at Highclere book which is a combination of recipes, lavish photos and stories about the house. I was expecting perfunctory corporate event nibbles, so was particularly impressed by the food. Luscious, velvety onion and black truffle soup, cured salmon and one of the best scotch eggs I’ve tasted (avoiding the usual mistake of too much breading) made an excellent dinner. These were followed by a particularly elegant take on Eton mess and a chocolate pot with a butterscotch base and popping candy top that could trigger a diabetic coma, but might be worth the health crisis. As you might expect, the service was top notch and the team made you feel like a proper house party guest rather than a paying punter.

Of course, what you’re really buying at events like this is exclusive access. For frequent visitors to big events here, there’s a real high to parking in front and walking around to the private bit of the house. Though the skies were a bit gloomy, it wasn’t raining and it’s hard to beat quaffing cocktails on emerald green lawns below remarkable architecture. Having the family’s 1930s Rolls Royce parked on the lawns added to the atmosphere. I suspect the earl and countess had hoped for more than 20 guests, but the small numbers gave each guest plenty of quality time with them.

What’s the gin like? Created to reflect the estate, the most notable aromatics are lavender ... a staple at Highclere going back to the Middle Ages ... and citrus inspired by what’s grown in the Victorian orangery. There are also, uniquely, oats, reflecting the current earl’s work as a producer of precision-milled oats for racing thoroughbreds. I couldn’t pick it up on the nose or the tongue, but the idea of it being in there is great fun. 

At £37.50 it’s on the high end of the gin price range. Despite the Carnarvons excellent insight into the world of cocktails, it feels like a waste to hide such high-end stuff in the strong flavours of a negroni or an aviation. I’d stick to a simple martini or a gin and tonic, where you can better appreciate the balance of aromatics. I might pair it with a mild cured salmon on oat cakes to see if I can bring out those interesting grains.

And what’s it like to spend time with a real earl and countess? Not that much different than anyone else, to be honest, though I did feel my years of reading Country Life and listening to The Archers probably gave me a conversational advantage. Lord and Lady Carnarvon both have an easygoing charm, skill at talking to strangers and an ability to make people feel comfortable that they share with anyone who makes their living interacting with the general public. In fact, they reminded me much more of the rugby stars, ex-politicians and famous authors I’ve worked with putting on corporate events than any stereotype of staid, formal English aristocracy.

Personal exposure has only boosted my admiration for how the Carnarvons have parlayed their Downton Abbey association into a variety of business lines that will, hopefully, keep this historic estate thriving ... and employing locals ... for decades to come. I came away with new cocktail recipes and a characterful Christmas gift idea for friends, particularly Downton-crazed Americans. Not bad for a local Friday night out.