A leading timber company have answered an appeal from gardening guru Alan Titchmarsh to help transform the garden of a couple of Chester Good Samaritans for his new TV series.
Love Your Home and Garden is a follow-up to Britain’s most popular gardening programme, Love Your Garden, and its first episode aired this month with Alan joined by a new team for a green-fingered makeover with a difference.
Helping out for episode three in the new series, to be broadcast on Wednesday, September 13, are Ruthin-based Clifford Jones Timber who have again answered Alan’s appeal for help.
They have supplied wooden sleepers for the garden of Chester couple Richard and Ann Price who were nominated for some gardening help by The Samaritans, the charity Richard has volunteered for over 40 years.
Richard Jones, Chairman of Clifford Jones Timber, said: “When Britain’s best-loved gardener asks you for help you can’t say no so we were delighted to answer the call again.
“We provided them with a load of railway sleepers for Richard and Ann’s garden and Alan and his team have done a wonderful job of transforming the garden and we will be watching when the programme is on at eight ‘o’clock that evening.”
Claire Jutla, of production company Spungold TV who make the Love Your Garden series, said: “We had worked with Clifford Jones Timber before after finding them on an online search and once again they came up trumps and were very helpful and easy to deal with.”
Last year Clifford Jones Timber provided a lorry load of the company’s treated and durable 2.4-metre sleepers and 90 pine logs as Alan and his team of horticultural hotshots created an amazing new garden for a 90-year-old ex-Land Army girl.
For the new programmes, which follows on from the latest Love Your Garden series, Alan had recognised that for many people, a stand-alone garden is not enough and for the first time he and his expert team have set out to create brand new indoor spaces to complement their amazing gardens.
Top architects, builders and gardeners have turned run-of-the-mill homes into jaw-dropping places to live, where the theme of the outdoors is brought right through to the inside, connecting the spaces seamlessly together.
That’s what they have done for Richard and Ann who have devoted their lives to helping others. Richard has been a Samaritan volunteer for over 40 years, Ann trains guide dogs for the blind and together they have fostered nearly twenty children.
Claire added: “Their home and garden have taken a back seat. Instead of a relaxing sanctuary at the end of a tiring day, the ground floor resembles a corridor of rooms with no connection to the garden.
“In addition, Alan believed the garden to be one of the ugliest he has ever seen. A giant patio dominated the space, having been built to accommodate the puppies Ann trains.”
In the programme Alan and his team get to work on the outdoor space while Alan enlists the help of award-winning project designer James Stroud to get cracking with the interior.
James specialises in designing interiors that work in harmony with the garden and his first move is to demolish the existing conservatory and utility room, to completely reconfigure the ground floor and create a calming open plan space in neutral colours.
Meanwhile Katie Rushworth creates a country garden of wild flowers and a new vegetable garden and play area for Ann and Richard’s beloved granddaughter Jessica to enjoy.
Richard Jones added: “Although we’re best known as Britain’s biggest manufacturer of fence posts we have plenty more strings to our bow and we produce and sell a range of timber that’s ideal for garden landscaping.
“That’s what Alan Titchmarsh wanted to transform the garden in Upton, in Chester, and we had just what he needed for the makeover he was planning.”
“We always try to be versatile and think of new products and we’re very proud of the fact that everything that comes in through our gates is used.
“Our garden range is part of that diverse approach and while the four million fence posts we produce every year are the bread and butter of what we do they are not the only product we make.
“We also produce gates, laminated timber for the construction and outdoor play industries and dried logs, all made from timber from forests all over the UK.”
The company, founded in 1948 by Richard’s grandfather and carried on by his father, Alan, employs over 80 people at their Ruthin headquarters and at a second site at Gretna in Scotland where they employ a further ten staff.
They send their fence posts as far afield as the Falkland Islands while other clients for their timber products have included Center Parcs, a luxury treehouse builder, award-winning vineyards and a deck-chair company.
The new series of Love Your Home and Garden, Britain’s most watched gardening programme, began on ITV on Wednesday, August 30, and the third and final hour-long episode of the series features the Chester garden.
Love Your Home and Garden, Episode 3, ITV, Wednesday, September 13, 8pm.
For more on Clifford Jones Timber go to www.cjtimber.com
