What gardening advice do you have for anyone trying to sell their home?
Gardens have become significantly more important to buyers and the right look can definitely add value to a home. Style and plants are very personal, but there are basic things you can get right. If you’re in an urban area then maybe a more formal, funky foliage will work. If you’re in a rural area then certainly you can take your cue from what’s around you, the borrowed landscape and the materials your house is made from. It’s great because there’s a huge focus in the last 10 years on wildlife, and protecting the wildlife corridors. People have become educated about how important plants are and their part to play in pollination. There’s been a huge turn around in horticulture in the last 20 years and it’s fantastic to see that.

What advice would you give first time gardeners?
Don’t let yourself become overwhelmed. Speaking from my own experience you think, ‘Oh I’ll never understand all this’. But adopt a “can do” approach; think about growing a few things to eat, I think that’s really inspiring, especially if you’ve got children. Even if it’s just sowing some year round lettuce, or corn salad, or rocket in a container for the summer, from little acorns mighty oaks grow. I would also certainly recommend taking a summer course at a good horticultural college. You can learn an enormous amount from that and of course there’s just fantastic amounts of information on the Internet. You also have to think about the soil conditions and where the sun rises and sets; the best thing about gardening is that you can never know everything.

You’ve written a book on gardening with children, do your family get involved?
Yes, it was all about them, inspiring them, making them somewhere that was fun for us all to play in. We grow vegetables together – the kids always sow pumpkins and sunflowers, and in the spring I always sow stuff into the raised beds, which we have in our garden. Being outside, has become part of everyone’s life now. Hal loves being out there with me, I always do the fine-tuning tasks and he has a relationship with all the electrical gadgets. I’ve never touched a strimmer in my life and I have no intention of ever doing so!

Do you have a favourite time of year in your garden?
I love it at the end of May when Wisteria comes out, that’s when you know summer’s really arrived. It used to be that my garden only ever sort of seemed to looked good at that time of the year. Then I created my late summer garden, which has got all perennials and ornamental grasses predominantly. Because our soil is clay and we live on a hill with a lot of wind they’re the two factors that have shaped the garden. There’s been a strong focus on shelter, and most of the success of the garden is because we’ve grown things in raised beds, so they haven’t had to struggle with the clay.

Spring is obviously an important time of year for gardeners, what would you say to our readers they should be focusing on? 
It depends what they’ve got, if they’ve got things like Herbaceous Perennials for instance, now is a good time to divide them. You can do that either with a sharp knife or a spade or you can tease them apart with some garden forks back to back and just pull them gently apart. The good thing about doing that to, for instance geraniums, or anything growing herbaceously is if you divide them you encourage them to grow.
They’ll mostly start waging war on slugs as well, of course good garden housekeeping is that you’re supposed to encourage wildlife, they’re supposed to do it all for you, but it’s a lie! Every spring I forget how much I hate those damn slugs, then they start eating my sunflower seedlings and I remember. I use everything from copper tape to branflakes to try and get rid of them, the little slugs go over them and then the bran starts to clog up their pores. Coffee grounds are supposed to give the little buggers a heart attack; I try a few different things.

What kind of advice would you give someone who wanted to create a vegetable patch or herb garden?
Keep it very small scale to start off; don’t jump in at the deep end. Think about what level of time commitment you can give and start things off in barrels or other types of containers. There are herbs that require full sun like rosemary, sage and then others that will take a little bit of shade like mint and parsley, so if you have a slightly shady area it doesn’t mean that you can’t grow things.

You’re entered in the Guinness Book of Records for moving and replanting the world’s largest tree, do you think trees are important stalwarts for a garden?
Absolutely. The great thing about trees is that they provide height, they can be ornamental, or they can provide screening. They can provide food and shelter for wildlife, they can absorb pollution, they give you oxygen, flowers, and they’re just fantastic things. Even if you have a small garden you can still choose a small Prunus or Sorbus, a really lovely ornamental tree to have in your garden that will provide spring flowers and berries in the autumn.

What do you have next in store for your gardening career?
At the moment I’m doing a few projects with my brother who has a landscape business and I’ve been doing plant consultation with him on a number of really fantastic projects. One recently involving a giant rockery which was created at the Thames sanctuary, where people just wanted to be surrounded by lovely scent and shelter. Most of the time my gardening is focused on my own garden, it’s about tidying it up, dividing the plants, cutting back the ornamental grasses, thinking about when I’m going to sow the raised beds. It’s about getting ready for the fantastic burst of growth once the clocks go forward.

It must be a wonderful feeling seeing people enjoying the garden you’ve cultivated?
It is, it’s a fantastically rewarding thing to do. I’m very fortunate that I haven’t had to make a full commitment to a garden design business, I’ve got involved in my brother’s so it doesn’t have to take up all my time. I’m still very aware that I have two children and I still have my music career. For me gardening is something that will be with me for the rest of my life, and I can only become more knowledgeable.