This is from Telegraph. Also on Twitter now.

1. Went to All-Party Gardening & Horticulture Group annual reception in Parliament last night.

Talked to Alan Titchmarsh. He told me: “I’m doing some gardening programmes for the BBC early next year that will be transmitted in a year’s time. But I’m not going to be doing Gardener’s World. There’s no truth in the rumours.” The BBC has delayed the announcement until the end of this week. Titch later embraced Tommy Walsh. A Groundforce reunion? Leads me to think where are they now-Tommy-Dansand promos and white van man insurance ads. Matt James-lecturer in Falmouth. Charlie Dimmock-Meridian TV slots, Portugese holiday home and retirement home promos. I could go on.

2. Titch’s two top gags, both introduced by “I was on my way to a literary festival in Yorkshire. [AT asking directions] Do you know Bradford turnoff? Local cloth cap: I should do, I married her.

In Huddersfield to a man in pub. Is Huddersfield twinned with anywhere? No, but I think it’s got a suicide pact with Ilkley. A version of the late comedian Linda Smith’s old gag on Erith and Dagenham.

 

3. Talking of BBC, backlash against Tree O’Clock. Beeb has spent £96,000 on whips for the world record planting attempt on 5 December promoted by Kate Humble on Autumnwatch. Anti-BBC papers such as Mail and Telegraph loved the tale. TaxPayers’ Alliance got angry about the waste of the cash, plus the £57,500 spent on Dig In seeds given out to TV watching gardeners this summer. But the comments on the web stories tended to say BBc money is better spent on trees than Jonathon Woss (yes Mail readers wrote Woss).

4. Back at Parliament, Royal National Rose Society says Butterfly World/Future Gardens nicked their carpark and wouldn’t give people directions to the RNRS garden, which attracted 8,500 visitors this year-they suggest that was more than FG.

5. No sign of under-fire MPs at APPHG such as regular attendees Andrew Dismore, who claimed a second home five miles from his constituency and Christopher Fraser, who is ‘stepping down’ at the next election. A Scottish hack rang me the other day to ask me what happened to former APGGH chair David Marshall. Marshall resigned as an MP and went to NZ after getting depression following exposure of employment of his family when an MP.

6. Quote of the week: “If gardening makes him so angry all the time, maybe he should get another hobby.” Who about whom?

7. Next best quote (how not to write from the Spectator): “The artful disposition of tulips in a garden is often problematic, anyway, since it can be difficult to make ramrod-straight flowering stems look at home in a lax setting, but it becomes downright impossible if the tulips that do survive to flower again are so random in their colours.”

8. Lia Leendertz upped her game last week on Guardian website possibly stung into action by criticism of the boring piece she wrote last week in Guardian mag. Former HW colleague Lia wrote about using human manure on the garden. What bodily emission or fluid next? Who will go there?

9. Talking to someone at APHG event about Countryfile. Apparently BBC is doing a  kids’ version. They suggested it could be called: a – Kidsfile. B. Childrenfile. C. Paedofile.

10. I’m starting an easy guide to journalism. I think there is a need. Part one-avoid cliché (see number six-ramrod straight is hackneyed and tiresome for readers). Part two: defamation-malicious and false statements. Often end up in court cases. Part three: Plagiarism: stealing stories. Part four: Copyright infringement. Using material without consent. More next time.

11. Talked to Nicholas Marshall of Wyevale at APHGG event for the first time in a while - building bridges (that’s my new thing since parents got flooded out in Cumbria). Marshall said Hilary Benn going on about tree cover in UK doubling since 1919 was not so good because most of the extra 5 per cent was conifer plantations. Not bad for carbon-bad for biodiversity though.

12. Spoke to GIMA’s Neil Gow at APHGG. He said I had it in for the garden centre industry. A brave lone voice. Incidentally, Gow says his Xmas tree prices are going down this year. Most are going up by £5 because of lack of imports cos of euro. It’s in the papers.

13. Also spoke to Myles Bremner of Garden Organic about redundancies at the charity. He said they were in the admin dept. Just in time for Xmas etc. Webbs garden centre has taken over the retail side. Admin is being outsourced. Bremner kept doing that irritating thing that they teach in media training – asking you what you think when you ask them a question.

14. Talked to landscaper Paul Cowell at APHG. Cowell was on TV last week telling viewers that rogue traders were rife in landscaping and needed to be dealt with. I wrote the story for HW. A comment on our website: “Here is the OFT link that covers this in a little more detail and brings in into prospective. http://www.oft.gov.uk/news/press/2009/134-09 Tarmacing and paving had \(954), nearly a third of the complaints. I do however have to question if these should all be labelled as landscapers?"

Most landscapers I speak to say they are doing more and more hard landscaping. Any views? Other than it’s not us. Or obfuscation.

15. Went to a book launch of  at Potterton Books in Sloane Square area last week. Met Rob Cassy, who is not just writing a novel, but a trilogy! Also went to Stewarts garden centre in Christchurch. Built bridges with Martin Stewart who was tending his own reindeer. And to New Forest Garden Plants in Hants. Alpine wars, the Jekka effect, the euro-it was all there.

16. I was going to run my popular garden awards this month but Martyn Cox has got in first. Thankfully I have won many nominations.

Here's the latest. Check out Telegraph Gardening for my latest. No frills this week.

1. Garden writers have had a slow week. In The Times, Stephen Anderton's piece on conifers comes two months after everyone else wrote theirs during National Conifer Week. And Alice Bowe continues her idiot's guide to gardening. In the Guardian, Lia Leendertz runs through some stuff to do in the garden if you have run out of ideas of stuff to do. How about stay in instead and write a garden page filler piece? This weekend I read a recommendation of the book New Trees by Grimshaw and Bayton, which Kew Publishing launched six months ago. Finally, Helen Yemm is headlined ‘my allotment mayhem.' Turns out it's on how she's cleaned her shed.

2. Went to Soil Association conference last week hoping to hear president Monty Don say something silly. The corduroyed one was disappointingly balanced but the view of Defra chief scientist Dr Bob Watson entertained. He ran through a load of graphs showing Doomsday scenarios worldwide because of global warming. Someone from the floor (not Alys Fowler who was with a doppelganger with a teacosy on her head) said Dr Bob was doing a Dr Nutt by coming out with an extreme view that was far from the Government's more conservative position. Dr Bob disagreed and said his views were the same as Government chief scientist Dr John Beddington. Where things did kick off was when Dr Bob said the Government was still looking into GM. Boos and hisses rang round. The afternoon session before Fast Food Nation author Eric Schlosser chatted in the evening sesh to Guradina hack Felicity Lawrence was mostly anti-GM. I liked the hissing when Dr Bob from Defra mentioned GM. Interestingly to me no one talked at all about growers-it was all about community gardens or starving Africans. Tiny or global. Confused on Soil Assoc's role. Are they Oxfam? An allotment society? Maybe should focus on supporting UK organic growers?

3. Titchmarsh - The announcement about his new BBC programme has been put back until December say the BBC. Was to be last week. This is probably because the story has already been out there-Mail says he's back on Gardener's World, HW says BBC/Titch's agent says he not. I'll ask Titch next week at All-Party event.

4. Ex Gardenlife publisher Seven was apparently one of those who went for the contract publishing job to do Britain's biggest circulation gardening mag recently. Haymarket retained the Beautiful Gardens contract, which involves 4m mags sent by Tillington group garden centres to households.

5. Email from Ben Webster. "I am the new environment editor for The Times and I get copies of Horticulture Week which you send to Lewis Smith, who has now left The Times. I do not have time to read your magazine so please stop sending it." Webby writes almost exclusively on climate change but does hack on food waste, beekeeping, supermarkets, etc. Maybe he should find a bit more time to do his research. We've had several stories in the Times this year-before Webby arrived.

6. James Alexander Sinclair emailed the other day to say he was part of the RHS tapas seven, who lunched recently to celebrate the autumn. James asked me to write a piece on biscuits for him. I told JAS that bourbons are vegan and all the world's custard creams come from Carlisle, but I would have to think hard before I could get a whole column out of it.

But Garden News columnist Phil McCann ("always has something interesting to say") has got in first!

Phil says biscuits are close to his heart and name-checked David Cameron's taste for oatcakes (not a biscuit) and Nick Clegg's like of Rich Tea (no-one's fave). Phil continues: "But in time-honoured fashion, the whole biccy chat got me thinking 9and reaching for the biscuit barrel!)

He carries on the say gardeners like growing different things just as biscuit lovers like eating different biscuits. Alpine lovers like Rich tea, herbaceous lovers like Crinkle Creams, fruit growers like garibaldi and veg growers like digestives. The "bedding brigade" like Jammie dodgers. With another 150 words to go, Phil starts listing other biscuits he likes as he...scrapes the bottom of the barrel.

7. Ten horticulture stories from this year:

1.Alan Titchmarsh Wikipedia claim to be writing AT's guide to the Kama Sutra

2.RHS chief Inga Grimsey resigns

3.RHS to rid itself of 10 per cent of workforce etc

4.Chelsea Flower Show loses one third of show garden due to recession-led sponsorship crisis. James May to show plasticine garden at Chelsea-Chelsea is quite fertile for stories. Hot pants to pot plants was my best from 2008-about Aussie stripper turned garden designer Jamie Durie. This year Flemings burnt down so the Aussies didn't come over.

5. Buckingham Palace visit with head gardener Mark Lane garden ahead of first guided tours

6.New Gardener's World garden in Birmingham

7.Future Gardens to happen. Future Gardens goes pear-shaped

8.Golf courses membership fall off in recession

9.Revamped Gardener's World hit by viewer backlash

10. 10 Downing St-Sarah Brown copies Michelle Obama

8. Former World Bank chief economist Lord Stern has suggested people give up meat to save the planet - two-thirds of the world's agricultural land is given over to livestock. Methane from livestock is the clear cause of global warming. Putting land over from livestock to crop growing is an unanswerable way to solve food shortages and cut greenhouse gas emissions. Meat causes 18 per cent of global carbon emissions. But the NFU thinks different. President Peter Kendal comes up with bad science-"Focussing on a single issue as way of saving the planet is extremely irresponsible and likely to be counterproductive. Reducing greenhouse gas emissions from livestock in the UK by a contraction of the industry, in order to reduce output and livestock numbers, would simply ‘export' our emissions to other countries. This could also lead to an increase in the amount of UK food which we would be forced to import. I have always said that farmers and growers see themselves as part of the solution to climate change, not part of the problem."

This leads me to ask: Why are all TV chefs meat-fiends? And why are all celeb gardeners organic?

9. Coincidences: Wrote about Wicker Man starring Edward Woodward on latest Daily Telegraph column. Sadly Woodward died the next week. Also wrote a piece on poinsettia for HW a couple of weeks ago ahead of the annual newspaper pic of someone standing in a glasshouse among thousands of the Xmas potplant. On the way to Southern Growers reading Metro the story appeared before my eyes. Except this year it featured wasps used to kill whitefly on poinsettia. The third coincidence is I bumped into an old BBC contact at Cabe Space's launch of its new Grey to Green campaign at the London College of Printing last week. She told me she is now working on promotions, which I wouldn't like. Dig In being one. I still don't get Dig In. The BBC sends seeds to Gardeners' World viewers, who already know how to garden and have their own seeds. The campaign also goes out to BBC kids telly watchers. Who would rather have a young plant-most beginners fail with seeds. The BBC type asked me if I was the one who had sold my Dig In seeds on Ebay. Now there's a thought. The last coincidence, if you've got this far, is that Paul Downer from Oak View Landscapes appeared on BBC news on 14 November talking about Office of Fair Trading complaints being up about rogue traders. I wrote a warmly received piece on this issue on 30 November after speaking to BBC Rogue Traders' Mitch Westwood. Another coincidence is both of these high profile examples to the industry backed trade bodies as a way of upholding standards. They also said recession was to blame for dodgy landscapers setting up to make a quick buck.

10. At the Cabe Space event Dan Pearson came over and was charming as ever. He said he tried to get a community allotment thing going but couldn't raise the interest. I said Alys Fowler had advertised on Facebook for punters for her Homegrown Life TV project (BBC2 January 11 8pm). Dan sadly said he hadn't been on TV since 1999 and that people forget. Also met Chris Baines at Cabe event. He said ex-Afghanistan serving former soldiers should take up gardening skills to green eco towns. Then the fire alarm went off and we all wandered out into Elephant and Castle to try and find the way home.

Dan will be signing his book Spirit at Petersham Nurseries, London - 10am, 21 November

Kew Gardens, 4 - 8pm 12 December and Toppings Books, Bath 6 - 8 pm 17 December.

Camels are bringing the Christ back into Christmas say Joseph’s Amazing Camels, who are supplying Trelawney garden centre with three dromedaries (one hump-from North Africa/Middle East). It’s down to recession-back to basics trad xmas etc. Meanwhile, please see latest Telegraph blog.

Latest fan-blogger 'The Fat Gardener' mentioned blog in a recent posting as one of his favourites. Also

Recent Rogue Traders interview with BBC landscaping expert Mitch Westwood produced some comment.

1. The Federal Trade Commission has a stern warning for UK garden retail industry businesses secretly using bloggers and others in social media to endorse products and services:  we're coming after you

In a move that has generated a backlash as big as the blogosphere itself, the agency put the word out on the street that beginning December 1, it will be looking to haul into court the most flagrant users of cloaked endorsers.

Indeed, even a blogger who accepts something a simple as a free sample from a company will be considered a violator, and the company, culpable, unless that relationship is made clear.

"Social media is here to stay, and we have enough respect for advertising on the Internet and the important role of the blogosphere as a marketplace for public opinion to hold it to the same standard we apply to advertising in any other medium," says Mary K. Engle, director, FTC Division of Advertising Practices.

2. Nigel Slater in Observer-A recent trip to one of the Royal Horticultural Shows at Vincent Square brought platefuls of pears etc…. What is this show? Is it the Royal Horticultural Society show? Slater should know what its called-he writes regularly for RHS mag The Garden.

3. Alice Bowe in The Times. ‘Lazy gardener tips’- number four: Build raised beds. Also-“digging can do more harm than good”…later “dig over soil in the autumn”.

4. Nicky Haslam (Observer) How do you know when something or someone is common? It’s nothing to do with some Nancy Mitford-esque horror of someone putting their knife on the plate. It’s those little clichés that make you cringe, like someone saying: “My garden’s got its own microclimate.”

5. Stephen Fry: When asked by a careers officer if what he wanted to do. “I want to be a careers officer.” Reminds me of the people who say their careers officer mocked them for wanting to be a gardener/told them they were only fit to be a gardener-ie most gardeners.

6. Twitter update- Amy Winehouse: watch my babygyal Dionne Bromfield on the Alan Titchmarsh Show 3pm-4pm on ITV. Then buy the album again!x

7. Lookalikes: Les Dennis and Mark Thatcher. Went to No.10 garden this year. Nicer than when Mark was there. Les has no conenction with gardening other than being led up the garden path in Extras.

8. Former ITV Studios executives Mark Wells and Glen Middelham have secured the first commission from their old employer for their new indie Rain, teaming up with Spun Gold to produce a country walks series with Alan Titchmarsh.

The 3 x 60-minute Alan Titchmarsh Walks Of Fame is a primetime series set to debut on ITV1 next spring, and was commissioned by Diana Howie and director of factual and daytime Alison Sharman.

Each episode will see Titchmarsh meet with a well-known celebrity, who nominates a 5-mile walk somewhere in Britain that has personal significance for them.

Titchmarsh will then accompany the celebrity on that walk, asking questions about their career and life along the way.

I reported on Titchmarsh’s possible return to BBC Gardener’s World this week and note twitters, bloggers etc have picked up on the story. Thanks for using it, esp those who said where they got it from.

Eg: Guardian “passnotes” 9 Nov, which reported my story adding amusingly “: Do say: "You can present anything you like, Mr Titchmarsh, as long as you do it on the BBC." Don't say: "Welcome back, 'Suralan'. What happened to your beard?"

9. Most stupid things I’ve done this year-professionally: Most of them I have never heard the last of or never heard from again: Left Wyevale long service event early to catch a plane-Wyevale haven’t talked to me since. Published Chelsea Flower Show presenters’ wages and compared them to 2008. Wrote down Gardener’s World producers’ nickname. Called an industry blogger a clown. Wrote indiscreetly about my allotment in “Liz Jones fashion” according to Telegraph gardening editor. Told Evening Standard their production staff are idle. Wrote about the fun people had at awards evenings-some people said that stuff should stay within four walls and are on non-speakers. Wrote a piece saying RHS needed cash in bank in case Chelsea hit by terrorists. Wrote a piece saying one trade association was losing influence.

10. This week-Government working on peat. They have a meeting on Weds 11 Nov at RHS Horticulture Halls. The industry say we can go to report. Defra say we can’t. Umm. Defra likely to push peat reduction targets onto consumer and away from grower. Off to Southern Growers this week and to Soil Association annual conference-looking forward to chair Monty Don’s speech.

Garden Retail awards last night rewarded the best garden centres in Britain. Thanks to our sponsors HTA, Quinton Edwards, Garden Expo, Glee, Greenfield Software, Gardeners' World Live, National Garden Gift Vouchers, Pet Care Trust, William Sinclair, Town & Country and Vital Earth.

1. Introduced Garden Expo's Jonny Kirk to Glee's Dan Thurlow. They got on like a house on fire.

2. Sat on the glamour table with Millbrook's Sue Allen and Tammy Woodhouse, Pet Care Trust's Janet Nunn, Garden Centre Association's Gillie Westwood and The Sun's Val Bradley. Look in The Sun for piece on Saturday and listen to Radio Kent. Most of them sneaked upstairs for a special gig we put on featuring Jonathan Ross, Liam Gallagher, Russell Brand and Bryan Ferry. This is true (ish).

3. Squire's Dennis Espley asked me to get awards announcer Lynn Bowles off Radio 2's Terry Wogan show to stand up so everyone could see what she looked like. I said I would if he didn't make me dance with anyone like he usually does.

4. Doesn't awards presenter Alan Dedicoat (voice of the balls) look like Garden Centre Association's chairman Martin Stewart?

5. Dedicoat said don't choose the number seven for your lottery numbers or multiples there of because everyone else does.

6. Best dancers-Andy McIndoe and Carol Paris. Jonathan Ross was doing a music awards upstairs at Grosvenor House on Park Lane. Disloyally, the Millbrook contingent went to have a look. They were quite rightly thrown out.

7. Best tartan- Ken Cox's frockcoat. Second Dobbies' James Barnes (trews). Third: Capital Gardens' Colin Campbell-Preston (also trews)

8. Tillington's garden centre magazine contract is up for renewal today. The Beautiful Gardens mag goes out to 4 million homes and is Britain's biggest garden mag. The mag has 10 times the circulation of any other. Seven Publishing and Haymarket are pitching. I put a word in with Tillington people such as Dennis Espley (Squires), Caroline Owen (Scotsdale), Peter Self (Whitehall), Paul Wright (Frosts) etc. Not that I have any influence.

9. Most talked about-Nicholas Marshall from Garden Centre Group (formerly Wyevale). Also who is going to succeed Inga Grimsey at RHS (she left last week ahead of schedule citing a bad foot). HTA's David Gwyther and Hillier's Andy McIndoe told me they are out of the running. An expose will be in Private Eye next week (I know I say this every week).

10. Last to leave...me.