Alan Titchmarsh opens new gardening exhibition at Woburn Abbey

Famous gardener Alan Titchmarsh MBE visited Woburn Abbey on Wednesday to launch a new exhibition marking the bicentenary of the first landscape gardener Humphry Repton.

Alan, who viewed Repton’s ‘red book’ with the Duchess of Bedford, said: “I am delighted to be opening an exhibition which celebrates the work of a man whose prime object was to beautify the land surrounding a fine country house and to help house and garden work in harmony. Repton and his ‘Red Books’ well deserve their place in the history of British landscape gardening.”

The Duchess of Bedford said: “I am very happy to welcome Alan Titchmarsh to Woburn Abbey. The Abbey will be a major player in the national celebrations, supporting the work of The Gardens Trust and giving Humphry Repton the prominence he deserves.”

The exhibition is officially open to the public from tomorrow (Friday) and runs until October 28.

Called Humphry Repton: Art & Nature for the Duke of Bedford, it explores Repton’s influential work for his most fascinating clients.

Repton is recognised as the first person to invent and use the title ‘landscape gardener’, and he regarded himself as the rightful successor to Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown.

Repton produced over 400 designs and schemes for gardens great and small, but of these, he stated: “none were more fully realised than at Woburn Abbey”.