He’s a magnificent broadcaster, gifted gardener, brilliant author and all-round horticultural visionary. This month, with Valentine’s Day in everyone’s thoughts, Alan Titchmarsh talks about his favourite - and most romantic - varieties of flowers.

When it comes to romance, most people think of roses. And rightly so. A red rose is the universal shorthand for love - bold, fragrant, and unfailingly classic. Yet after a lifetime in gardens, I’ve come to believe that romance lies not just in the grand gestures but in the quieter blooms too: the ones that catch your heart when you least expect it.

Take the sweet pea. Those fragile tendrils and delicate petals, like scraps of silk, have a fragrance that can stop you in your tracks. Like love itself, they’re not showy; they climb, they tangle, they persist through rain and wind. When you pick a handful for the kitchen table, their scent fills the room, and I often find stirs something deeply nostalgic in me. It’s really very magical.

Then there’s the lily of the valley - modest, low to the ground, but exquisitely formed. Its perfume is soft and very subtle, but it lingers in an unforgettable way.

Camellias, too, have a place in my romantic pantheon. When everything else lies dormant in late winter, they bloom… unapologetically often, and even sometimes through frost. There’s something rather moving about that. Love, after all, isn’t just about the sunny seasons. It’s about perseverance through the cold ones.

And we mustn’t forget the rose’s cousin, the wild variety that flowers in hedgerows and along country lanes. Its beauty is fleeting, its petals soon scattered, but in that moment it’s perfect, almost as a reminder that love, like nature, is at its most precious when we appreciate its impermanence.

People often ask what flowers to give as a gesture of affection, and I always say the same answer: choose the ones that mean something to you. Don’t be afraid to go against the crowd, because very often the crowd are just blindly following each other anyway. Perhaps it’s the scent that reminds you of your grandmother’s garden, or the flowers that grew where you first walked together.

Ultimately, gardens are full of love stories if you know where to look. They’re written in petals and perfume, in the courage of a snowdrop pushing through frozen ground, in the intertwining stems of climbing roses.

So, this Valentine’s, by all means buy the bouquet, but take a walk in a garden too. You’ll find that nature, in her quiet way, has been celebrating love all along!