A landscape gardener is digging her role as a television presenter working alongside Alan Titchmarsh.

Filming starts next month for the latest series of ITV’s Love Your Garden, when Katie Rushworth will be reunited with the Ilkley TV star with whom she presented the show last year.

Mrs Rushworth said: “When it came to filming the final episode last year I was so sad, I shed a tear. I’m really excited about seeing everyone again.

“Everybody on the production team gets so close. You’re sharing hotels and travelling together and they’re such long days.”

This year the Tuesday night series has been extended by two shows.

“ITV were so thrilled with the show last year – it got 4.5 million viewers, and this year they wanted eight episodes instead of six,” Mrs Rushworth, of Bingley said.

“It was the first time I’d ever done anything like that. I’d never presented before, so for it to go down so well was a testament to everybody involved.”

The makeover programme shows four presenters working in the gardens of families who have gone through tough times.

“We transform their garden so they have somewhere nice to sit and contemplate what they’ve been through or somewhere to help provide nice memories or look on the bright side of life,” Mrs Rushworth, a Craven College garden design student, said.

Mrs Rushworth does not yet know where she will be filming next month, but said most of the gardens were in the south of the country.

The mother, who runs a landscaping business called The Queen of Spades, said working with Mr Titchmarsh was “great fun”.

“He’s really good at making you understand the process of how a show is put together.

“Sometimes you’ll be in front of the camera and you’ll feel you’ve got to fill the silence of a gap. You’ll talk about the plant and then put it in the ground and during the bits when you’re planting you want to talk. But Alan explained that it will be edited and cut together,” the 29-year-old said.

“We went to the same college, Shipley College, and did exactly the same course. We’re from within 10 miles of each other and our first-born children have got the same name and now we’re on the same programme!”

The third series of Love Your Garden will be shown on ITV later in the year.