IN the week that Ilkley was announced as the gardening capital of Britain by winning the Britain in Bloom title, the nation's favourite TV gardener and the town's biggest celebrity Alan Titchmarsh spoke about his new series.

'British Isles: A Natural History', which began yesterday on BBC 1 is a series of eight hour-long programmes which aims to provide the most complete portrait yet of Britain's geographical, natural and human history.

Mr Titchmarsh said: "It's absolutely brilliant, I've seen so much of Britain. It really is a wonderful, wonderful place, you know."

Some people who only know Alan from Gardener's World and Ground Force might think this is something of a departure for the man they're used to seeing on his knees in soil.

"Not at all," says Alan. "In fact, I'm going back to my roots." The 55-year-old has been a member of Wharfedale Naturalists Society "since I was a tiny tot" and it was from there that his love of plants grew, leading to his first job with Ilkley Parks Department then an apprenticeship at Kew Gardens, which put him on the road to being the nation's favourite gardener.

The programme isn't simply a Titchmarsh voice-over with nice pictures of Britain. He gets involved and - sometimes - down and dirty. He is lowered down Gaping Ghyll in North Yorkshire, which contains a waterfall twice the height of Niagara Falls and climbs to the summit of Britain's highest peak, Ben Nevis.

The crew had a hairy moment during filming last May when a BBC helicopter crash-landed at Hadrian's Wall, just 50ft from the crew

"We were very lucky we got out of it okay," he says. "It just came out of the sky, hit the ground and landed on its side. They all climbed out, there was a couple of cracked ribs, that was it."

Alan and the crew also had a minor panic when they got cut off by the tide while filming on a beach in Devon and had to clamber up a slate cliff. He says the series has filled him with hope.

"You realise that the country is full of a lot more than you knew. People are very quick to travel all over the globe because they don't like the weather here, but we've got the most wonderful country right here and it's been shaped by that very weather. Britain is absolutely full of hidden treasures."

Alan is still resolutely a Yorkshireman, though he now lives with his wife Alison in Hampshire. He visits Yorkshire four or five times a year, to see family and to deliver the occasional lecture to the Wharfedale Naturalists Society.

When he's not filming or gardening back at his home, he's in his loft writing. His latest novel, Rosie, was published by Simon and Schuster last month, and is currently doing well in the best seller charts.

In addition, he has two new gardening television programmes lined up as well as a top secret project which will see him branching out into yet another new area, the details of which he's keeping firmly under his cap.