Top TV gardener Alan Titchmarsh is reportedly on the run following the discovery of human remains in a garden he created for a home improvement programme. According to tabloid The Shite, police are now excavating at least nine other gardens featured in Titchmarsh’s TV series Ground Force. The investigation was allegedly sparked when the new occupants of a house in Camberley –which had featured in the garden makeover programme in 2001 – discovered two badly decomposed bodies under their patio. “They took the patio up to try and get to the bottom of the evil stench in the garden – they thought it was the drains,” claims Shite reporter Dan Carpett. “They were shocked when they discovered two decomposing bodies under there!” Despite their advanced state of decomposition, forensic scientists were able to determine that both bodies had apparently been stabbed to death with a garden fork. “They reckoned they’d been there since Titchmarsh and Tommy Walsh laid the patio for the TV programme,” says the reporter. “Their dental records matched a couple of local tramps who had vanished from the area around the same time.” The gruesome discovery led the police to investigate several other gardens made over for the BBC series. “No bodies were found in any of the gardens done after Titchmarsh left the show in 2002,” Carpett says. “But traces of human remains, including several teeth were found in the compost heap of a Reigate garden featured in a 1999 edition of Ground Force!” A police raid on Titchmarsh’s nursery allegedly revealed more bodies, this time fertilising hollyhocks in a greenhouse, whilst a large shed was found to contain a large industrial-scale grinding machine, which, forensic tests showed, had apparently been used to dispose of yet more bodies. “The police suspect that the fertilisers marketed commercially by Titchmarsh could be composed largely of the ground up bones and dried blood of these victims,” confides Carpett. “They think he could be behind the disappearances of hundreds of vagrants and down and outs over the years, as demand for his products has risen.” When police arrived at the gardener’s Hampshire home to arrest him, they discovered that he had already fled. “My sources tell me that search of the house and grounds uncovered several druid-type robes and a number of ceremonial daggers,” Carpett asserts. “There was also an altar to some kind of pagan fertility goddess in the garden shed which looked as if it had been used for human sacrifices!”

Although Titchmarsh remains at large, The Shite claims that one of his closest associates has contacted them to reveal the full extent of his horticultural depravities. According to Charity Blowse – who claims to have been a production assistant on Ground Force – the gardener is the high priest of an ancient nature cult, which worships forest spirits such as Pan and the Green Man. “At the end of each garden makeover he and his acolytes would perform a strange rite to ‘bless’ the new garden,” she claims in an article in today’s Shite. “It involved stringing two sacrificial victims – usually vagrants or backpackers – upside down from a tree branch, and slitting their throats with a trowel, so that their blood ‘fertilised’ the soil.” Later in the article – which is accompanied by a picture of Miss Blowse in her underwear, sitting astride a giant marrow – she describes how Titchmarsh would regularly preside over pagan masses in Epping forest, during which he would don a pair of antlers and assume the guise of Herne the Hunter, whilst various male and female acolytes would dress as satyrs and woodland nymphs. She alleges that during these ceremonies he would achieve a symbolic union with nature by ‘sacrificing’ various fruits and vegetables, including marrows, melons and cantaloupes, by piercing them with his penis. As the ceremony climaxed and the gardener’s semen ‘fertilised’ the fruit, flame-haired Blowse asserts that leaves would begin to sprout from his body and his manhood became a firm woody stem. At this point the participants would begin to drink and dance wildly, and would be joined by various forest spirits, including centaurs, pixies and fairies, before falling on each other in an orgy of frenzied sexual abandon. The Shite claims that police are currently investigating whether hallucinogenic drugs were produced at Titchmarsh’s nursery. The article also claims that at least two editions of Ground Force had to be pulled from the schedules when it was realised that the finished gardens, when viewed from above, formed obscene tableaux. “BBC executives went berserk when they realised that the closing aerial shot of a Streatham couple’s garden in a 2000 episode revealed that the new layout of shrubberies, rockeries and water features designed by Alan formed the image of a huge set of male and female genitalia,” Blowse reveals. “A strategically placed fountain ensured that foam-flecked water spurted from the tip of the giant penis into a pond placed between the lips of similarly sized vagina.” However, Blowse claims that several other obscene makeovers slipped past the censors, including a naked woman apparently urinating on a man’s face in Dorchester, (“Highly imaginative use of golden shower arrangement”, according to veteran TV gardener Geoff Smith, reviewing the programme in the Radio Times), and a man masturbating a huge erection in Cirencester (“Excellent deployment of red hot poker and morning glory”, muses Smith).

The Shite is now demanding to know why action wasn’t taken against Titchmarsh following these discoveries. “Surely they must have realised he was some kind of dangerous sex obsessed weirdo when they saw the way he had desecrated the gardens of innocent people?” thunders its editorial. “How many lives could have been saved if he’d been arrested there and then?” The newspaper is currently urging its readers to help the police apprehend the rogue gardener by keeping a look out for him, and is offering a reward for information leading to his capture. Nevertheless, they are warning the public not to approach him under any circumstances. “He is a very dangerous man and is believed to be armed with secatuers and a hoe”, points out the editorial. “He could be disguised as a tree, so watch out for suspicious looking bushes”. Doubts have been cast upon the story’s veracity by the BBC’s denial that it had ever pulled any editions of Ground Force and it maintains that it has never been contacted by the police in connection with any investigation. His agent has also dismissed the allegations, stating that they were completely without foundation. “For God’s sake, they’re utterly preposterous,” she told a press conference. “I mean, they’re even claiming that they found a vaguely woman-shaped tree in his bed which he allegedly had sex with!” She has also denied that Mr Titchmarsh is a fugitive from justice. “He’s just on holiday for God’s sake,” she says. “When he gets back next week, I’m sure he’ll be speaking to his solicitors!” Titchmarsh’s agent suspects that the tabloid article is part of a personal vendetta against her client. “It’s that bloody reporter, Carpett,” she opines. “He’s had it in for Alan ever since his parents’ garden got a Ground Force makeover in 1999 – apparently they didn’t like the decking and hated the rockery! They reckoned it knocked thousands off the value of their house!” Despite such allegations, The Shite stands by its story and is currently promising new revelations about the gardener, including the satanic messages which can be found hidden in the text of sex scenes in his novels.