Charlie Dimmock digs Homes and Gardens Northwest Show

"You meet such different people. I prefer it to standing up in front of a large audience. What's interesting is I might do a talk and at the end invite questions.

"Sometimes there's only a couple but after I've wound up and finished they'll flock to me.

"People can be shy in public, feel their questions are a bit silly, but with gardening most of us experience similar difficulties. We should share ideas."

Charlie's life took an amazing turn when she shot to fame in the hit BBC programme Ground Force, where she worked with the already established TV favourite Alan Titchmarsh and landscaping whizz Tommy Walsh.

"It was completely unexpected. I'd always been a keen gardener, trained as a horticulturist and was lucky to get a year's placement at the Chelsea Physic Garden in London. But I never imagined myself on TV."

Her first on-screen venture came while working at a garden centre in her native Hampshire where a TV crew on regional series Grass Roots filmed her making a pond.

"That was a few years before Ground Force. I went on to manage the garden centre. Then out of the blue the producers rang me to do a screen test for a new BBC gardening show. They remembered me from Grass Roots."

The "new" programme turned into the phenomenal hit Ground Force which eventually saw the team creating gardens around the country and around the world. It made a star of Charlie and, thanks to her refusal to wear a bra - she insists it's too restrictive - a pin up for many. She looks back on it with fondness.

"I was talking to Tommy only the other day, we're still great friends," she says, though she doesn't foresee a Ground Force revival.

"It was hard work, physically. Plus, we're all too old now!"

Today Charlie still lives in Hampshire and is as busy as ever touring garden shows, doing talks, supporting environmental campaigns, helping with a landscaping project in Portugal and presenting UKTV series River Walks.
With the Mersey at the heart of Liverpool's Capital of Culture party, she looks forward to chatting with some Merseysiders.

"I've been to the north west before and over the border to North Wales - as a student one of my first botanical field trips was to Bodnant Garden, stunningly beautiful - but hopefully I'll get more chance to chat and look around this time.

"The ECHO Arena show itself is the inaugural one and so should be great fun. I'll do talks, demonstrations and question and answer sessions."

She acknowledges gardens are transforming dramatically as the world faces up to climate change.

"More than ever we're at the mercy of the two extremes: floods or drought. It affects all gardens.

"Have two or three large pots of bedding rather than a whole array of small ones is my tip. They hold moisture better and are easier to maintain. And bring back the saucer! We all used to put saucers under pots to collect excess water for thirsty roots to draw on as required. They've gone out of fashion, but practically they made sense."

She advocates regular maintenance as the key to gardening success.

"Do a bit at a time, half an hour or 20 minutes of hoeing in a summer evening does wonders to keep weeds down, or try an hour or so planting or conditioning the soil at weekends."
And don't get paranoid over the state of the lawn.

"Grass is a survivor," says Charlie. "Don't cut too low in dry weather, it leaves bare, yellow patches, making it easier for weeds to seed. But even if it does begin to look a bit bare don't worry unduly, at the first good downpour it'll revive again."

And with that she's off to pack her bags ready for the crowds in Liverpool. After all, we all dig Charlie!