UKTV Gardens: What's your favourite style of garden / garden design?
Dan: "I like gardens to be as natural as possible and driven by nature: unpampered, loose and unstructured, allowing plants to be themselves, rather than constraining them too much."

UKTV Gardens: What is the coolest plant or flower in the world? And why?
Dan: "For me, it must be the lotus. They're incredibly beautiful, they've inspired nations to change their architecture and you can eat them. They also have this double life of living in the mud and living in the air above the water."

UKTV Style Gardens: What has been your biggest gardening cock up?
Dan: "There haven't been any, I'm happy to say."

UKTV Gardens: Is the changeable British weather a gardener's friend or foe?
Dan: "A friend. Our climate is not always good to be in as a person but it's fantastic for plants and growing things. It's actually quite gentle and never as cold as you think it is. Having said that, it's great gardening in California and South Africa. I've always loved deserts and I love to garden in an environment that has a lot more sun and is quite dry. I just like that aesthetic."

UKTV Gardens: Who is your gardening hero? And why?
Dan: "Most probably Beth Chatto, because she's a fantastic plantswoman, she's still going strong and still passionate about gardening. She introduced a whole different aesthetic at the Chelsea Flower Show years and years ago, before anybody else started gardening with wild plants. In this country, she's a pioneer and remains a real enthusiast."

UKTV Gardens: John Steinbeck once said: "There is nothing pleasanter than spading when the ground is soft and damp." Would you agree?
Dan: "Absolutely. One of the things I love about gardening is that it's a combination of the physical and the intellectual. So while your body's working, your mind can be free to think about all sorts of things and it's quite a meditative state you can get into as it's about rhythm - and that's a good thing."

UKTV Gardens: What would you be doing if you weren't doing this for a living?
Dan: "I thought about art college when I was around 18 but I chose gardening in the end as that was the thing I was more passionate about. But I think I could be interested in studying sculpture."

UKTV Gardens: Which famous people's gardens have you worked in?
Dan: "Antonio and Priscilla Carluccio and Sir Paul Smith."

UKTV Gardens: Alan Titchmarsh once joked that his obituary would read "The Man Who Planked Britain". What will yours read?
Dan: "I think it would be something like 'The man who made us look at our countryside again'."

UKTV Gardens: Is decking chav?
Dan: "Depends how you use it. I just think it's been overused and with any fad, there's bound to be a backlash. But there's definitely a place for it - occasionally."