Cover of the Week: Gardener's World, March 2011 issue

So Gardener's World is 20 years old - I can remember the panic in the office I was working in at the time when news of its imminent launch filtered out. I was working on a homes mag at the time so wasn't going to be affected, but the guys working alongside me on a marginally successful gardening mag were definitely not happy.

I've always felt that the way BBC plugged its own mags to death on air at launch was wrong and made otherwise mediocre products into market leaders purely by dint of the free publicity they received. There is no way, for example, that Gardener's World at launch was as good as the Emap's Practical Gardening, which despite its title was the most beautiful gardening mag every produced in the UK in my view and was at its best in the mid-90s.

It's editor at the time was the scary Adrienne Wild. I made a complete hash of an interview for a job with her back in the 90s - I arrived sleep deprived after a very late night in Liverpool watching football and was miles off the pace under 'Wild fire'. Shame - though their offices in Peterborough had to be just about the ugliest publishing HQ I've ever seen.

Anyway, I digress. The point of this post is to praise the cover of the 20th birthday issue, which was really leaping off the shelves at me from 10 yards away this morning in my local M&S. White space is a rare commodity indeed on a gardening magazine cover and this was a brave decision by art editor Guy Bennington. With Alan Titchmarsh guest editing this issue, the temptation to use a big pic of the insufferably smug Mr T must have been huge. Credit to Guy for resisting the obvious solution and going instead for the graphic option.