Broadcaster Jo Whiley says she likes to garden “unfettered” by wearing just a bra and shorts.
The DJ, whose Scent Garden is being unveiled at this year’s Chelsea Flower Show, said that tending her plants – in shorts and a bra – keeps her sane and “calms me when there’s chaos in my head”.
She told Radio Times magazine: “I’d be lost without it. I wouldn’t know what to do with myself.”
Jo, 51, added: “Mentally it’s so cathartic. When I know it’s a gardening day, I wake up so excited. Rain or shine makes no difference.
“I’ve had as many great gardening days in wellingtons and a mac as I’ve had really nice days in a bra and shorts.”
She added: “My mum always used to garden in a bra, and now I can really understand why.
“It’s so good to feel unfettered and just work in the sunshine. I don’t have a particular gardening bra. My mum has always had a great bosom so when she was gardening in her bra, it was quite impressive. I think I may look rather underwhelming.”
Jo said she was happy living outside of London with her family, playing Family Fortunes and Mr And Mrs with friends, and her husband acting as quizmaster.
But she said that the “madness inside my head” left her teenage son mortified when she marked his 16th birthday.
“I decided it would be hilarious to repeat something I did for his sixth birthday, which was to collect him from school dressed as Spider-Man,” she said.
“So there I was, being Spider-Man and throwing webs all over the place, and he said to me: ‘You’re such an embarrassment.’ He was mortified and hated me. He walked past and wouldn’t speak to me. I felt so deflated.”
The Jo Whiley Scent Garden is one of five Radio 2 Feel Good gardens designed to show how plants can enrich one of five senses.
