By Hannah Furness, Arts Correspondent

Her gardens are among the most-admired in the kingdom, from the wilds of Balmoral to the manicured lawn of Buckingham Palace.

Now, anyone who has coveted the Queen’s grounds will be able to take tips from the royal gardeners themselves, as Alan Titchmarsh takes television viewers behind the scenes.

A new programme, entitled The Queen’s Garden, will show viewers an entire year in the life of the Buckingham Palace garden, from the summer garden parties to the nocturnal wanderings of wildlife in the heart of London.

It will show how gardeners work tirelessly to maintain the Queen’s flowers, while bearing in mind her wish to see animals and insects made welcome in the gardens, swapping pesticides for homemade garlic treatments.

Titchmarsh will explore how bee hives, homes for insects and deposits from the Royal mews each help cultivate the gardens of Buckingham Palace, with top tips from gardeners giving insight into the Queen’s own tastes.

The programme, to be broadcast by ITV on Christmas Day, will also show how the garden has been used by the royal family for generations, from the king who planted mulberry trees to rival the French to the young Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret climbing to peer over the high garden walls.

A sandpit used by the royal children will be filmed, along with oak trees planted decades ago by the young Prince of Wales and Princess Royal, grown from acorns sown on the event of their birth.

Titchmarsh, who spent 12 months exploring how the Palace garden changed with the seasons, will be seen finishing the calendar year with a Christmas tree mounted in the Marble Hall, decorated with holly and mistletoe from the royal garden and festooned with festive golden crowns.

Among the treasures is a white helleborine orchid, found last year in the woodland part of the garden and now known to be the first time the species has been spotted in London in more than a century.

It will also visit the lawn “infused with perfumed camomile”, where the Duke of Cambridge hosted a football match earlier this year, and black-and-white footage of the royal family at play in the grounds.

Among the tips offered to green-fingered viewers is the Palace’s method of keeping greenfly away from the rose garden, with a homemade garlic spray sprinkled liberally on petals.

Describing putting garlic powder in water, gardeners admitted the method does leave an unusual garden scent, telling told Titchmarsh: “We do get a few comments, especially from the footmen as they go past. The smell disappears after a day, but the roses last a lot longer.”

The organic gardening method is just one of the ways in which the Queen is said to deliberately encourage wildlife into the grounds, with 200,000 bees already providing honey for the household.

The 39-acre garden, which contains a lake, hosts 350 species of wildflower, 83 species of bird and 2,500 British species of insect which live in compost heaps and dead wood deliberately left out to encourage habitation.

Part of its success, Titchmarsh will tell viewers, is the “secret magic ingredient” provided directly from the horses at the nearby royal mews; manure.

The broadcaster will be joined by historian Dr Lucy Worsley to detail how the garden has changed over the years.

She will tell viewers about the National Mulberry Collection, originally planted by James I who hoped to rival France’s silk industry after learning silk moths fed on the berries, and how royal children peered over the garden walls to catch a glimpse of the “outside world”.

The then-Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret were said to have enjoyed spying other children with their nannies, with the future Queen wistfully telling her governess: “One day I too will have a bicycle.”

Speaking of the Queen’s involvement in her garden now, Titchmarsh said: “She is very much at the helm of how her garden is run. And the wildlife is very important to her. There is this overwhelming desire to be accommodating to all forms of life.“

He added of the programme: “It’s like a secret window into a beautiful, hidden garden.”

The first of the two-part programme is due to be broadcast on ITV on Christmas Day, following the Queen’s speech.