It's been a month to applaud inspiringly unsentimental nonagenarians. Supergran and the Garden of Justice (17 June) is in the BBC’s Our Lives series and was as about as moving as good, quiet, unpretentious telly can get.

Supergran and the Garden of Justice
BBC1

It's been a month to applaud inspiringly unsentimental nonagenarians. Supergran and the Garden of Justice (17 June) is in the BBC’s Our Lives series and was as about as moving as good, quiet, unpretentious telly can get.

I baulk at the title “Supergran” but I doubt 93-year-old Dena (inset) would care; she’s got better things to think about. Dena runs an allotment in Manchester which is worked by young offenders on the Community Payback scheme. The food they grow supplies a neighbouring luncheon club for the elderly. “I love growing things and I have a passion for helping people. They are almost entwined,” says Dena. Sharp as a tack but fiercely kind, she sees in gardening a way to restore self- respect. “I hate to see wasted lives: we’re all entitled to make a mistake and be forgiven for it.” Not that she’s a soft touch, far from it, but for her, these young men, mooching in with their hoods up, are lost, not bad. D’Ago is the newest recruit. Dena doesn’t ask him what he’s done: she never does.

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