Celebrity gardener Diarmuid Gavin helps grieving NI woman pay tribute to her partner

Nichola McGregor’s partner Arnie Clarke died on February 13 following a tragedy at Tollymore Forest Park.

The 56-year-old, who was well known in Antrim sporting circles, drowned while trying to rescue a pet dog from a swollen river.

During June and July Diarmuid helped Nichola bring a French flavour to her garden at her Antrim home in memory of Arnie who had been working for the Michelin company in France in recent years.

The results feature in episode four of the six part programme which also shows makeovers for two other gardens in Northern Ireland.

Episode two, which will be broadcast next Monday, sees Diarmuid help design a garden for the Montgomery family in Banbridge who have a spectacular view but a lacklustre garden to see it from.

In the final episode he turns his attention to Co Down to lend a hand to Rachel Kelly in Drumbo who has a an eyesore in the garden she wants to forget.

Diarmuid said the programme was filmed over the past three to four weeks: “The majority of the programme was done remotely, through Zoom or Facetime.

“I hadn’t been to any of the gardens until the final day when I surprise them all by turning up to see what they’ve done.

“They sent me images and maps of their garden and I’ve done some designs from here, sent them back. My project manager went up and my planting guy went up but I never got to see them until the very end.

“In ways I had the easy job while everyone else was digging though I suppose I was digging in my own place.”

Diarmuid also speaks to some gardening experts from Northern Ireland – Mount Stewart head gardener Neil Porteous and exotic plant expert Conrad McCormick.

He was full of praise for the gardens at the National Trust property at Mount Stewart: “Maybe the best garden in Ireland is Mount Stewart. I absolutely love that place and the ethos of it.

“I’ve been going there for years. I love the humour, the warmth, the variety of planting and the colour. And I love the democracy of it, the fact that everybody can get to enjoy these gardens.”

The show also features NI chef Rachel Allen who helps Diarmuid fulfil his dream of keeping chickens in the garden.

Diarmuid said: “We’ve now got three rescue chickens called Arlene, May-Lou and Michelle. They have the odd scrap but get on relatively well.”

He added: “It’s up there with the best programmes I’ve been involved in. It has a warmth, it reflects the times we live in, and it has great people in it.”

Gardening Together With Diarmuid Gavin, a new six-part series beginning on BBC One Northern Ireland tonight at 7.30pm, sees Diarmuid tap into this huge rise in interest in all things green, sharing his passion for gardening with people direct from his own garden sanctuary.

From novices who rarely set foot in their back yard to seasoned gardeners, Diarmuid will be offering advice to green fingered viewers.

Of the explosion of growth and colour experienced during lockdown, Diarmuid said: “In climate terms we had this intoxicating mix of warm and wet. Especially early on it got very, very warm and then the rain eventually came and plants just exploded.

“We live on the most amazing island, maybe one of the best islands worldwide for gardening.

“It is wet but we don’t get the extremes of hot and cold. Plants love to grow here.”

Of the corresponding upsurge in gardening during lockdown, he said: “It was this remarkable set of circumstances. People were at home, they were out in the gardens, even if they weren’t interested in gardening they were using their gardens and beginning to notice growth. People really wanted to garden.

“One of the biggest gardening forms in the world is based in Northern Ireland – Westland Horticulture (based in Dungannon).

“They were telling me that every garden centre they were supplying to had the same story – the amount of new gardeners who have come on board sewing seeds, using compost, growing spuds, wanting to plants fruit trees – it’s amazing. And it’s also sustainable because once they start they get interested and that won’t change.

“As a gardener it’s been an amazing year.”

Discussing the biggest challenges for new gardeners, he said: “Everybody makes the same mistakes.

“First of all it’s about getting to know your garden, you do need a little bit of information about plants, but it’s so rewarding because once plants start to grow you just become amazed at what they do and you like to be out there looking after them.

“The first and most important thing is getting used to your soil, understanding that the best investment that you make is in your soil, working well-rotted farmyard manure in.

“Other common mistakes are the wrong plants growing in the wrong place, or the right plants growing in the wrong place. That’s why it’s important to find out a little bit of information about plants.”

At the start of lockdown Diarmuid started broadcasting a series of short clips through his Instagram page to answer people’s gardening queries: “We’ve done over 100 episodes. Every evening we broadcast with expert gardeners from around the world.

“We realised we had the information to answer people’s questions so we put that information to use.

“People wanted to know about their camellias having yellow leaves, they wanted to know about moss growing in their lawn, when to prune fruit trees. They would be the most common questions.”

He gave the following advice on creating a garden from scratch: “A well-rounded garden will have a couple of trees, your foot soldiers of the garden would be your shrubs – you need to decide whether you want deciduous or evergreen, then for the main colour we go to the cottage garden look, that’s the herbaceous perennials, and then seasonal colour bulbs and annuals from seed.

“It is very easy but it takes a little bit of time. A good way to do it is regular trips to the garden centre to see what’s in flower.

“Repeat planting is also very good. If you have a group of three lavender in one area of the garden, put another three further down the bed so your eye hops from place to place. You don’t need to have millions of different types of plants, repeating different groups can be very soothing and add up to a cohesive design.”

He also offers advice to those without a garden who want to add a splash of life and colour: “Programme two is all about pots and containers. My mum lives in a block of flats, she sold the family home a couple of years ago. In a situation like that you have to grow things in pots.

“This time of the year make sure you’ve good drainage so that when the water gets at them it can drain away, but also that you water on a regular basis. If the sun is coming out you maybe need to water once a day.

“On one of the programmes we show you how to make feed from nettles. Just nettles and water in a tub put a lid on it, let it bubble away and after two weeks you have the most brilliant feed for fruit and vegetables or flowers.”

On the subject of weeds, Diarmuid shared some advice: “It’s important that we don’t garden as if we’re doing housework, there is a place for some weeds in a garden,” he told me last week as we chatted ahead of his new TV programme which airs on BBC NI tonight.

“We should be a little bit more relaxed with our gardens, and garden with the environment rather than kill everything we don’t like.”

In defence of daisies and dandelions, he said: “Every lawn should have some daisies and dandelions in it because they provide pollen and they are the only things that we allow to produce pollen in lawns.”

He said: “There’s two types of weeds – perennial weeds with the big tap roots, things like dandelions or scutch grass or convolvulus (also known as bindweed). They all needs their roots taken out.

“I’d be a bit of an organic gardener so I don’t like to use too many weed killers so that means digging them out. Start by clearing the flowerbeds first, making sure it’s clean.

“You’ll always have the seedlings that will be germinating, but a regular hoeing will do the job for those. A hoe is a great thing that we’ve kind of stopped using.”

Diarmuid lives with his wife and 15-year-old daughter in Co Wicklow, just over the border from Dublin near Bray.

For the celebrity garden designer lockdown meant that he was able to spend a prolonged period in the same place for the first time in more than two decades.

He said: “I have to say lockdown was slightly idyllic. The weather was absolutely brilliant and where I live is by the motorway but it’s also by the country.

“There’s a field behind us to walk the dogs or go for a run. Through the field we have the most amazing food shop – Avoca, it’s four minutes door to door.

“I have a routine where we go swimming every morning in the sea at seven, then it’s back home and it’s back to the garden.”

He commented: “Normally I’m never at home because when I am in Ireland my routine is going to the airport every morning, going over to London or Newcastle or even over to China for a few weeks.

“That’s been the big change, I was permanently at home, which didn’t necessarily prove to be a bad thing.”

Considering his own garden, which contains an outdoor bath and a veranda, he commented: “It’s not huge, maybe it’s a bit bigger than average, but not huge, the cameras certainly make it look bigger.

“It’s a nice size, it’s big enough to get lost in, the way I have it planted up it’s in various sections.

“I have definitely got to know it this spring and summer.

“I love the garden we’ve created at home. It’s a bit of a jungle in Co Wicklow.”

Diarmuid described himself as a renegade in a family of non-gardeners.

He said: “There were no gardeners in my family, quite the opposite. I’m from a family who regarded gardening as housekeeping, keeping everything neat and tidy. I’m very definitely the renegade.”

He recalled: “My influence from a young lad was Blue Peter with an older gardener called Percy Thrower. I always used to be amazed at what he did. But also Willy Wonka – the garden in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory really got to me.

“Having a chocolate river in the garden is the ambition and if we go to a second series I will insist.”

Remembering how he became a celebrity gardener Diarmuid said: “The big break was doing a garden for the Chelsea Flower Show in 1995 and again in 1996. Being discovered in 1996 was life-changing almost overnight. It was an extraordinary time.”

Diarmuid’s first major TV gig was as the gardening expert on BBC makeover show Home Front which was presented by Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen

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