Diarmuid’s show grows from Insta to our TV screens
GROWING together while keeping apart – that’s the theme of Diarmuid Gavin’s new gardening show which is springing from Instagram to our TV screens.
During lockdown the celebrity gardener has been running a nightly live show from his back garden on Instagram along with co-host Paul T Smyth, and now it has been picked up by RTÉ One and BBC One Northern Ireland.
In the Insta show the hosts take questions from the public, play music on vinyl and it has even featured special guests such as Diarmuid’s mate, architect Dermot Bannon.
Next month, the format is transferring to TV as Gardening Together, and Diarmuid will be digging up bits of his own back yard in Co. Wicklow – which he describes as looking like ‘a World War I trench’
‘Whole new breed of gardener out there’
– to demonstrate how to do everything from building a fire-pit to installing a chicken coop.
They are also looking for six lucky gardeners who want help in redesigning and revamping their patches with expert help. Diarmuid tells the Irish Mail on Sunday:
‘There’s a whole new breed of gardeners out there who are realising that they have a garden for the first time [they] are taking an interest because they couldn’t go off and play golf or do whatever else.’
The show will send a project manager to those chosen to get help with their garden redesign.
‘It could be people who have small projects or medium projects, or they might be older people who the garden has just got too much for them. It might be somebody young living in the middle of a city with a very small space. People are very interested in growing their own fruits and vegetables right now,’ he says. ‘Maybe they found a packet of seeds that they didn’t realise they had in the cupboard, and they think they’ll give them a go.’
But will we see another bath and man-shed in the garden as we did with Bannon’s own pad on Room To Improve? ‘There’ll have to be a little bit of madness,’ he says.