GREATEST GARDENS

Wherever you are in Northern Ireland, you’re never more than a few streets away from a superb secret garden. These gardens, tucked out of sight from the public, will often have obsessive, proud owners keen to cultivate the biggest, the brightest and the best, all the while gathering peer recognition and horticultural awards.

Now these passionate puveyors of gardening greatness are going to be pitted against each other as we track down the best-kept horticultural secrets in the country.

Each programme Diarmuid Gavin and Helen Dillon visit three very different secret hideaways based in a particular part of the country. They examine and appraise the gardens while the nervous owners wait inside for their verdict. We get lots of good natured banter and takeaway tips from our experts, before they finally meet the gardener. At the end of the programme, after seeing all three gardens, Diarmuid and Helen decide which of the three they have enjoyed the most, basing their choice on the classic gardening competition criteria of planting, design and good gardening practice.

Diarmuid Gavin is a former Chelsea Flower Show winner and one of the UK and Ireland’s most respected garden designers and broadcasters. Helen Dillon is a distinguished gardening lecturer and writer. Her own fabulous garden in Dublin is renowned for being one of the best in Ireland.