Filthy Garden SOS episode 6: The team takes on an ex-military man’s old garden, left to run amok since the death of his wife, by transforming it into a welcoming and well-ordered space. The idea of helping a proud old soldier rekindle his love of gardening brought Diarmuid, Danny and Penny to Fareham in Hampshire, to discover a cluttered, chaotic garden filled with garden ornaments, an abandoned pond crater and its substitute – a plastic swimming pool of fish.
Brian and his wife Margaret took enormous pleasure in their garden for decades but when ill health took its toll on both of them and Margaret died in 2013, the garden went into decline. Brian was ashamed of the garden it had become but at 80 he knew he couldn’t sort it out on his own. His son Shane stepped up to help the team give his dad back a garden he could enjoy and manage on his own.
Determined to play his part in transforming the garden, Brian was soon filling the skips, digging up the old turf and levelling the ground that would turn his old pond in a new terrace to bring social gatherings back into his garden. His greenhouse was revived, new raised beds would make it easier for him to grow his own vegetables and with the clutter gone, Brian was delighted to discover a lovely garden he could proudly show off.
Filthy Garden SOS episode 6
Diarmuid Gavin
Diarmuid Gavin (born 10 May 1964) is an Irish garden designer and television personality. He has presented gardens at the Chelsea Flower Show on nine occasions from 1995 to 2016, winning a number of medals, including gold in 2011. He has also authored or co-authored at least ten gardening-related books.
Gavin started work with small jobs, the first, a suburban house garden featuring gravel and railway sleepers, in 1988, while he was studying at Glasnevin, still intact as of 2016. A notable early commission was for social columnist Terry Keane, a contract during which he also met his future wife.
Gavin runs his own garden and landscape design business, with an office in London, and contact details in Ireland also. The enterprise launched its website in 2005, but after a refresh, the site has displayed a holding page since 2013. Gavin has designed many gardens in the UK and Ireland, and beyond, for commercial, public sector and private clients. In interviews he has mentioned projects primarily in the UK and China, that his work primarily involves travel, and that he has never yet been to Ireland’s national flower show, Bloom. In particular the projects in China have tended to be large-scale and of long duration, involving a lot of time away from home, and limiting his work in Ireland and the UK.
Danny Clarke
Dannahue “Danny” Clarke is a British horticulturist who co-hosts the BBC series The Instant Gardener with Helen Skelton.
Clarke was born in Oxford to immigrants from Jamaica. He changed careers from sales and founded his own garden design company in Bromley in 1997, and called himself The Black Gardener after noting that another businessman calling himself the Black Farmer was having success. The name led to him being noticed and invited to screen test for The Instant Gardener, a daytime BBC programme that started in 2015. He also appeared as a presenter for the BBC on the RHS Chelsea and RHS Tatton Flower shows and Tree of the Year for Channel 4 in 2016.