Diarmuid Gavin
Diarmuid Gavin - our glasshouse specialist
In our own homes we鈥檝e lost sight of the potential for growing under glass. In this episode, Chelsea gold-medal-winning designer Diarmuid Gavin wants us to use glasshouses to restore a sense of adventure, flair and excitement to our gardens.
The base for his revival is the Great Glasshouse of the National Botanic Garden of Wales in Carmarthenshire. On his campaign he also visits Wentworth Castle in Barnsley to help out with the final stages of the restoration of the elaborate Victorian glasshouse, and discovers more about the history and heyday of glasshouses in the UK.
He鈥檚 on the hunt for the best glasshouses for small gardens, and meets up with passionate allotmenteers in Nottingham, who have gone one better and designed and built their own remarkable greenhouses from old window frames, doors and plastic bottles. He meets an expert orchid grower and finds out why these incredible exotic plants are tailor-made for glasshouse cultivation.
Throughout the episode, Diarmuid gives us his top greenhouse growing tips: he plants up a tiny terrarium, complete with exotic planted landscape and plastic dinosaur, he gets to grips with hothouse flowers when he meets a tropical conservatory keeper and he explores the wealth of temperate and tropical flora on display at the National Botanic Garden in Wales.
