Episode 1 Greatest Gardens

Behind Northern Ireland's streets and fences

lie some amazing hidden gardens -

private spaces with passionate owners,

open just a few days a year.

Now, two top gardening experts, Diarmuid Gavin and Helen Dillon,

are going to be searching for the best.

They'll be looking for great design...

This is the contented garden.

-It's a gin and tonic garden, isn't it?

-Isn't it?

..beautiful planting...

-It's a bit kind of roundabouty.

-That's terribly depressing.

..and great gardening practice...

Oh, this is heaven.

-This is my deadly enemy.

-Absolutely awful.

..as the nervous owners wait inside for the verdict.

Hopefully they'll be kind to us.

I'm anxious about what they think about my planting and my choice,

and do they think I'm totally mad?

This time, three gardens created out of nothing.

If you gave me a skip, I could improve this garden.

I'm afraid it was very Parks Department.

So which garden will be best?

First up is the Georgian town centre of Hillsborough, in County Down.

Today, the high street is deserted.

There's a special visit looming.

They have the bunting out, they knew you were coming.

No, they put it up for you, Diarmuid, I know that.

They've put it up for the Queen! What are you trying to say?

That's why there's not much traffic.

She likes her garden, does the Queen.

She loves gardening, isn't that nice?

Gardening and racing.

Through an ordinary high street archway

lies something totally unexpected.

Artist Dawn Mitchell has spent more than a quarter of a century

turning a total wasteland into a magical garden.

Sometimes people come in and go, "Oh, did you buy it like this?"

And sadly not! It took a lot of work.

She still works hard at it.

Four hours a day.

And people go, "Oh, my word!"

But I don't really notice it, really.

Dawn has created a series of what she calls rooms.

The first is an area for entertaining guests.

It has a small central lawn,

surrounded by packed herbaceous borders

and lots of little pathways tempting you on.

It has just organically grown, I suppose,

and I'm a bit of a romantic and I am an artist as well.

So as something else appears, I make another little area.

Through one of the archways,

she has created a second area for relaxation and meditation.

Then another archway leads to her third room,

based on Victorian garden designs

and dominated at one end by a huge gunnera.

The gardens that mean most to me are gardens that hold me,

that I don't want to leave.

I want to sit, I want to linger,

I want to see what's round a little corner.

And I think that's what makes

basically a long, straight, Georgian plot interesting -

the little rooms and the little meandering paths.

Diarmuid Gavin is one of the UK's top garden designers

and has won gold at Chelsea.

Top gardening author Helen Dillon

owns Ireland's most famous private garden.

Together, they will argue over the garden, as Dawn waits inside.

It's a very odd feeling,

that two wonderful gardeners are in my garden

and I'm not there with them.

Interested to hear what they think and what they feel

and do they think I am totally mad?

Straight off the street is a fuchsia arch.

Isn't this beautiful, Helen,

the way the fuchsia is creating an archway at the entrance?

I love this fuchsia because it is the pale pink form

of the one that's naturalised all over Ireland.

But this pale one is absolutely adorable.

And it's happy anywhere, and tuppence to boot.

Everybody thinks it's Irish but it comes from Chile.

And this is a beautiful foreigner.

And that really is all about gardening in this country.

We really appreciate aliens -

-plants coming in from distant lands.

-Exactly.

And people never say how wonderful Ireland is

for the astonishing range of kit we can grow,

despite being geographically the same level as Newfoundland.

They're impressed by the entrance,

but what about the first of Dawn's garden rooms, for entertaining?

And on to the beautiful little patch of green lawn.

It's just a glade, a grass...

And the other thing I think this garden has got,

I think it's got huge charm.

It's very clever the way...

OK, we're standing at the centre of this circular lawn

and yet there's pathways bringing you, teasing you,

really everywhere.

And that is so important in any sized garden.

Before exploring the pathways,

Diarmuid has an issue with a plant pot.

This is nit-picking, OK, I know it's nit-picking.

I love containers.

I think they have a place, they make wonderful focal points.

But if I was having a container here,

I would have a large long tom pot in terracotta.

None of this kind of Indonesian glazed stuff.

There's no need to give it a good kick, dear boy.

The first room may have fallen on the pots

but what about the second?

This is supposed to be more tranquil,

with statues and lots of seating options.

I think this is a really beautiful bit.

It gets better and better.

But the stark whiteness of the seats,

although they're wonderful seats, I think they jump out at you.

-White is an awfully strong colour.

-You're such a stick-in-the-mud.

-I'm not a stick-in-the-mud!

-You are!

You lot want to sit there and show off gently in your little tent,

-your private tent.

-It works.

My only problem is the colour,

not the lovely swingy things that I'm longing to lie down in.

But if somebody my age gets into that,

they're never going to get out again.

I think it's very welcoming to the visitor.

There's all these seats all over the garden saying,

"Please sit down and enjoy my garden just like I do."

-That's right.

-Which is very attractive.

-It's a gin and tonic garden, isn't it?

-Isn't it? It is.

Do you know what I adore? Come here, you!

-Do you know what I adore about this garden?

-What?

I adore the fact that there are some of the most common garden plants

that everybody would be familiar with,

just repeated, repeated, repeated.

There's about 20 plants.

-Geraniums, choisyas, roses, hydrangeas...

-Aquilegias.

Aquilegias. And you see them everywhere you look.

Then there's the occasional spark, likes that blue mecanopsis.

So anybody could create this garden.

All these plants want to grow in our gardens.

Yeah, it doesn't depend on choice plants, it depends on lovely,

floating, flowing design,

with lovely mixes of easy plants

that are not going to let you down

and the odd delicious delicacy.

The third and final compartment of Dawn's garden

is her Victorian sanctuary.

-Look at this!

-Wow, my goodness me.

Oh, this is high Victoriana, isn't it?

And a lovely Victorian sort of hideaway.

Oh, this is heaven.

Laurel... Look at that pond!

And look at your man up the end there, big happy gunnera.

An enormous gunnera.

With six...eight-foot leaves.

That has to be in water.

It has to be in water! It couldn't be that big.

Well, I've seen them grow... If it's damp, it will grow.

Maybe they dug out and they lined it with plastic.

Well, I want to see how it's done because I want to copy that.

-Just hang on a minute.

-She's going up the creek without a paddle!

I tell you what this is, it's heavenly, cool, damp pie.

-Dr Livingstone, I presume!

-Listen, listen.

Feel that. Feel that, it's lovely.

Lovely, lovely damp stuff.

Lovely damp stuff. No wonder it's doing so well.

Now, Diarmuid, what do you think of these containers?

I think they are equally hideous.

Well, you are a naughty boy...

but I agree.

Do you know, you just realise the importance of where you place seats.

The view that's framed up there, through the tunnel,

it is pure delight.

You know, Helen, this isn't the type of garden I design

or I plant or I kind of create in my head.

-It is, though, the type of garden that I absolutely love.

-Me too.

Well, here we go!

At last it is time for Dawn to be put out of her misery.

It takes real imagination to see a spot that is completely bare

and have a vision of how it's going to turn out.

I made a few big mistakes at the start -

buying a beautiful plant I loved

and putting it where I wanted it,

then realising you have to look at those plants and see where

they want to be and the position, the planting, all of that.

Something would sit and wither at the side here

and it would be wonderful over here.

So just sitting and saying, if you're doing a garden,

go and sit and find out where the birds are,

where the sun is, where the damp patch is,

where the dry patch is, and then love that

and work with that and then you get a wonderful garden.

-Beautifully said, beautifully said.

-Thank you.

Dawn, have you got any tips for people starting

with a relatively big garden and an empty palette?

Slugs and snails love it here

and when I pick 20 or 100 out of the hostas,

I think they're gone and of course they're not.

What do you actually do about the slugs and snails?

I actually get a clove, a full clove of garlic,

-put it in a large pot of water...

-A clove or a whole bulb?

-Sorry, a bulb.

-A whole bulb.

-A bulb, sorry.

..and set it in a big pot of water and let it bubble and simmer

and get lovely, thick garlicky water

and put it down and the slugs and snails don't like that.

Do they die or do they run off and hide?

They don't like it, I think they disappear.

-I don't see any dead ones.

-That's incredibly useful advice

because it isn't putting out any poison

that would be damaging to your dogs.

Brilliant, absolutely brilliant.

Diarmuid and Helen are going to be judging

which of three gardens is best

at the end of the programme.

The next is in Carrowdore, just outside Greyabbey in County Down.

Richard and Beverly Britton have transformed an old quarry

into three acres of fairy woodland trails.

These surround a stunning central strip of lawn,

leading to a pond they created out of the quarry,

which provided stone for airfields in World War II.

It's been quite a lot of work just to clear the site

and make it halfway presentable.

Since buying the site 15 years ago,

civil servant Richard and teacher Beverly

have tried hard to make use of local materials.

And there's an old dump across the road from us

and the dump owner allowed us to go in and scavenge,

and get various bits of rock and other bits and pieces out of it.

Which earned us the nickname Stig of the Dump from some of our neighbours!

Richard is particularly proud

of salvaging a collection of wrought iron gates.

We got them fixed and again painted them white.

Just as a point of interest within the garden.

You're going from one part of the garden into another part,

it's nice just to go through the gate.

Beverly is the muscle of the team.

We had a lot of natural stone and I like building the stone walls.

I've the biggest biceps in Greyabbey at the moment!

And she has an eye for a bargain.

We do tend to go to some of the local places

and look at the reduced section.

But the biggest cost of all is the time the garden demands.

We spend a few hours every Saturday and every Sunday in the garden,

and then evenings as well in the summertime.

So what will Diarmuid and Helen make our Stigs of the Dump?

I hope they don't slip on the brick steps!

Hopefully they'll be kind to us. At the end of the day, just enjoy it.

Hopefully!

Straightaway, Diarmuid sees something he doesn't like -

the driveway.

It is pure magic, Helen, it is a theatrical set.

I have rarely seen such a nice view in a garden

-but I want to change it.

-I knew you would, I knew you would!

I tell you why, I'd get rid of the driveway.

I don't know what I'd do, maybe grass,

and I would have a formal rectangular lawn there,

wonderful borders on either side.

Maybe the only formal part of this garden.

So you've got the incredible formality in the wilderness.

-Carved out.

-Yes, carved out!

The garden features thousands of purple and white foxgloves,

mostly grown from seed by Beverly.

I have to just tell you one thing about this foxglove.

You know people always want white ones, rather than mixed,

although I loved mixed.

To tell which the white ones are when they're seedlings,

you simply take one of the leaves off

and look at the back of the leaf.

And if it is completely white and completely without pink,

you're going to get a white plant.

-Wow!

-So you can make a whole group of white foxgloves.

So if you look at the back of the pink ones, there will be

a faint flush of pink. Do you see down at the bottom, there?

So that is all white on the mid rib at the back

and all pink on the mid rib at the back.

So you know when they're very small seedlings

what colour they are going to be.

Wherever you go, one colour jumps out at you.

This garden, it seems, has a bad case of the blues.

Blue paint is everywhere in this garden,

but do you know where it comes from?

It comes from La Majorelle garden in Marrakech,

the Yves Saint Laurent garden.

-That's right. But how did it get to these islands?

-I would like to know.

Somebody recreated La Majorelle at the Chelsea Flower Show in 1993.

I went along, was about to do a television show, used it,

stole the idea, used it in a garden and Titchmarsh picked it up.

So now you're knocking it flat?

I am knocking it flat anyway, cos I don't think it works.

I was wrong, Titchmarsh was wrong, Yves Saint Laurent, he got it right.

-He got it right because he had different light.

-He had taste!

And taste is an issue for Helen

when it comes to Richard's recycled white gates.

Well, the white there is jumping out at me, the white of the gate.

We don't need to be invited in that gate.

The trail does that, the ferns do that.

The wild wood is asking us in.

Do you know, if you gave me a day, a skip,

I could improve this garden just by removing things.

And if you give me £100, I will remove HIM!

This water is absolutely beautiful. You can't see a sniff of the edge.

You can't see any plastic or anything like that.

All the water lilies are in flower.

It's so beautiful and so enchanting,

except for that red thing, which to me means pure suburbia.

The most unique aspect of the garden

is to be found in the fairyland forest.

Well, this is just heaven.

Just the feel of it.

To walk on this with bare feet must be wonderfully cool.

-Well, this is a moss garden.

-This is wonderful.

In the Orient, this would be highly prized.

This is so heavenly.

-Heaven, except I see another Titchmarsh.

-I think you do.

You know, Diarmuid, I think it would be awfully nice without this path.

Yes.

Yeah, it doesn't need it.

The paths are lined with Beverly's handbuilt dry stone walls.

But Helen and Diarmuid aren't sure about them.

-Oh...

-Is the problem with this...

is it because it is a bit too higgledy-piggledy? Do we need it?

No need for all these stone walls.

This is a rustic woodland, it's been carved out of a woodland.

Have you ever seen a nicer tree than this oak?

So therefore you don't need to define the space around it,

it's almost sinful.

Do you know what the point of these bridges were?

What was the point about them?

It's an oriental design, from Chinese and then Japanese gardens.

The point was they were quite steep walking up

so you stopped to catch your breath

and you looked right and left and admired the view,

-and then you walked down carefully.

-Excellent.

Well, who lives here? What sort of person lives here?

The king of the fairies.

And the queen of the fairies.

They're not afraid of hard work.

They have explored the best that a rather difficult site had to offer.

It's absolutely heavenly.

But they used to live in suburbia.

And maybe they learned it

from watching bad television gardening programmes,

-such as...

-What are you trying to say?!

Maybe they learned it from that.

-What are you trying to say, Helen Dillon?

-Well, possibly.

And perhaps if they hadn't seen

any bad television gardening programmes,

-they wouldn't have done all that.

-Oh, go away, would you?!

-Nervous?

-Looking forward to this.

Finally, it's time to meet the owners.

Lovely to meet you.

Utterly enchanted with the garden.

99.8% of it.

And how do you make that wonderful green moss?

It's just sort of growing naturally.

I think by strimming

and then blowing the leaves off on a regular basis,

it's just growing naturally

and it is very pretty and it's a lovely green colour.

We feel you have really gone with what likes to grow here,

and you have made the best of what likes to grow here.

And you've repeated plants, and that settles the eye.

It does, it's beautifully settled.

One thing, we didn't terribly like the blue, was one of the things.

Who was the fan of Alan Titchmarsh?

We've been watching Ground Force on a series link in the other room!

You were right!

Maybe you've introduced notes of suburbia into this place

that shouldn't be here.

The stonework, also, what do you like about that?

It gives me something to do.

And I like jigsaw puzzles

and it creates a bit of a boundary to divide the garden...

-Different parts of the garden.

-..but also keep it together,

if that makes sense.

On the other hand, if you hadn't done it in areas...

-You needed to do it to begin with.

-..you wouldn't have created that picture.

But then now it's matured, some of those woodland areas are heaven,

but to my eye, one might take some of the stones away.

Our final garden is also in the countryside,

this time near Kells in County Antrim.

The garden has been created around a river and a stunning modern home.

Both garden and house have been masterminded by the owner,

architect Jane Burnside, with low maintenance in mind.

My husband and I both work full-time and I have two teenage sons and,

well, they're not that enthusiastic about garden maintenance.

But they do help.

So with, you know, with that in mind,

we had to make the garden practical.

So the woodland area's all barked and a membrane down,

so I can deal with the weeds with herbicides.

As an architect, Jane is very conscious

that the house and garden should work together.

Now, with changes in technology,

you can get that connection between inside and outside.

So it becomes even more important

that when you are sitting at your table

and looking out at your garden,

that you're looking out at something.

I like having my coffee break out on the big oak logs.

You get the sound of the water, you get the morning sun there

and if I'm lucky, my three wild ducks will come and join me.

So, is Jane looking forward to a visit from our two

horticultural heroes?

I think Diarmuid will probably like the more contemporary side.

But would probably have wanted to be much more extravagant.

And Helen would probably like the more traditional side, and all

the sort of luscious tropical feel that we've created there.

That would be my guess.

Well, let's find out.

I love the surrounding trees.

A very contemporary home.

I find this wonderfully rural out there,

while this, I find the planting a bit...

-I hesitate to say this, a bit kind of roundabouty.

-It is, and yet...

Hold on, hold on, hold on.

-This is my deadly enemy.

-Absolutely awful. Awful.

-Horrible stuff.

And you can just imagine the kind of landscaper

who goes up to the house and says,

"Madam, I can get rid of all these weeds for you, no trouble at all."

Spread down this horrible plastic stuff

and then you spread this on top,

which won't work properly because it's not in contact with the ground.

And it's too dry.

You cannot avoid seeing it. Look at it, how ugly it is.

It takes away the illusion. You can see it everywhere coming up.

It's that whole thing, what people want, low-maintenance gardening,

-soulless gardening.

-And if you've got dogs, particularly,

when a dog goes to the loo, the stuff sits on the surface forever.

So first impressions are not great.

But very soon, things start looking up.

Immediately you get over here,

-you're welcomed to sit down on these wonderful benches.

-I love this.

-I love this bench.

-And that's so pretty.

Look at the gunnera, the lysichiton, the hostas.

And this beautiful water course and the ducks.

But then you get over into suburbia, if you look there.

Yeah, that's terribly depressing.

There is some really choice planting there. Judicious planting.

-Here it is just...

-I mean,

the scale of what's over there is perfect for the landscape.

But this is spotty-dotty.

It is a mixed bag, isn't it?

-That convolvulus has got on the box...

-I have to say,

-I think the convolvulus is brilliant.

-Yeah.

Beautiful specimen, lovely, silvery leaves.

Rare to see then that nice.

This is a plant that must have full sun.

It must have good drainage. It wants sun all day.

It doesn't just want two hours in the morning,

it wants from six to eight hours.

-What have you found?

-And let me explain why.

Have a look at that leaf.

And what makes that leaf silver or grey

is that it is covered in millions of tiny hairs.

Millions of tiny hairs.

And that indicates that it comes from a very sunny place,

because the hairs stop water evaporation.

And they protect it from hot sun.

So that is a clue that this is a sun-loving plant,

comes from the Mediterranean -

on no account shove it under a tree because it won't look like that.

Really, really good.

The river bank is crowded with healthy ferns, skunk cabbage

and gunnera.

-Nice view from here.

-Yeah...

You're not sure?

It's my least favourite aspect of the house.

No, I've suddenly seen the reflection. Isn't that rather good?

-Yes.

-And then we've got this lovely primula here.

People think of primulas as little things.

And little beautiful things, sweet things that you see in fields

-in early spring.

-Exactly, March.

But it's a water-loving primula and when it is fully out,

it will be up to about here.

Beautiful primrose yellow.

So if you've got a really damp waterside place,

this would be blissfully happy, and naturalise itself.

This is a true species. If you went to the Himalayas,

you'd be finding that precise plant

growing in the wild, exactly like that.

Compared to most plants in this garden,

you've got off very lightly!

HELEN LAUGHS

The other side of the house shows the full scale of Jane's vision.

What I love here is the transition

between the plain, large terrace there

and then instead of going straight into the grass,

it has that beautiful, beautiful panel with the white edge.

I absolutely love it.

-And the cloud of sage...

-Beautifully done.

-Purple sage around that.

Beautifully done.

-It's slightly...slightly Ibiza-like, isn't it?

-Is it?

-It's slightly stylish...

-It's certainly stylish.

And slightly cold for our climate.

Yeah, but when the sun comes out, it will be absolutely perfect.

Yeah, but therein lies the problem.

-What do you think about the birches so close to the house?

-I love them.

You have to be slightly brave because the roots of birch

are surface, some of them go along the surface.

They will probably invade some of that lawn in time

and they may even lift some paving.

I still think it's worth doing.

-I think they're exquisite.

-Exquisite.

-What is my issue here, then?

-Yes, what is the issue?

-Get your issue first and then start arguing.

-It's too show-housey.

-Too show-housey?

-Too perfect.

-I think it's lovely-housey.

100 metres from the front of the house,

Jane has managed to hang on to two magnificent old oaks.

The secret to this whole landscape

are these bowls that have been carved out.

But you see, it's so clever. As you know but not everybody else does,

if you change the level of soil around a tree, you kill it,

because it rots the bark, kills the tree, ultimately, this beautiful oak.

Therefore it's so clever to have made that shallow bowl

for the tree to live in, which hasn't affected the level around the tree,

and then raised up the soil well out here, which doesn't matter.

And it's just perfect because it looks beatable,

apart from being perfect for keeping the tree alive.

Yeah, and it is such an interesting, subtle indentation on the landscape,

-but so welcoming when you see it.

-Isn't it?

But what sort of person do you think lives here, Diarmuid?

This house screams design.

-Doesn't it just?

-Every inch is planned.

Did you say they might be an architect?

I think there's an architect.

I think there's an architect somewhere here.

There are A's for Architect everywhere. Let's go and meet them.

-Hello, Helen.

-Hello, Jane.

-I'm very, very pleased to meet you.

-Ditto.

-Hi, Jane, Diarmuid.

-You're welcome, you're welcome.

-Thank you very much.

This is a great treat, particularly the house

-and the birches planted among it. I adore it.

-Oh, well, thank you.

Thank you. I'm very pleased with the birches.

It blends the house and the garden quite nicely together.

Sorry, I was saying I absolutely adore that plain panel of grass

there, with the white edge. I think it is heavenly.

-Well, that's my swimming pool.

-Is it?

This is my wee bit of Ibiza here.

So instead of having the perfect infinity edge swimming pool,

-I've got the Irish version, which is...

-The lawn?

-The infinity lawn.

We love the natural planting around and the introduced trees.

-Some of the other planting jars, we feel.

-Oh, right, OK.

-The royal "we".

Look, a lovely smile!

What a lovely smile!

It's just so beautiful, this bit...

-Uh-huh?

-It doesn't quite go with some of the plants,

say, at the entrance as you come down the drive, there. They look...

-sort of like they don't really belong here.

-Yes, well,

the bit coming down the drive, the peninsula bed as we call it,

I love it because when I drive in

I've got this carpetty, woodlandy colour.

When you mention woodland, I think of ferns popping up

and maybe some native bluebells and whatever, not these traffic lights,

kind of, you know, on and off blinking at you.

Whereas your background, the water course, and here...

-It is so beautiful.

-I am in heaven.

-Oh, well, I'm glad you love it.

Absolutely, absolutely love it.

So, three fantastic gardens that anyone would be proud of.

But which one will Diarmuid and Helen decide is the best?

Using classic judging criteria

of design, planting and good gardening practice,

Diarmuid and Helen will try to come up with a winner.

First, Jane's contemporary slice of Ibiza.

Here was somebody with a vision.

She reinvented an Irish cottage

and created a garden from Ibiza to match it.

And then she contrasted it with the natural landscape beyond.

The planting, unfortunately,

was the aspect of this garden that really let it down for me.

I'm afraid it was very Parks Department.

What about the second garden,

Richard and Beverly's fairyland, with splashes of Titchmarsh blue?

I loved stepping into their world, delving deep into their world.

There were areas that weren't quite there for me.

I think if you're going to be that good, you can

do something with that driveway.

And I also think some of the meandering stone walls,

we just didn't need them. There were so many beautiful glades.

It was beautiful without them.

I mean, bearing in mind that they started from nothing,

I think they are doing extraordinarily well.

Finally, they considered

Dawn's multi-chambered Hillsborough paradise.

I absolutely loved it.

I loved the way it was all hung on the series of arches.

I loved the excitement of entering one room after another

and having different things.

Well, I just thought this was the most perfect garden.

But there was one extraordinary thing which

swings it for me in Dawn's favour.

When we went down towards the end of the garden

and we saw sight of that gunnera and you dug through the moist mulch,

-and that's what was feeding that.

-She really knows what she's doing.

She knows what she's doing. Well done, Dawn.

So, congratulations, then, to our winner, Dawn Mitchell,

edging it against some very high quality competition.

Oh, wonderful, thank you!

Well done to Dawn.

We've really enjoyed seeing some more wonderful gardens.

-See you next time.

-See you.

-Goodbye.