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Greatest Gardens

Who has the best private garden in Northern Ireland? Diarmuid Gavin and Helen Dillon are on the trail to find out.

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.

Episode 1

This week Diarmuid and Helen are in Counties Down and Antrim. They cast their expert eyes over a stunning compartmentalised paradise behind a Georgian terrace house in Hillsborough, a reclaimed quarry in Carrowdore and an ambitious river landscape in the shadow of a stunning modern house in rural Antrim. Which will Diarmuid and Helen like the best?

Episode 2

This week our two favourite experts are let loose in County Londonderry and North Antrim. They enjoy a Jane Austen style Georgian garden in Derry, a bijou Islamic style sanctuary in Portstewart and great lakeside splashes of colour near Glenwherry. Which will Diarmuid and Helen like the best?

Episode 3

Diarmuid and Helen encounter an astonishing mixed bag of great private gardens in County Down. A massive estate on the banks of Strangford Lough, with a 200 year-old walled garden provides the starting point, followed by an eccentric garden dominated by Alpine rock plants behind a modest house in Bessbrook. Finally they visit Castlewellan, where they encounter a large, mature garden peppered with lots of comic touches. Which will Diarmuid and Helen like the best?