The 61-year-old Dubliner, a former Chelsea Flower Show gold medal winner, also opened up about a family tragedy in which his five-year-old brother Conor — who was a year younger than him — was killed when he was hit by a car while they were on their way to school.
And in tonight’s Virgin Media Living With Lucy show, Diarmuid also remembers his mother-in-law, the late journalist and gossip columnist Terry Keane, as a “totally brilliant, dangerous, mad, creative” and kind-hearted woman.
Recalling his early years, Diarmuid says: “School-wise I didn’t enjoy that part of life and family-wise it was pretty difficult growing up at certain times. I would have been regarded as conventionally dim.
“People didn’t think I had intelligence. The school didn’t suit me, the exams didn’t suit me. I had belief in myself so I really didn’t care, but certainly nothing was expected of me.
Studious
“I grew up the second of five kids with an awful lot of love, but challenges too. The main challenge was we lost our brother when there was an accident when we were going to school one day…and I was there.
“It’s hard to grow up with grief and such extreme grief. I have to talk about it because Conor did live and he was a little boy, a little brat getting up to all sorts of tricks and up to no good and everything like that.
“He was great and his story isn’t my story to tell, but to ignore it is to deny him. And I’m not going to deny that he lived and he was a brat,” he smiles.
Lucy Kennedy hangs out with Diarmuid Gavin
“As a result [of Conor’s death] childhood wasn’t great. There was huge love from parents and everything like that, but childhood was not great for me. I didn’t enjoy it. Everybody worried for me, how I was affected by it [the accident]… and I wasn’t in a creative environment. I was in a studious, hard-working environment, so I didn’t fit.
“But amazing parents that they could carry on. Mum is made of incredibly strong stuff.”
Diarmuid, who became a hugely successful gardener, says he feels fortunate to have found his niche in life.
“I got lucky and I got to do what I loved doing and that was an unlikely scenario for me growing up,” Diarmuid says. “So for it to happen is something that I really appreciate because I wasn’t expected to amount to anything.”
Chatting with Lucy, Diarmuid becomes emotional as he recalls his father’s pride at what he had achieved as a gardener.
Lucy Kennedy hangs out with Diarmuid Gavin
News in 90 Seconds – October 26th 2025
“Dad got to see everything that happened to me and Dad revelled in it,” he says. “He loved it all. When he was in hospital on his final days in Tallaght they were trying to judge if he was with us or not, so a nurse pointed at me and said to Dad, ‘Who is that?’ And Dad said, ‘Our brightest star.’
“They [his parents] were amazed that I found my way. They were absolutely amazed.”
Speaking about meeting his wife, Justine, with whom he has a daughter, Diarmuid says it happened while he was doing a gardening job for her mother, Terry Keane, who was then a social diarist with the Sunday Independent.
Terry’s mother lived with her and Justine recalls that she played the role of matchmaker by inviting Diarmuid to dinner one night. “Mum and granny both adored Diarmuid,” she says.
Diarmuid says: “Justine is a solid rock. She never believed in any of it [his celebrity gardener status], never was amused by the whole thing… in a way she had seen all of that with her own mum and isn’t interested.”
Homeless
Asked about his mother-in-law, he says: “She was brilliant, utterly brilliant. She was Terry Keane, she was a well-known journalist and gossip columnist and fashion writer. But I’ll tell you, she wasn’t only that. She rang me one day and she said, ‘Diarmuid I’m worried, I’m in the house, I’m on my own, I think somebody is living in the shed.’
Lucy meets Diarmuid’s wife Justine
“And so I arranged that a friend of mine would call down and he did the following day and the two of them went out to the shed, which was right up against the house. And indeed there was all the signs of somebody homeless living in the shed. Sean [his friend] said, ‘Do you want me to put locks on it?’ ‘No,’ she said, ‘If he needs the shed, he needs the shed.’ That was her. She was unreal — totally brilliant, dangerous, mad, creative… I was digging the garden and Buzz Aldrin, the man who had been on the moon, walked past to dinner. It was everybody,” he says of her circle.
Gavin recalls that Terry used to lend him her car when he was a struggling gardener. “I had a deal with my mother-in-law that she’d let me use her car and I’d have to drop her in to the Sunday Independent every morning by ten and collect her at 5pm. I’d have a ton of granite in the back and she’d never say a word. But if I was a minute late there would be hell to pay,” he laughs.
Diarmuid’s dreams included designing a garden for the White House, and he has created a model of it in his workshop.
Chatting with the Sunday World, Diarmuid is clearly no fan of the current president and his administration, but says if he got a call to create a White House garden he’d jump at the opportunity.
“I will, because I’m the ultimate pragmatist,” he laughs.
Living with Lucy is on Virgin Media One tonight at 9pm and on Virgin Media Play.
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