Garden Studios

The Irish designer, notorious for his spats with other big names at RHS Chelsea – let alone his non-conformist creations – is now an envoy for the Young Gardener of the Year competition, run in association with the Prince’s Foundation For Building Community.

“I’m very enthusiastic about it. It’s my best role,” said Diarmuid, who can be one of the vital judges. “If i will get the opportunity to encourage and encourage and spot what the following generation are doing it’s the foremost fantastic thing.”

Like other celebrity gardeners, Diarmuid took offence at David Cameron’s dismissal of gardeners in 2010: “He compared horticulture, as a skill, with litter picking, and in case you have done three years in college this is quite difficult to take.”

But Diarmuid did criticise some school-leavers for his or her attitudes: “With this complete X Factor thing, such a lot of youth just want all kinds of factors that aren’t the simplest thing to attempt for,” he said.

‘They want world celebrity but there’s a big deficit with regards to skills – and especially horticultural skills.”

Diarmuid has come a ways since high profile rows with Bunny Guinness and Andy Sturgeon: he hopes to be escorting Prince Charles across the students’ winning gardens on the show in Earls Court.

As well as encouraging the scholars as they build their gardens, and being one of the vital judges, Diarmuid may also hold seminars for the general public.

“I’ll be taking a romp through garden history, showing how the gardens we create today had been influenced by 2,000 years of gardening history,” he says, “looking in any respect the pre-eminent styles leading as much as what we create in our own front and back yards.”

Diarmuid specialises in contemporary garden designs, and his talks will feature a few of the gardens he have been involved with inside the UK and other countries recently, for instance Frimley Park Hospital, near Farnbrough, in Surrey.

“We have done various hospital gardens recently,” he says, yet he has no plans to construct a show garden at RHS Chelsea this year: “You need to save up for that,” he laughed. “Glorious Goodwood is much more likely.”

The Ideal Home Show is at London’s Earls Court from March 14 to 30 and lines other celebrity experts together with designer Laurence Llewelyn Bowen and television architect George Clarke.

Tickets cost £12 ahead online at www.idealhomeshow.co.uk, where there’s also a regular timetable and additional information about which days Diarmuid would be on the show to offer his seminars.