Diarmuid Gavin

Also known as the "punk rocker" of contemporary landscaping, Diarmuid Gavin is one of the best known garden designer working in Britain today. After fronting a string of garden makeover shows and appearing as a celebrity guest on the hugely popular BBC series Stricly Come Dancing, he currently enjoys a far higher profile than any of his peers.

But Gavin is much more than a mere TV gardening personality. One of the most exciting landscapers around, he has earned considerable acclaim for his distinctive, bold and radical design work that is seen as a breath of fresh air in the sometimes conservative world of landscape gardening.

Born in 1964, Gavin hails from Dublin, Ireland, where he embarked on a landscaping career after leaving the College of Amenity Horticulture in Glasnevin. He established the Dublin School of Garden Design and set about making a name for himself internationally, winning a medal at the Chelsea Flower Show in 1995. It was here that he was spotted by television producers who picked up on the Dubliner's ingenious use of outdoor space as well as his natural charm and humour.

Over the next few years, Gavin was invited to work on a number of TV projects for many of the major UK channels. His big break came as an expert on the BBC's Home Front and its spin-off series Home Front In The Garden.

Gavin estimates that he has created well over 300 gardens since 1988, averaging around 20 a year. Taking inspiration from the likes of Roberto Burle Marx, his modernist style of landscaping is renowned for its shock value and has drawn comparisons with the artist Damien Hirst.

Bouncing Lottery Ball Garden

Although often highly functional and impressive in their use of small spaces, Gavin's uncompromising designs have proved too radical for some, attracting controversy for their unsettling 'weirdness'.

The biggest clash came at the 2004 Chelsea Flower Show, where Gavin's infamous, silver medal-winning "Bouncing Lottery Ball" design led to a screaming row with rival designer Bunny Guiness and almost resulted in a ban from the Royal Horticultural Society.

Although he has created several gardens that are in the usual contemporary style he's most well known pieces of work will always be his more controversial garden designs, such as the Lottery Ball design. It is always these controversial pieces that have made him stand out from the crowd in the world of landscape designers.

Despite his obsession with the 'new' and the 'modern', however, Gavin claims to be increasingly respectful of traditional styles of gardening, recognizing that "you can't go forward unless you absorb the heritage". Indeed, his own garden is relatively subdued and conventional.