I am on the brink of getting a greenhouse for the first time, and I am hugely excited. It has taken years to reach this point, for years I’ve imagined what that space would be like in my garden, and it’s about to happen.
In the early months of the pandemic when everything slowed down and life felt suspended. While many people were baking and trying new hobbies, I started to rethink how I wanted to live. I realised I was tired of airports and of feeling as though my life revolved around flights and schedules. I wanted a more grounded routine, something steadier and rooted in the garden.
I imagined a different pace: mornings outdoors, hands in soil, growing the dramatic, jungly plants I have always loved. Tree ferns, hardy bananas and the bold foliage that makes me feel as though I am gardening somewhere tropical. Alongside that, I wanted fruit and vegetables. Tomatoes, glossy peppers, aubergines, perhaps even a peach tree and a vine.
The greenhouse will find its home in the middle of the garden, in the sunniest, most open spot. I thought long and hard about what type and style would be appropriate. It needs to sit comfortably beside the architecture of my house, which although is part of a housing estate I’ve adapted the house with the addition of a verandah – it now looks like something from the deep south of the United States.
My history with the garden is rather inglorious. We’d move from busy London, acquired an enormous mortgage for this ‘house for life’ and began to think what the garden should look like. It wasn’t an unimportant factor…I’d spend the better part of two decades deciding what others should do with their plots and now I had to do the same for my own.
Initially it didn’t go well….I was making TV programmes around the world, rarely home. Our garden became a dumping plot for leftovers. Leftover plants from gardens I’d created at the Chelsea Flower Show. And leftover bits of paving, scrap steel and all sorts of other bits and pieces acquired by this garden hoarder.
Eventually the newspapers did a job on me….climbing up a nearby hill and with their long lenses exposing my Wicklow dump yard!
Eventually, and I mean eventually – I developed a plan! This started with finding veranda 12 cast iron pillars in a salvage yard. We had to build a temporary road through a neighbours field to get them in and that was accompanied by all sorts of drama.
But the pillars were wonderful, a plaque on them announcing they’d been made in Bristol in 1895. Now in 2025 they support a deck and a roof, I’ve replaced all the windows upstairs with doors which allow us to wander in and out so every room opens directly onto the garden. Then I started planting, climbers, trees, ferns and colour. And in the nearly 20 years since I haven’t stopped! It’s like a jungle out there!
The greenhouse needs to feel part of this setting. Same style, same sense of craft. That led me to Hampton, whose greenhouses are built here, with an understanding of timber, joinery and proportion. Their Causeway model was exactly right, and in the right white it will sit naturally alongside the veranda pillars.
I want the greenhouse to be more than a workspace. I wanted it to be somewhere pleasant to spend time. During the pandemic I began sea-swimming at sunrise, and I often came home cold, wrapped in a dryrobe. So, I want to grow plants in the structure and also take a hot shower! In amongst the plants!
Five years ago, I began to plan for this in earnest. I dug out a plot, laid a foundation, put some heaters piping through it and laid cheerfully coloured encaustic cement tiles on top, installed a drain for my shower water and began to save for my greenhouse that dreams are made of!
In the meantime, the terrace became my pot terrace, filled with containers of trees, shrubs and flowers. It was a place to sit, drink coffee and picture the greenhouse that would eventually stand there.
Now the time has come. The planning is done, and the build is about to start.
I already have a year of growing mapped out, written in notes, sketches and scraps of paper. This greenhouse marks a shift in my life: a new pace, a new focus, and a place where plants and ideas can grow side by side.
It also represents something personal. Reaching a moment where I can create this space, enjoy it and let it shape my days feels significant. It will be a warm, sheltered spot to work, read, listen to music and watch the garden change outside.
I can picture it clearly: sitting inside, looking out through the glass, watching the next part of my life unfold.
And so it begins: a greenhouse of my own, and a new chapter I’m looking forward to sharing!
Diarmuid Gavin is brand ambassador for Hampton Greenhouses.