When Peter O’Mahony isn’t sinking his studs into the world’s greatest rugby pitches, he’s tending to the pristine grass on his own lawn. His love of gardening was brought to international attention during the World Cup when his mother, Caroline, held up a sign declaring she was watering his lawn while he was gone.
So the question on everyone’s lips is: was it true? Did she water his lawn? “She did not,” he laughs. “She absolutely did nothing in my garden. I don’t know how she ended up with that sign, to be honest with you. I must get her doing some watering now after that.”
The Munster and Ireland flanker’s interest in gardening is not a recent fad. As a child, he loved to help the gardener when he visited his grandmother Maura Conroy in Cork’s Richmond Hill. “They were my earliest memories of spending time in the garden,” he recalls. “Simple stuff, but I remember it being very enjoyable.”
His grandmother died last year, but he has something to remember her by in his garden – a Japanese maple tree. “I moved it from her garden a few years ago. It has taken a while to settle in, but this is the first year it has really bloomed nicely.”
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The garden was one of the features that drew him and his wife Jessica to their home in Blackrock, Co Cork, 10 years ago. “We used to walk by the house a lot and say if it ever came up for sale we’d love to buy it, and all of a sudden it did.” Since then, they have been gradually redeveloping the house and garden.
“It was a beautiful old cottage garden, a bit wilder than now, but lots of lovely stuff,” he recalls. When they moved in, he started with the lawn, naturally. “Some people find cutting grass a chore. I don’t. I enjoy it,” he says. As a child he mowed lawns for neighbours, including former Ireland and Munster rugby player Frankie Sheahan. “He used to give me a few bits of gear instead of money. I was delighted with the gear and chatting with Frankie at the time was great fun.”
Taking on a mature garden of this size – about 200sq m (2,150sq ft) – was a daunting task, and on reflection he feels he rushed into the work. He would advise anyone in a similar situation to wait a season or two and watch how the garden grows. “But I’m quite impatient to be honest, so that was never going to happen.”
Many people are now asking him for advice since he began posting about the garden on Instagram (@peteomahony), where he has amassed more than 300,000 followers. A video of him trimming the sides of the lawn on TikTok (@peteromahony6) has been viewed 5.3 million times. His Annabelle hydrangeas with their giant mophead flowers have garnered much envy. “They have taken over, to be honest with you,” he says. “I didn’t realise how big they were going to get, but it looks well in summer, that kind of block planting.”
But not everything succeeded. “I love wisteria, but I struggle with it. I tried it a couple of times in pots, but I think that’s a bad idea because it’s a hungry, vigorous plant that needs to be in the ground, so that failed a couple times,” he says. “I’ve let a couple things die, watering wise, unfortunately, being away.”
Some of his plans for the garden have been held back by his heavy training schedule and travel demands. “I’d love to grow more food, but I don’t have the time at the moment,” he says. “You need to be on top of stuff all the time, but I need to be able to drop things and go for a week or two at a time. And during the summer things get crazy when you are growing food. I’ll definitely get stuck into it more when I finish playing.”
But he still finds time to grow potatoes, beetroot and salad leaves. “We have some raspberries and other berries that come back every year. They need to be cut in spring and try to get them picked before the birds get them. And we have a line of apple and pear trees, male and female that pollinate themselves. Trees are foolproof once you give them the bit of pruning that they need.”
He says the garden is starting to mature nicely now. “I was lucky to be able to put some mature shrubbery and plants in there that gave it some structure quite quickly.” It made a perfect backdrop when he and Jessica decided to get married in the garden during the Covid pandemic. “It was lovely. We had our immediate family in the garden and getting it ready gave me something to focus on.”
While he’s happy to share his knowledge with other gardeners, he is also keen to learn from the experts. “I’ve always watched Gardeners’ World and I enjoy that. I like Adam Frost and Monty Don obviously is very enjoyable to watch,” he says. “I used to spend a lot of time in west Cork with my uncle who worked as a greenkeeper and grew a lot of his own stuff. He definitely taught me a lot.”
And judging by the videos he posts on Instagram, his three children are now learning from him. Their youngest child, Ralph, seems to have inherited his father’s love of lawncare and is often seen pushing a toy lawn mower. “We have lots of songbirds and the kids have their books on recognising the different types of birds. Theo is definitely into the wildlife side of things. He’s very interested in bugs and bees and birds and fishing,” he says. “Indie then is very much into the neat and tidy stuff, keeping things where they should be. And Ralph just runs around trying to break everything up. If they want to get stuck into it, they’re more than capable of digging holes and damaging things.”
Speaking of digging holes, his Ireland team-mate Bundee Aki had been threatening to damage his prized lawn for a long time. So when O’Mahony hosted a party after the Six Nations victory and Bundee grabbed a spade, he had good reason to worry. “Bundee put a few divot holes in it,” he says. “I do two or three days on the lawn every spring and autumn to level it and reseed it, so I knew that was coming up and I wasn’t too bothered. But I told him if he went near the flowers or the shrubs there would have been serious trouble.”
When he first started posting about his garden on social media, a few team-mates seized the opportunity for some slagging. “But now a lot of the fellas who were taking the piss a bit are all of a sudden looking for tips on what to put where or should I put this in that pot, that sort of thing. There’s a lot of advice being requested.”
With all eyes on his retirement plans now that he’s in his last season with Munster, will gardening play a role in that post-rugby future? “I certainly have plans,” he says. “I don’t know about a career, but I certainly have an interest in working on that side of things.”
“I’ve always been lucky that I’ve done something that I have a huge passion for, and I have been paid well to do it so I don’t want to get stuck into something that I’m not very passionate about. I’m lucky that I am passionate about this. I’ll definitely do something in that space, but you’ll have to wait and see.”
Watch out, Monty Don. There’s a new gardener in town.
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