BRITAIN: The Irish-born BBC TV gardener Diarmuid Gavin picked up an award for his design at the Chelsea Flower Show yesterday as he found himself embroiled in yet another row at the prestigious event.
After reportedly falling out with the designer of a neighbouring show garden, Gavin was attacked for "lying" over sponsorship arrangements for his display.
Gavin admitted on his BBC TV show Diarmuid's Big Adventure that he falsely told Chelsea Flower Show organisers, the Royal Horticultural Society, he had sponsorship lined up. But this did not stop Gavin receiving a silver-gilt medal for his creation, which contains thousands of spherical lollipops in bright colours.
Fellow designer Bunny Guinness also won a silver-gilt award for her garden, which lies next to Gavin's. The pair reportedly fell out over the height of a wall, and apparently engaged in some verbal manure-slinging over the garden fence.
Now Mr Stephen Bennett, the show director, has given vent to his fury over Gavin's false sponsorship claims. The Times of London quoted Mr Bennett as saying: "We are very cross about his lying about sponsorship. He said he had a sponsor and he didn't. "We had 60 applications for this year's 21 big gardens. We had to turn down 40," he said.
"If someone's not sponsored we might have had a gap. Remember we had to turn down 10 fully funded gardens." To make matters worse, the official catalogue lists his creation - A Colourful Suburban Eden - as being sponsored by The National Lottery.
But it was eventually sponsored by Camelot, the Lottery organisers. A spokeswoman for the RHS said the application process was now being reviewed to see whether tighter checks on sponsors are needed. "As far as we were concerned there were no indications at the time from Diarmuid Gavin that anything was amiss. We were aware that negotiations were proceeding. He gave us names of sponsors that he said he had in the bag. The RHS took it on good faith.
She said many at the show had concerns that Gavin's garden would not be ready for the judges. "Diarmuid is quite a character. He got no award for his last garden at Chelsea in 1996 because it was not finished in time.
"Yesterday the judges were due to come round at 8 a.m. and at 7.30 a.m. he still had all hands to the pump putting the final touches," she said.
But Mr Mark Robinson, operations director at Diarmuid Gavin Designs, said: "When we applied we were absolutely confident that we had a sponsor on board.
"Camelot came on board at just the right time when the other \ was falling through," he said.
He added that the catalogue was a simple "mistake".
"The catalogue is written so far in advance and I missed it. We all make mistakes, don't we?" - (PA)