{"id":905850,"date":"2026-09-26T05:44:16","date_gmt":"2026-09-26T05:44:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/905850\/"},"modified":"2026-09-26T05:44:16","modified_gmt":"2026-09-26T05:44:16","slug":"builder-tv-presenter-harrison-gardner-ireland-felt-like-the-most-welcoming-country-id-ever-been-to-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/905850\/","title":{"rendered":"Builder-TV presenter Harrison Gardner: \u2018Ireland felt like the most welcoming country I\u2019d ever been to\u2019 \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the autumn sunshine, Harrison Gardner walks out of his house to move a yellow digger. He\u2019s in the process of installing a biodigester to turn food waste into cooking gas. It\u2019s so cool, he says. These are the things he gets excited about now. The biodigester will be stored in the first building anyone sees coming up the drive to the house he shares with his wife, their two daughters and a ginger cat, so the plan is to make it look beautiful. <\/p>\n

Tall and dark, Gardner\u2019s handsomeness has become a gag on the RT\u00c9 show he presents, Build Your Own Home, where he mentors people undertaking self-build projects. \u201cHe\u2019s got a different hold on the girls,\u201d says one Clare Island resident, arms folded but grinning, as the community awaits his arrival in season two. Cue a shot of a wax-jacketed Gardner strolling up to meet the islanders, who by the end of the episode are claiming him as a descendant of the Pirate Queen Gr\u00e1inne Mhaol, the island\u2019s most famous ruler.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m just a builder,\u201d Gardner often says. He is also an author, TV presenter, podcaster and co-founder of Common Knowledge, the social enterprise skills-sharing centre in Kilfenora, Co Clare. Digger moved and jobs done outside, he makes pour-over coffee and sits down at his kitchen table. <\/p>\n

The 200-year-old stone cottage, a 10-minute drive from Ennistymon, was bought for \u20ac81,000 in 2016 and originally renovated for \u20ac40,000. It\u2019s unlikely Mickey and Mary Mackey, the farmers who once lived here, would recognise the property and its surrounding five acres. Light comes in from triangular windows flush with high ceilings. Lime plastering purposefully ends with a corner to go, exposing the stone walls that first attracted him to the cottage, and buying it. <\/p>\n

Every room is built using a different technique and furnished with flair. In the bathroom, a green velvet chaise longue is squeezed in beside a freestanding tub, and the room can be warmed either by a radiator or a cast-iron stove. Marrying self-sufficiency with the necessities of modern living, Gardner, who hates reading instruction manuals and cares about how things look, calls the ever-evolving house a \u201cmetaphor for his life\u201d.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been a steep rise for this Australian builder, who arrived in Ireland a dozen years ago with two bags of tools and few connections. He\u2019d been on the road for years, but stayed in Ireland because it \u201cfelt like the most welcoming country I\u2019d ever been to, and because there seemed to me like there was so much opportunity for growth\u201d. <\/p>\n

Since then he\u2019s taught hundreds of people through his building-for-beginners courses in Clare, written two books – the latest of which, Heat, Shelter, Water, Food: How to Be Ready for the Unexpected, is published this week – and he is currently filming the third and fourth season of Build Your Own Home. Reviewing the show, The Irish Times called him its \u201cbiggest asset\u201d and \u201cmore chilled than a rainy morning in Cavan in deepest February\u201d. The Sunday Times was slightly cynical, describing him as a \u201chippy in a hardhat\u201d whose onscreen persona is a \u201cpeculiar mix of ganger and guru, chargehand and soothsayer\u201d. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0Broadcaster-builder Harrison Gardner on five things every Irish home should do to prepare for the unexpectedOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Neither review could capture the impact the series is having on some viewers, in the way the handwritten letter Gardner has pinned beside his desk does. The day after an episode called Cian\u2019s Cottage aired, a stranger wrote to thank him for \u201crestoring her faith in humanity\u201d. In the episode, Gardner and a team of others helped Cian Murtagh, a young formerly homeless man, to completely transform his derelict cottage in Sligo into a home.<\/p>\n

In person, Gardner is warm, considerate and open. \u201cIt was never my goal to be on TV, or in the public space at all, but since I was quite young, I\u2019ve always been trying to have a big impact in the world.\u201d That ambition started in Killcare Heights, a coastal suburb in New South Wales, that is \u201cso random\u201d that he rarely mentions it when talking about his childhood. It sounds idyllic. Gardner\u2019s back garden bordered a national park. His primary school, Pretty Beach, was named for a stretch of pristine white sand and surrounded by grasslands hopping with kangaroos. <\/p>\n

\"'I‘I was always very motivated as a kid, always independent, always progressing. Even things like my driver\u2019s licence, I got the first day that I could.’ Photograph: Alan Betson\/The Irish Times<\/p>\n

\"HarrisonHarrison Gardner says he finds small talk hard. He is far more comfortable in the weeds. Photograph: Alan Betson\/The Irish Times <\/p>\n

But he never felt at home. The Gardners were immigrants to Australia<\/a>. His mother was born in Tanzania, his father in England, and the family moved from their base in South Africa<\/a> amid the turbulence of apartheid in the 1980s. The youngest of three boys and the only one born in Australia, Gardner has previously described his childhood as fun rather than conventional, and not one he is trying to recreate for his own children. \u201cI don\u2019t feel particularly Australian,\u201d he says. \u201cI never really connected with white Australian culture. I was really lucky with the nature that I grew up in, but it lacked a lot of diversity and a lot of culture. Which is what I went out looking for.\u201d<\/p>\n

He got his first job at 13, stacking shelves in a greengrocer\u2019s before school, saving up to buy a video camera so he and his friends could stage slapstick stunts for Australia\u2019s Funniest Home Videos on TV. \u201cThe ones that we overcomplicated never got picked up, but the ones that were actually very short, very simple, and got the biggest laugh\u201d were, he says. It\u2019s an early example of Gardner\u2019s ability to communicate effectively and tailor his message to an audience. \u201cSitting on the chair, falling backwards into the pool, made it into the lineup. I remember that strongly because I was the one who was on the chair.\u201d <\/p>\n

[\u00a0Garden cabins, rural sprawl and tiny apartments: housing has become a numbers gameOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

He was 16 when his parents separated. His dad relocated to North Queensland. He wasn\u2019t close to his brothers, and so he chose to leave the house too. \u201cEverything was kind of falling apart, and my whole family was breaking up, so it just seemed like a good time for me to go too.\u201d He was 16, just a child? \u201cI didn\u2019t feel like it,\u201d he says. \u201cI was always very motivated as a kid, always independent, always progressing. Even things like my driver\u2019s licence, I got the first day that I could.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gardner moved closer to his high school, working three jobs, laying timber floors, making coffee and doing the audiovisual tech for a hotel. He was supporting himself and saving, meanwhile. A bright student, he won a regional writing competition and \u201cscored well\u201d on his exams, but college was never on his radar. \u201cI just really wanted to get on with life and see what was going on out there. And so I did.\u201d Three weeks before his 18th birthday, he boarded a flight to Kenya and headed for Kisumu, a port city on the shores of Lake Victoria, where he spent a year building houses. He started to feel more useful than ever before. It was an addictive feeling.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Less is more: How to buy your own \u2018tiny home\u2019 from \u20ac29,000Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

By the time he arrived in Dublin in 2014, as a stopover between a build in Iceland and a job in Malawi, Gardner had more than a decade of construction experience behind him, focusing on off-grid, self-sufficient homes. Ireland was just coming out of a recession, and Gardner fell in with the Fumbally crowd, meeting the late Manch\u00e1n Magan<\/a>, who became a close friend, and his now-wife, Erin McClure, in the progressive Dublin 8 cafe. \u201cIt felt like a country that was almost starting again and had all this potential, both culturally and at a community level. It was open to new ideas, was open to things being different.\u201d <\/p>\n

He slowly put down roots, and was running building-for-beginners courses from his Clare cottage when Anne McLoughlin called. The joint managing director at Motive Television and executive producer of the renovation show DIY SOS, McLoughlin was looking for a new format. She\u2019d heard of Gardner through an architect contact. It was May 2020, and the pandemic restrictions meant it was the first time the producer needed to screen-test someone over the phone. <\/p>\n

\"'Providing‘Providing basic needs is not that hard, and I don\u2019t think it is something that you need to, or should be, contracting out to someone else.’
\nPhotograph: Alan Betson\/The Irish Times<\/p>\n

\"'The‘The only thing you can do is understand how your home works and to understand how to meet those needs yourself.’ Photograph: Alan Betson\/The Irish Times <\/p>\n

\u201cHarrison was really charismatic and a total natural on screen,\u201d McLoughlin recalls. \u201cFrom the very first conversation, he was only interested in authoring a TV series if the format empowered people to learn and build their own homes themselves. His knowledge is generously given, but never patronising.\u201d The pitch was strong, and RT\u00c9 commissioned Build Your Own Home later that year.<\/p>\n

The show\u2019s tone is upbeat as people on tight budgets, often with little construction experience, undertake entire house renovations, build extensions themselves and, in the case of Clare Island, update their community centre. Gardner acts as a building mentor to the participants, who get a certain number of days with him onsite. He shows them how to dig foundations, how to tile, how to plaster a wall for the first time. It\u2019s a long way from the grandiosity and budgets of shows such as Grand Designs, and Gardner is a different kind of presenter. \u201cA lot of the shows that you see with guys doing renovations, they\u2019re standing on the sidelines, but Harrison isn\u2019t afraid to put in a long day\u2019s work,\u201d says Sean O\u2019Tuama, a participant in season two who renovated a 19th-century farmhouse in Limerick with his wife Jess. \u201cThe day we built the stairs was a long day, and Harrison was here for hours after the cameras left.\u201d<\/p>\n

[\u00a0The row over one-off housing rules: \u2018I\u2019m 43 and the situation has completely upset my life plans\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

The TV show is another gear in Gardner\u2019s childhood drive to have as big an impact as possible. It\u2019s why he moved from building single structures to teaching, and then embraced media. Particularly drawn to empowering people who have been told that they could never be a builder, the benefits of reversing that social conditioning through education and encouragement go a lot deeper than bricklaying for him. <\/p>\n

\u201cIf you can learn how to use tools and how a structure works, or how to build a piece of furniture, or how to install a shelf, it opens up doors for people to wonder: \u2018What else can I do?\u2019 And when you open the door to self-efficacy and agency, to someone\u2019s ability to believe in themselves, to take action and effect change in their own lives, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. So, the next time there\u2019s a power outage, we don\u2019t just wait for the electricity to come back on. We start thinking: \u2018What can I do to make sure I always have electricity in my house?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

These thoughts crystallised for Gardner in early January 2025 when Storm \u00c9owyn, record-breaking in its ferocity, hit Ireland, and the Clare cottage was one of the hundreds of thousands of homes that lost both power and water, as water treatment plants and pumps failed without electricity. It was bad, but things turned \u201cmedieval\u201d when a vomiting bug hit the household, and they still didn\u2019t have running water. \u201cWe were trying to clean up and look after everyone, but all of the things that we needed to work weren\u2019t working. I felt like I wasn\u2019t doing a good job of providing for my family in that moment,\u201d recalls Gardner. \u201cThe amazing thing was, it was pouring with rain that whole time, but we didn\u2019t have any system in place for collecting lots of rainwater, or for filtering it.\u201d <\/p>\n

Born into a seven-year-long drought in Australia, where there was a constant hosepipe ban, and every household was issued a free water-saving shower head and egg-timer to time every rinse, Gardner grew up with shortages, and Storm \u00c9owyn was a \u201cconfronting\u201d moment that made him realise how much he had taken the convenience of being connected to the grid for granted.<\/p>\n

\"AfterAfter Storm \u00c9owyn, Gardner set about making his house more resilient against future water shortages and power outages. Photograph: Alan Betson\/The Irish Times \"InnovativeInnovative contruction methods and outcomes at Gardner’s home: ‘I really believe in community, and I really believe in people looking after each other.’ Photograph: Alan Betson\/The Irish Times<\/p>\n

\"EmpoweringEmpowering other people to was the reason Gardner wrote his new book Heat, Shelter, Water, Food. Photograph: Alan Betson \/ The Irish Times <\/p>\n

After the storm, he set about making his house more resilient against future water shortages and power outages. How long could the cottage sustain itself<\/a> now? \u201cWell, it\u2019s not forever, but we collect enough rainwater that the hosepipe ban wasn\u2019t an issue for us. We have enough solar panels<\/a> on the roof and enough battery storage that when the power goes out, we can keep everything running within the house. If we have a storm this winter, we\u2019re kind of okay.\u201d <\/p>\n

Empowering other people to take similar steps was the reason he wrote his new book Heat, Shelter, Water, Food. It gives practical advice on how to be prepared for when things go wrong. \u201cThere are going to be more hosepipe bans in the summers going forward and moments in the winters when we lose power because huge storms are taking out power lines,\u201d says Gardner, who is totally uninterested in who is to blame for outages and shortages. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe only thing you can do is understand how your home works and to understand how to meet those needs yourself. Providing basic needs is not that hard, and I don\u2019t think it is something that you need to, or should be, contracting out to someone else.\u201d<\/p>\n

Talking about agency is Gardner\u2019s flow state, and he is cut short only by the noise of a car coming up the drive and his wife and youngest daughter arriving home. It\u2019s time to relocate to his podcast studio, where he records and films his show The Tools at Hand. A former animal shed, with horseshoes still hanging on the walls, there is a faint but not unpleasant animal smell in the air. It\u2019s material rather than ghostly, as Gardner built his own sound insulation panels using sheep\u2019s wool, hessian and wood. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0Ireland\u2019s Greenest Places: Community is the catalyst that can create changeOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

For someone so successful across broadcast, audio and writing, it\u2019s surprising when he says he finds small talk hard, and that being in a party situation can be \u201cstressful\u201d. He is far more comfortable in the weeds. \u201cSit me in a room with someone where we get to talk about our biggest fears or our traumas or our biggest life experiences, with no distractions? I\u2019m so happy I can talk all day long.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"HarrisonHarrison Gardner in his podcast studio, where he records and films his show The Tools at Hand. Photograph: Alan Betson\/The Irish Times \"HarrisonHarrison Gardner built his own sound insulation panels using sheep\u2019s wool, hessian and wood. Photograph: Alan Betson\/The Irish Times<\/p>\n

He\u2019s professionalised that one-on-one comfort zone with his podcast, where he invites people whose ideas he is interested in onto the show. A recent episode featured Michael Reynolds, an American architect and founder of Earthship Biotecture, which makes self-sufficient dwellings that generate their own power and harvest their own water. Gardner worked with him for years, and the American was formative to his belief that the best chance humans have of thriving and surviving will never be by building individual fortresses. \u201cI remember an example Mike gave: if it\u2019s the end of the world and you have tomatoes in your greenhouse, there isn\u2019t a wall high enough that you could build that would stop people coming to take them. The only way is to show everyone how to grow tomatoes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Aware that some people could interpret his advocacy for individual autonomy as fearmongering, or the siren call of an Armageddon prepper, Gardner is emphatic that this is not his sentiment in any way. \u201cI really believe in community, and I really believe in people looking after each other. I believe that the core of community is about individuals and understanding what they can give to the people around them, but when we are feeling vulnerable ourselves, we\u2019ve got nothing to give.\u201d<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Teaching people to self-build homes at Clare\u2019s Common Knowledge project: \u2018It is just looking backwards to go forward\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Heat, Shelter, Water, Food: How to Be Ready for the Unexpected by Harrison Gardner is published by Gill Books. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the autumn sunshine, Harrison Gardner walks out of his house to move a yellow digger. He\u2019s in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":905851,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[64,63,134,5275,473744,6831,1183,2261,427],"class_list":["post-905850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-entertainment","tag-magazine","tag-manchan-magan","tag-solar-power","tag-south-africa","tag-sustainability","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/905850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=905850"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/905850\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/905851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=905850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=905850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=905850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}