My dad bought me a Venus flytrap when I was about eight and it totally fired my imagination. I longed to get a South African pitcher plant, which feeds off live mice that it kills in its fluid.

My first job was mowing lawns for pensioners when I was at school. I studied at three horticultural colleges but probably learned the most working in an advice hut at a garden centre, taking hundreds of questions a day from inquisitive shoppers. You really need to have done your homework in that job.

I like to feed plants with vodka, bananas, eggs, beer and aspirin to keep them happy and I was the first gardening expert to realise Viagra could perk up cut flowers as well as men. It’s all backed up by research and I’ve always gone for the quirky approach. For me, gardening is about having fun in your own outdoor space. That could be anything from lying in your hammock in the sunshine to having water pistol fights with the kids. It shouldn’t be a chore on a Sunday morning when you’d rather have a lie-in – it should be fun.

I’ve had the showbiz bug in me from a young age and appeared  in a TV drama as a kid. I got my  big break working on Carol Vorderman’s Better Homes. The team on the show had done this fantastic makeover on a house but, in the process, they had completely trashed the garden. They called me in at short notice and I ended up doing four series.

I wanted to be a presenter from the days when I saw the botanist David Bellamy, a big hero of mine, bringing science to life on Tiswas. I’ve always loved talking to camera and there’s no better buzz than live TV.

Being a keen scuba diver, if I had to choose a favourite among all my gardens, it would be the piranha-infested underwater garden that I created at Chelsea in 2009. It cost £20,000 and I needed an eight-tonne glass tank to authentically recreate an Amazonian riverbed. I got the idea while diving with sharks in the Indian Ocean and we imported the piranhas from all over the world. The Queen loved it and it won a gold medal.

The most beautiful gardens I have ever seen are the Keukenhof bulb fields near Amsterdam. They take your breath away. I think the most gorgeous garden in Britain is the Royal Horticultural Society’s, at Wisley in Surrey. I have a lovely garden at my home in a village near Stratford-upon-Avon. It was  in a bad state when I moved in  and I’ve been getting it into shape. I employ one person to help me but I do most of the work myself.  I love it.

The proudest moment of my career so far was being elected as a Fellow to the Institute of Horticulture. It was recognition from my peers that I have made a real impact in the gardening world and a fitting reward for 30 years of hard graft.

David Domoney appears on ITV1’s Love Your Garden.