Day 8 - Bloom Celebrate Garden Life
Day 8 – 4th June 2007
Bloom Celebrate Garden Life
Bloom 2007, hosted by Bord Bia was the largest and most spectacular gardening event ever to be staged in Ireland. It featured over 30 stunning show gardens and interactive installations on display. The display gardens have interactive features that are designed and created by Ireland’s top designers.
Each garden has a distinctive theme ranging from traditional through to contemporary influences providing inspiration and ideas for the gardens of all shapes and sizes. The showcase included daily entertainment, creative workshops, cookery demonstrations from Ireland’s top chefs, exquisite arts, crafts, sculpture displays, outdoor food markets, a variety of specialty garden retail exhibits, a family fun learning zone and Ireland’s largest ever nursery and floral display.
The Gurus team were in their element with so much to see and do at Bloom that they only had time to show you a snippet of the show.
The gardens seen on the show:
‘No Rubber Soul’
Rubber Soul was a garden for those who never grow old in mind. The main theme is to bring Irish gardens back to what they should be. Whilst symmetry, hard landscaping and modern trends have a place in horticulture, we sometimes forget our roots. The design reflects old rural soul combined with select planting of new. An almost reinvented 1970’s Irish country garden, the main feature is a 1969 Morris Minor, which symbolizes the many Irish men who promise to restore and rebuild but sometimes never finish. Apart from the natural (i.e. plants), the entire garden is built from recycled materials. It is designed to allow one to consider how, with imagination, we can pursue ‘green’ goals. Plant era and style have been meshed to form a garden with a ‘no’ rules system. It offers a time out from the hustle of like, materialistic deadlines and routines. The garden was planted for all seasons, ensuring colour throughout the year.
Designer – Peter Donegan
Peter Donegan is 31 and lives in North Country Dublin. He studied horticulture and having worked in Ireland, England and Scotland, returned in 2000 to establish Peter Donegan Landscaping Ltd. The practice won its first award for a fifty-five acre 18th century private garden, from Association of Landscapes Contractors in Ireland, in October 2006. In February 2007, the practice was certified in recognition of standards achieved under Bord Bia Landscape Quality Programme. Peter has written many publications including the Irish Independent, and the Farmers’ Journal and he writes for SelfBuild Ireland magazine and recently appeared on RTE’s The Aftertoon Show.
Peter Donegan
Landscaping Ltd
Ballyboughal
Co. Dublin
Email: info@doneganlandscaping.com
‘Agraria’
Agraria was a conceptual display garden created for the Dublin Meath Growers Assosiation, to demonstrate fruit and vegetable production in Dublin’s surrounding countries and to acknowledge the support received by local growers from Tesco Ireland. The primary inspirations for the spatial form of the display garden were drawn from agricultural landscape patterns in the north county. The recent opening of the M1 and its relationship to agriculture pattern and food production, and the juxtaposition of farming activities to the eastern coastline and Dubin’s industrial landscape.
Designer – Barry Lupton
Barry worked in the nursery sector prior to studying amenity horticulture through Teagasc. Having successfully graduated, he undertook a BTEC Diploma in Garden Design and BSc in Landscape Design at Writtle College, Essex. Since qualifying, he has established his own garden design business and in 2005 attained a full membership of the Garden and Landscape Designers Association (GLDA). In addition to his design work, he is also the editor of the trade publication Horticulture and Landscape Ireland and lectures in Senior College Dun Laighaire, where he introduced Ireland’s first externally-verified diploma level course in garden design.
Barry Lupton
Lusk
Co. Dublin
Email: editor@hli.ie
Absolute Garden
The 21st century customer is going back to basics, mixing traditional methods of gardening with contemporary designs. Keeping in mind that Arboretum use natural raw materials which are indigenous to the Carlow region, so it was decided to use natural Carlow limestone. Limestone is often associated with the purification of water, so the use of water in the garden symbolized the movement of life within nature. They did not want to detract for the simplicity of the limestone, contemporary materials were used like glass and brushed stainless steel which compliment the naturalness of limestone creating a modern garden design that is functional and cotemporary. The planting scheme was decided to be minimalist but striking to comliment the natural purity of Carlow limestone, hence the use of the colour white as an integral part of the planting formation, often defined as purity.
Designer – Rachel Doyle
The Arboretum Garden centre is very much a team effort – everyone gives their input and then the best ideas are collated and put into effect. Creaters of the garden includes garden designer William, Bill and the Garden Centre team Eamonn, Barry and Rachel and Anita from PDS Architects.
Rachel Doyle Arboretum Lifestyle & Garden Centre
Leighlinbridge
Co. Carlow
Tel: +353 59 972 1558
Email: arboretum@eircom.net
www.arboretum.ie
The plants that grabbed Neville and Trevor’s eye at the show include:
Blue Poppy (Meconopsis betonicifolia)
Ornamental Onion (Allium cv.)
Star Jasmine (Tracheleospermum jasminoides)
Tropicanna Canna (Canna indica ‘Tropicanna’)
Bloom was a great success in Ireland with many visitors coming to see this fantastic event held in Phoenix Park. Bloom has been scheduled to appear for the next three years, visit www.bloominthepark.com for updates on next year’s event.
Bloom Celebrate Garden Life
Bloom 2007, hosted by Bord Bia was the largest and most spectacular gardening event ever to be staged in Ireland. It featured over 30 stunning show gardens and interactive installations on display. The display gardens have interactive features that are designed and created by Ireland’s top designers.
Each garden has a distinctive theme ranging from traditional through to contemporary influences providing inspiration and ideas for the gardens of all shapes and sizes. The showcase included daily entertainment, creative workshops, cookery demonstrations from Ireland’s top chefs, exquisite arts, crafts, sculpture displays, outdoor food markets, a variety of specialty garden retail exhibits, a family fun learning zone and Ireland’s largest ever nursery and floral display.
The Gurus team were in their element with so much to see and do at Bloom that they only had time to show you a snippet of the show.
The gardens seen on the show:
‘No Rubber Soul’
Rubber Soul was a garden for those who never grow old in mind. The main theme is to bring Irish gardens back to what they should be. Whilst symmetry, hard landscaping and modern trends have a place in horticulture, we sometimes forget our roots. The design reflects old rural soul combined with select planting of new. An almost reinvented 1970’s Irish country garden, the main feature is a 1969 Morris Minor, which symbolizes the many Irish men who promise to restore and rebuild but sometimes never finish. Apart from the natural (i.e. plants), the entire garden is built from recycled materials. It is designed to allow one to consider how, with imagination, we can pursue ‘green’ goals. Plant era and style have been meshed to form a garden with a ‘no’ rules system. It offers a time out from the hustle of like, materialistic deadlines and routines. The garden was planted for all seasons, ensuring colour throughout the year.
Designer – Peter Donegan
Peter Donegan is 31 and lives in North Country Dublin. He studied horticulture and having worked in Ireland, England and Scotland, returned in 2000 to establish Peter Donegan Landscaping Ltd. The practice won its first award for a fifty-five acre 18th century private garden, from Association of Landscapes Contractors in Ireland, in October 2006. In February 2007, the practice was certified in recognition of standards achieved under Bord Bia Landscape Quality Programme. Peter has written many publications including the Irish Independent, and the Farmers’ Journal and he writes for SelfBuild Ireland magazine and recently appeared on RTE’s The Aftertoon Show.
Peter Donegan
Landscaping Ltd
Ballyboughal
Co. Dublin
Email: info@doneganlandscaping.com
‘Agraria’
Agraria was a conceptual display garden created for the Dublin Meath Growers Assosiation, to demonstrate fruit and vegetable production in Dublin’s surrounding countries and to acknowledge the support received by local growers from Tesco Ireland. The primary inspirations for the spatial form of the display garden were drawn from agricultural landscape patterns in the north county. The recent opening of the M1 and its relationship to agriculture pattern and food production, and the juxtaposition of farming activities to the eastern coastline and Dubin’s industrial landscape.
Designer – Barry Lupton
Barry worked in the nursery sector prior to studying amenity horticulture through Teagasc. Having successfully graduated, he undertook a BTEC Diploma in Garden Design and BSc in Landscape Design at Writtle College, Essex. Since qualifying, he has established his own garden design business and in 2005 attained a full membership of the Garden and Landscape Designers Association (GLDA). In addition to his design work, he is also the editor of the trade publication Horticulture and Landscape Ireland and lectures in Senior College Dun Laighaire, where he introduced Ireland’s first externally-verified diploma level course in garden design.
Barry Lupton
Lusk
Co. Dublin
Email: editor@hli.ie
Absolute Garden
The 21st century customer is going back to basics, mixing traditional methods of gardening with contemporary designs. Keeping in mind that Arboretum use natural raw materials which are indigenous to the Carlow region, so it was decided to use natural Carlow limestone. Limestone is often associated with the purification of water, so the use of water in the garden symbolized the movement of life within nature. They did not want to detract for the simplicity of the limestone, contemporary materials were used like glass and brushed stainless steel which compliment the naturalness of limestone creating a modern garden design that is functional and cotemporary. The planting scheme was decided to be minimalist but striking to comliment the natural purity of Carlow limestone, hence the use of the colour white as an integral part of the planting formation, often defined as purity.
Designer – Rachel Doyle
The Arboretum Garden centre is very much a team effort – everyone gives their input and then the best ideas are collated and put into effect. Creaters of the garden includes garden designer William, Bill and the Garden Centre team Eamonn, Barry and Rachel and Anita from PDS Architects.
Rachel Doyle Arboretum Lifestyle & Garden Centre
Leighlinbridge
Co. Carlow
Tel: +353 59 972 1558
Email: arboretum@eircom.net
www.arboretum.ie
The plants that grabbed Neville and Trevor’s eye at the show include:
Blue Poppy (Meconopsis betonicifolia)
Ornamental Onion (Allium cv.)
Star Jasmine (Tracheleospermum jasminoides)
Tropicanna Canna (Canna indica ‘Tropicanna’)
Bloom was a great success in Ireland with many visitors coming to see this fantastic event held in Phoenix Park. Bloom has been scheduled to appear for the next three years, visit www.bloominthepark.com for updates on next year’s event.
AS SEEN ON 
