BLOOM FESTIVAL:Bloom goes green this year with sustainable gardening a hot topic at the festival of horticulture, writes JANE POWERS
AS CHELSEA Flower Show rolls through its final glittering hours in London, a somewhat smaller garden event is cranking up in the Phoenix Park.
Dublin's festival of horticulture, Bloom (which opens next Thursday), is in its fourth year, and is settling nicely into its identity. True, before it is over it will have been called "Ireland's Chelsea" more times than you can count, but this is a frivolous comparison, one that trips too easily off the tongue, and sets up wrong expectations.
Bloom is nothing like Chelsea: it is different in so many ways. It's more family friendly, for a start: children go free, whereas they don't go at all to Chelsea. It's more interactive and accessible (with designers meeting the public at their gardens), and it has a broader appeal as well.
This year, for example, there are more food-related exhibits and demonstrations than in previous years. And, seeing as Bloom is a creation of Bord Bia, this is a natural direction for it to take. We don't have the population or the means on this island to support a large show devoted purely to horticulture.
Still, there should be plenty of the green and growing stuff to keep people interested in plants happy. There will also be room to have a picnic, and barrow-loads of the energy and fun that attend such events in Ireland.
So, what can we expect this year? There will be about 24 show gardens, including five large ones. Among the contributing designers are Bloom regulars Jane McCorkell and Colm Doyle of Doylescapes. The latter's garden, titled G and T, is a clean-lined and angular contemporary retreat with an L-shaped pond, and a timber pavilion and deck - just the place for relaxing with one of the eponymous drinks, or whatever you're having yourself. It features a sculpture by Martha Quinn that, along with the timber works and a perennial border, will be given away to three visitors in a draw at the end of Bloom.
Bord Bia's garden, titled Patterns of Change, will be designed by Ronnie Nevin, who worked for many years as an art director in the Irish advertising industry, and who is now attending the landscape design course in Senior College Dún Laoghaire. The garden, which is being constructed by a team of 11 students from the college, pays homage to Ireland's agrarian past and expresses hopes for a sustainable future, with symbols such as furrowed earth, mini swathes of grassland, a vintage plough and lots of vegetables.
Sustainability and food are two of the dominant themes at this year's Bloom, with many of the gardens featuring elements of one or both. Designers have been encouraged to source their plants within Ireland, and to utilise only species that are suitable for Irish conditions (last winter's extreme cold will have seen a few exotics wiped off the menu).
The burgeoning GIY movement, founded by Michael Kelly, will have a large garden, designed by Fiann Ó Nuailláin. The Dublin designer is also creating his own medium-sized garden, Behold I Bear Gifts, which will be planted with a grove of native birch. Like all of Ó Nuailláin's gardens, it will be a simple and beautiful space, heavy with symbolism.
Also in the medium category is Paul Doyle, whose sleek Italianate creation won the best in show award in 2008. He returns this year with a similarly precise garden, Eclipse 2010, which has as its focal point a piece of industrial sculpture, part of a massive steam boiler. Planting is restricted to four varieties, including 1,500 houseleeks, a species he used to dramatic effect two years ago at Bloom.
Other gardens worth lingering at are Dawn Aston's and Crawford Leitch's large Urban Oasis, with lots of southern hemisphere planting, from FitzGerald Nursery; Niall Maxwell's contemporary potager, Victus Ortus; and Sinéad Finn's detailed urban front garden, Up Front.
Besides the display gardens, which create a theatrical side to the show, an important part of Bloom is the floral marquee, which holds several dozen Irish nurseries, and a handful from further afield.
This has been a difficult spring for plant-growing businesses, which endured terrible losses after the hard winter, and which were further handicapped by a cold, late spring. Now, more that any time before, Irish nurseries need support.
Other horticultural treats will be found in the many trade and educational stands, and on the Garden Expert stage. This offers a chance for visitors to sit down, take a load off their weary feet, and to listen to the musings and advice of a bunch of garden pundits.
Among the those holding the microphone, and who will be delighted (or terrified) to answer any query that is flung at them, include Illinois-based green blogger Shawna Lee Coronado; the British designer and TV presenter James "the man with the hat" Alexander-Sinclair, and our own Gerry Daly and Dermot O'Neill.
JANE McCORKELL GARDEN DESIGNER
Designer Jane McCorkell was deep into the building of her show garden at Bloom as we took this picture last week, but she remained singularly calm and focused. Her powers of organisation are finely-honed, something she sees as a necessity in her busy life. "I have three kids between nine and three, and I'm trying to run a business. I'm a bit of a sergeant major," she admits. "I have an Excel sheet for every day."
This will be the third time she has presented a large garden at the Phoenix Park festival, and her previous two efforts were each awarded a gold medal. The idea for this year's offering was hatched during the torrential downpours of last November, and centres around the idea of rainwater harvesting. "That rain had such an impact on everyone in our industry. The thought of having to pay water rates after that nearly killed me. I thought, okay, there has to be a better way."
McCorkell's better way shows that the mechanisms for collecting the run-off from our roofs and hard surfaces don't have to be industrial or ugly. In her Rain Garden she uses a pergola-like structure to lead the water into a circular font, which sits over a hidden reservoir. Other kinds of sustainability are also evident: many of the materials are recycled, including bricks, gravel and the steel joists that make up the pergola. The sandstone paving came from an Irish quarry, and all the plants - except the chamomile lawn - were grown in this country. The resulting creation is a strong design, based on boldly segmented concentric circles; the steel framework and some large trees, meanwhile, draw the eye upwards and give a loftier layer to the garden.
McCorkell has more than her garden design business, her young family and her own acre of garden ("an ongoing project, a bottomless pit!") to keep her busy. She was recently elected to the horticulture board of Bord Bia, one of four women on the panel of 14. It is a position that she will hold for two years. After that, who knows (although she probably has a spreadsheet for that too). She's definitely one to watch.
See janemccorkelllandscape.ie
Bloom is at the Phoenix Park, Dublin from next Thursday, June 3rd until Monday, June 7th. Tickets €15/€25 (seniors and students, €10/€15); cheapest prices apply if booked online at bloominthepark.com or tel: 0818-300260. Children go free, with a maximum of three children with each paying adult.
Where to eat and drink and what to buy at Bloom: Food File, page 22
L & K DUNNE PLANT BREEDERS
Four years ago, when Laurence Dunne found a single variegated shoot on one of the plants in the family nursery, L & K Dunne, he knew it might be something special. His brother, Kieran explains: "We're always on the lookout. Most people would move on and not spot it, but we have a trained eye." Part of the daily regime of a nursery is to check the stock for pests, diseases, weeds and fungal infections, and to see that everything is getting enough to eat and drink. "We grow two million plants on the nursery, you have to mind those babies all the time."
Laurence's nonconformist shoot (known as a sport in hort-speak), had sunny lemon-yellow margins on the leaves, and appeared on the shrubby evergreen Cistus corbariensis, on one of the mother plants - those that supply the cuttings that grow into the nursery's commercial stock. The rogue stem provided just four cuttings, which were cosseted over winter in the vegetable glass house, and potted on the next spring. Visiting experts were impressed by the sparkling and cheerful green-and-yellow foliage, and the health of the new plants. Like the original variety from which it sprang, the Dunne plant is evergreen, has large white flowers in early summer, and is self-grooming, so you don't need to keep tidying it up.
The brothers decided that they had a winner, and that they should go big time. They registered the name Little Miss Sunshine, and applied for plant breeders' rights - which means that the variety cannot be propagated commercially by anyone else, without paying a fee. The two plants that survived from the original four cuttings have provided the material for more than 50,000 more Little Miss Sunshines in the nursery, and a further 15,000 in the UK. Plants have been sent to America too, where, Kieran says, "there is huge interest in the sunshine states".
Their discovery won the best plant award at the Kildare Growers' trade show last year, and also took prizes in the UK. It will be launched at Bloom on the Newlands Garden Centre stand, and will also be available at selected garden centres throughout Ireland, where it will sell for €12.99. All of this is a long and exciting journey for a single maverick shoot on a plant.
MICHAEL KELLY GROW IT YOURSELF
"Why don't we do Bloom?" Five innocent little words, spoken more in hope than in any real expectation that something might become of them. Five little words that spelled the start of an awfully big adventure.
Back in February, we had a "stroke-beard" meeting here at Grow It Yourself (GIY) HQ - my kitchen table - to chart our plans for the year. How were we going to get the GIY message to the masses? Someone suggested Bloom. "50,000 people go to it," they said. "We really should be there."
GIY was launched in September last year. We inspire people to grow their own food and give them the skills they need to do so successfully by getting them together in community groups and online so that they can share tips, knowledge and produce. It started as a personal thing - I had been growing my own vegetables for five years and I wanted to join a group so I could meet like-minded people and learn from them. There were only flower and plant clubs in this area and since I didn't have any interest in hydrangeas, I decided to set something up.
It quickly went from personal to local to regional to being like Shaws . . . almost nationwide. We now have more than 70 GIY groups around Ireland and approximately 5,000 people involved between the groups and our online community. We've spent the past six months on the road, meeting would-be GIYers from all over Ireland, marvelling at the level of interest and trying to get people fired up about food growing. It has been a prolonged veggie-fuelled road trip.
Over the past few months we have become a registered charity and received some (and much needed) philanthropic investment from the Arthur Guinness Fund and Social Entrepreneurs Ireland. We have also made our first tentative forays overseas - a GIY Scotland organisation is in the pipeline and we've already established GIY in Western Australia. Interestingly, though the issues that GIYers there face are different (their main problem is lack of water), the GIY model seems to work just as well.
Back to Bloom and that "stroke-beard" meeting. I didn't know a lot about show gardens back then but I did know that typically you needed to start planning for them about a year in advance, have an enormous budget and a specialised crew of landscapers. Sure where's the fun in that? We decided to put it together in three months with no budget whatsoever. Only time will tell whether that was folly.
Thankfully, we had some help. Our lead sponsor, Woodies DIY, provided much of the hard landscaping. Like-minded companies have donated all manner of accoutrements and help. Bord Bia brought in garden designer Fiann Ó'Nualláin to design and co-ordinate. But, above all, it is the individual GIYers from groups around the country who have saved the day. Each GIY group was allocated a vegetable to grow. Having an army of amateur growers doing the growing for a show garden is a risky proposition, and given the frigid start to the growing season we've had, it has been even more challenging.
Ó'Nualláin's brief was to recreate a standard urban or suburban garden that is edible - in other words, a real garden for real people, that could stand proudly beside the show gardens. At the same time, we wanted to finally knock on the head the notions that a veggie garden can't be a beautiful garden and that you need acres of land to GIY. In addition to the best of produce grown by GIYers nationwide, watch out for tree crops, a living wall, beehives, a wormery and the GIY hens. To reach the next generation of GIYers, a Design-a-Scarecrow challenge was launched for primary schools. Keep an eye out for the winning design in the GIY garden, which will be diligently keeping the birds away from the veggies.
In our enthusiasm to get groups involved, no one considered how we would physically get the plants from around the country to the Phoenix Park. One of our members drove from Northern Ireland with her group's plants. Others did runs to various regions for us, returning to Dublin with so many plants that they could barely fit in the car themselves, and they arrived gasping for oxygen. Tim Weldon from GIY Bray sourced a polytunnel for us and nurtured the plants for a few weeks before the planting weekend.
When the construction and planting phase began in mid-May, teams of volunteers busted a gut to get the garden built. At one point on a Sunday morning, as a conveyor belt of GIYers washed stones to put into the gabion seats (long story), I couldn't help thinking we looked like a prison chain gang. Despite cold and chapped hands from the freezing water, spirits were high - a fitting metaphor for the entire project.
Over the weekend we have some brilliant events happening in the GIY garden. Come visit us - together we grow. Michael Kelly
Michael Kelly is the author of Tales from the Home Farmand founder of GIY Ireland, giyireland.com
Visiting Bloom? Don't miss these
Victorian Walled Kitchen Garden Large productive garden with fruit, vegetables and cut flowers. The OPW's gardeners will be on hand to answer questions.
David Austin roses Renowned for their repeat flowering, disease resistance, and heavenly scents: on display at the Hughes Roses stand.
Anyone for butter-churning or apple- pressing?
Visit the Forgotten Skills talks and demonstrations in the Food Market.
In search of the perfect vegetable? Visit the Mr Middleton stand and see how the growers at Thompson & Morgan polish their onions and line up their carrots.
The winner of RTÉ's Super Garden TV programme will reconstruct his or her garden on site.
Nature's Playground of Possibilities: a natural playscape for toddlers.
Scents in the City by Liberty Florist. The eastern-themed stand will be decorated with four three-metre pillars, dressed with opulently-coloured flowers and jewels.
Other uniquely Irish plants on view at Bloom this year, on the Bord Bia It's Garden Time stand:
Betula pendula 'Spider Alley': birch with good white bark and spiralling stems (Woodstock Trees and Shrubs)
Lonicera japonica 'Mint Crisp': a variegated honeysuckle (Woodstock Trees and Shrubs)
Hebe 'Red Rum', 'Black Beauty', 'Strawberries and Cream' and 'Raspberry Ripple': four new varieties of this evergreen shrub (Tully Nurseries)
