Blooming marvellous
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Saturday May 31 2008
Get some inspiration for your own gardening projects from the experts showing at Bloom, Ireland's largest gardening event which takes place at the Phoenix Park Visitors centre this weekend.
Paul Martin won gold at Bloom last year with a lavish, luxurious outdoor living space (see above) so everyone will be watching keenly to see what this designer comes up with in 2008.
His Health and Wellness garden this year features a canal cutting through two contemporary walls. The sharp lines allow the visitor to be drawn down to the far perimeter, and sandstone paths disappear behind screens. Lovely features include a canopy of mulberries and a colour palette which changes from greens to whites and blues.
For those of you who like to entertain outside, check out his ideas for a hidden dining area complete with ovens and herb walls and a chance to gaze back along the water as you enjoy a glass of wine
Italian inspiration
How many people have come back from holidays inspired by gardens they saw abroad? Paul Doyle's Bloom garden this year has great elegance, with inspiration derived from the classical gardens of Italy.
It was conceived as a formal mulberry grove that blends texture and structure with sublime elegance and ease. Interestingly, the 200 square metre garden only features eight species of plants.
Paul has made the 20-metre long garden look double that length through the clever use of mirrors and wide lines of box hedging. He sub-divided the space into linear strips on various levels and these techniques could be used in small gardens to make them look bigger.
Art Deco is usually a design feature indoors but Paul, who is based in Rathgar, Dublin 6, has taken it outside, with a restrained use of vertical bronze statuary, mirror slivers and richly-embellished doors with recessed silver panels displaying Oriental wallpaper. Another lovely feature of this Bloom garden is a dry river-bed of 1,500 succulents which runs through the centre of the display.
Allergy-free gardening
For those of you who suffer from allergies, check out Kieran Kirwan's design for a suburban garden. It highlights the usage of allergy-friendly plants. Kieran, who formerly worked as an ecclesiastical sculptor and a secondary school art teacher, chose a suburban front garden setting to reflect its potential as a lifestyle amenity.
The garden features the OPALS (Ogren Plant Allergy Scale) system to deliver the allergy-friendly scheme, while providing colour and shape through mounded and curvaceous threads of planting.
Sustainability is a key consideration as the garden promotes front garden drainage by replacing cobble locking with more porous solutions.
Planting schemes and consultation were provided by Paul and Orla Woods of Kilmurray Nursery, who were Floral gold medal winners at the Chelsea Garden Show.
Green planting schemes
Frazer McDonogh, who designed the Lyons Tea Green Retreat, set out to create an intimate garden where people can relax and unwind in a sub-tropical atmosphere of lush, leafy plants.
Frazer, who lives in Wicklow town, formerly worked in Hawaii, where he had a landscaping service specialising in waterscapes. He believes that gardens are a very important part of our lives today, given the hectic lives we lead, and says we need gardens to relax, unwind and reconnect with nature.
The green retreat is based around the use of plants with bold, dramatic foliage. The range of colours, shapes and textures is endless, from the feathery leaves of the dicksonia tree ferns, under planted with waves of ground ferns and hostas, to the fan-shaped foliage of the trachycarpus fortunei. Willow fencing is used for boundaries to give a natural backdrop. The contrasting colour highlights the plants.
The planting is predominantly green -- grasses, ferns, lush leafy planting -- a trend that's gaining in popularity and won the approval of the judges at Chelsea this year.
- Bairbre Power
