Many of those involved in next week’s Bloom garden festival in Dublin are showing grace in the face of cutbacks by volunteering their time and expertise for free. And several show gardens will reveal novel and ingenious ways of growing food in small spaces, writes Jane Powers
THIS THURSDAY SEES the start of the third annual Bloom garden festival in the Phoenix Park. It is the first non-boom Bloom, and the challenges facing the exhibitors have been mighty. With the main sponsors from last year either pulling out, or drastically reducing their backing, funding for the event is down by more than €500,000 – or so I have been told. Furthermore, because of the uncertainty of the financial situation, several of the two-dozen show gardens got the go-ahead only weeks before the event. Even a fortnight before the show, salient details of some of the spaces were difficult to pin down. Normally, a designer would expect to have the best part of a year to fine-tune the plan, grow plants to a decent size, research materials, and do the thousand other things that are necessary for a picture-perfect display garden.
So, this year, most participants face a mammoth task. But Irish people thrive in adversity, pulling together and employing an ingenuity that is always bubbling just beneath the surface. Add a dollop of last-minutemanship as a catalyst, and the energy starts pulsing.
At this very moment, Phoenix Park is buzzing with teamwork and goodwill – much of it voluntary. “This economy finds a lot more people volunteering,” says Orla Woods, co-ordinator of the floral pavilion at Bloom. “They will be getting no money, but they will be getting a lot more than that back.”
Fiann Ó Nualláin’s “The Great Escape”, designed for Unicef, is a case in point. “It is not funded in any way at all,” he says. All the people who are constructing the mound-in-a-meadow installation are donating their time and expertise. Most of the native plant species have been home-grown by Fiann in a pair of polytunnels in his back garden, while the Irish orchids are on loan from an orchid fancier who raised them himself. After Bloom, all the plants will be re-homed around Dublin city to increase the biodiversity of the urban area. Among the recipients will be St Audoen’s After-School Project, the Brú youth centre in Crumlin village, and the Bluebells for Bluebell scheme in southwest Dublin. The eponymous flowers for this last venture have all been grown from seed by Fiann over the past five years. It’s touch-and-go whether the bluebells will be able to hang on until Bloom, as it is past their natural flowering period, but either way they will come to rest in the suburb of Bluebell in the coming weeks, where they will be planted by local schoolchildren.
Ó Nualláin’s garden is one of many that will have a soft profile this year. Economics have dictated this choice to some designers, as hard landscaping is expensive to procure and work with. Grass and plants are certainly less costly, but they also lend a more welcoming air to a space. Green is the colour of solace in these straitened times.
One can’t get greener or calmer (or more affordable) than the meadow labyrinth made by the students of the Senior College in Dún Laoghaire. Their contemplative space has been made by repeatedly mowing the grass in an intricate pattern during the weeks before Bloom. Another meadowy garden is that of Rebecca Thorn, which offers a sunken seating area shielded by perennials and ornamental grasses.
The idea of growing one’s own vegetables has been an ever-loudening and sweet note in the din of this recession. The Obamas are right in tune with their White House vegetable plot – a version of which will be created at next week’s festival. Besides this, the show gardens will offer unique ways of growing food in small spaces. Also on view will be the OPW’s Ashtown Victorian kitchen garden, from which Fionnuala Fallon has been sending excellent dispatches to this newspapers property supplement.
Along with the display gardens, Bloom will offer a floral marquee, which will act as a temporary billet for some of Ireland’s specialist plant growers and sellers. Among them are Peninsula Primulas; Peppermint Farm, with organic herbs; Dicksonia Direct, specialising in ferns; Mount Venus with its woodland plants and other perennials; Camolin Potting Shed, with new and interesting herbaceous plants and grasses; and Robert Miller’s Carlow nursery, Altamont Plants, showing for the first time.
Also in the marquee are gems such as the Irish Dahlia Society, which is speed-growing crowds of this iconic late summer bloom to coax them into flower at least a month early.
The Bloom Garden Forum, meanwhile, will feature some of the country’s better-known garden experts. John Cushnie, Gerry Daly, Helen Dillon, Dermot O’Neill and others will be there to bat around whatever questions are thrown at them.
This year, there will again be an artisan food market featuring Irish produce, and the Crafts Council of Ireland will have a large craft area with pieces for sale, demonstrations, and classes for kids. A Family Fun and Learning Zone also caters for the small people on this island. This year, Bloom is actively targeting families with a “kids go free” offer (up to three per paying adult), and there are further savings for those who book online in advance.
Bloom runs May 28-June 1 in the Phoenix Park. See www.bloominthepark.com