President to open Bloom garden event today

Bloom, the country’s biggest annual gardening, food and family festival,

will be formally opened this morning by President Michael D Higgins in the grounds of the historic Ashtown demesne in the Phoenix Park in Dublin.

Last year’s show attracted over 110,000 visitors, a figure that Bloom’s organisers, Bord Bia, expects to be exceeded this week.

This year’s five-day event includes 30 show gardens, 50 nurseries housed within the show’s Floral and Nursery Pavilion, over 100 food and drink producers, and almost 200 retailers, all contained within the 70-acre site.

Highlights

Other highlights of Bloom 2014 include an exhibition of floral designs by Aoifa, the Association of Irish Floral Artists. As part of Bloom’s Aoifa Floral Art Stage, many of the country’s leading floral artists and designers will be offering advice and demonstrations on the techniques and skills required to achieve a perfect floral display.

This year’s Bloom festival will host a series of talks by experts in horticulture and floristry, including broadcaster and garden writer Gerry Daly, GIY founder Michael Kelly and garden designer Fiann Ó Nuallain.

Cookery writers

Many of the country’s best-known cookery writers and chefs will also be taking part in the show through a series of demonstrations and workshops, including Neven Maguire, Donal Skehan and Catherine Fulvio.

Among the Irish garden designers tipped to win gold at this year’s event is Bloom newcomer Andrew Christopher Dunne with a medium-sized show garden sponsored by Samaritans entitled “You’ll Talk, I’ll Listen”. His formal design features a series of shallow terraces constructed out of Donegal sandstone, ornamental water-cut steel panels and a series of “rusted” steel poles surrounded by multistemmed birch and handsome foliage plants.

Another Bloom newcomer tipped for gold is designer Paul Foley, a mature student in landscape design at Senior College Dún Laoghaire, with a small garden that celebrates the collection of rare and unusual southern hemisphere plants amassed by the late Lord Milo Talbot of Malahide Castle.

Judging of Bloom’s show gardens took place yesterday, where it was carried out by a team of experts from the world of horticulture including the ward-winning British garden designer Andrew Wilson, Mark Gregory (a multitimes Chelsea gold medal winner), landscape architect Karen Foley, Paul Maher (curator of the National Botanic Gardens in Glasnevin) and the award-winning Irish landscape architect Feargus McGarvey.

Bloom continues until next Monday. See bloominthepark.com for details