Bloom 2007, the most ambitious gardening event to be staged in Ireland, was officially opened yesterday by the President, Mary McAleese, who is also its patron. It is being held nearly in her back garden in the Phoenix Park this coming weekend.
She caught the mood of the event, forecast to become Ireland's urban ploughing championships, when she said the gardens and other displays mirrored the confident, creative new Ireland that surrounds us.
With pre-booking ticket sales already at over 7,000, the President said she expected huge crowds to attend the event as a vindication of all the planning, work and vision that had gone into the show over the past months and even years.
The President toured the 30 show gardens and interactive installations on the 70-acre site accompanied by her husband Martin. She joked that he was thinking of ordering a defibrilator because of all the plants she had spotted and wanted him to plant.
Indeed there was plenty to be seen on the site at the Phoenix Park Visitor Centre which has become a tented village for the holiday weekend with hundreds of thousands of euro worth of plants, paving, sculpture and garden furniture on display.
The President said the show would help us to appreciate the importance of our environment and the opportunity we have each day to enhance it.
"It is an opportunity more and more people are taking with their conservatories, decks, barbecues, patios, tubs and hanging baskets, all blurring the old distinction between the home and the garden, giving the garden an enhanced relevance in our everyday lives," she said.
"It is easy to see why garden centres and gardening programmes have achieved unprecedented levels of popularity and the evidence is that not only do we have good teachers, but we are good students," she said.
While the 50,000 people who are expected this weekend will see the new Ireland, even in the stylish gardens there are reminders that for some this Ireland is no bed of roses.
That is the name of the Simon Williams-designed garden which has been built by Pat Doherty and Collette Herron of the Doagh Famine Village, Co Donegal, to raise money for the Simon Community.
The garden, in which sits a homeless figure wrapped in a sleeping bag, tells the story of Irish history in a humorous and interdenominational way and portrays the Irish wake and an eviction scene. In the centre sits a metal framed bed clothed in roses with a sleeping bag "which is symbolic of both the relationship between opulence and poverty and the Liffey as a social divide in Dublin", according to the designer.
As Bord Bia is the main sponsor of the event, there is a heavy emphasis on food on the site, with restaurants and a food market. There is also a huge play area for children.
Today is Ladies Day and will feature a garden design forum and flower arranging workshop as part of the entertainment which runs from 10am today until 8pm tonight.