Large number of Kildare gardeners to showcase their designs at this year's Bloom Festival

The creative talents of a host of Kildare garden designers and nurseries will be on show at Bord Bia’s Bloom this June Bank Holiday weekend.  The five day event which returns to the Phoenix Park Dublin from May 31 to June 4 showcases the best of Ireland’s horticulture and food industry and will feature 20 spectacular show gardens; endless garden and floral features, installations and talks; more than 100 food producers; 25 live cookery demonstrations with some of Ireland’s best loved chefs and a host of activities and entertainment for all the family.   Veteran Bloom garden designers Anthony Ryan and Kieran Dunne have created the ‘Our Ladys Children’s Hospital Crumlin Garden’ to serve as a place of solitude.  Sponsored by Kildare Growers in association with Bord na Mona and Peter O’Brien Landscapes, it is a sanctuary space for an owner who has a very hectic lifestyle and values their relaxation time in a beautiful environment.  Having a particular love for tranquil and peaceful surroundings, the garden’s design provides an opportunity to escape undisturbed during summer evenings to read, chat, reflect and enjoy peace and silence in a secluded space.  Simple in style, the garden’s main feature is a recessed alcove covered with a tilted disc canopy which provides a covered retreat.   Showcasing new and previously unseen work by more than 40 artists, Ruth Liddle and Ken Folan’s garden installation ‘Sculpture in the Park Bloom 2018’ offers visitors an opportunity to walk through and interact with some of the best Irish outdoor art in a garden-style setting.  Sponsored by The Kildare Gallery at Carton House, the installation features some of Ireland’s leading artists whose pieces are created using a range of styles, techniques and materials, illustrating how a well-chosen sculpture will work in harmony with its surroundings.   Award winning garden designer Dominic O’Donohue from Naas based Sanctuary Synthetics has created a show garden that showcases the use of artificial grass in a school setting, specifically for children with severe specialist needs by drawing a direct relationship between the nurturing of plants, fruit, flowers and seeds and the nurturing of a child through their early and formative years.  ‘The Sanctuary Nurture Garden’, created in partnership with The Phoenix Specialist School, is based around a heart-shaped mound with a sunken outdoor classroom at its centre that also serves as a social space and playground representing the transition from inside to outside.  Complete with teaching thrones, the classroom is surrounded by multisensory planting allowing children to connect with nature on a safe soft artificial surface.  Mature woodland planting surrounds the school comprising mature oak, chestnut and birches at the top end of the heart-shaped mound, complemented by native planting based on sight, smell, taste, sound and touch on the bottom half of the mound.   Veteran garden designer Mark O’Loughlin returns to Bloom to turn the world of show gardens quite literally upside down.  Designed to challenge, intrigue and amuse visitors, ‘The Sanctuary Upside Down Garden’ sponsored by Naas based Sanctuary Synthetics features a simple urban terrace front garden and house façade, with a major twist: the ground is the sky and the footpath and lawn are overhead.  The grass lawn, lollipop potted trees, conifers and border hedging are all artificial and have been carefully placed to show-off the versatility of the materials used.  Visitors will be invited to go through the front door to take fun “look at me I’m upside down” pictures and selfies.   Created by some of Ireland’s most acclaimed garden designers, the Bloom show gardens have become an engaging, colourful platform for many organisations to communicate strong health and charitable messages.   Speaking at the launch, Tara McCarthy, CEO, Bord Bia said, “This will be the 12^th year that Bord Bia has hosted Bloom in the Phoenix Park and we are incredibly proud of how the event has developed and evolved over the years. If offers a platform for some of Ireland’s most acclaimed garden designers to showcase their skills, creativity and imagination in developing spectacular outdoor spaces which continue to captivate our visitors. It also offers our many hardworking food producers, plant nurseries and food and drinks companies the opportunity to engage directly with the consumers of their products in a relaxed and informal setting. And best of all it offers a great day out with something for everyone!”   Kildare will also be represented in the Nursery & Floral Pavilion by Mary Doran, Doran Nurseries (Irish Plants), Naas, Co. Kildare; Ivan Curran, Garden Direct, Kilmeague, Naas, Co. Kildare and Con Collins, Department of Agriculture, Food & Marine Horticulture & Plant Division, Backweston Campus, Celbridge, Co Kildare.   And the parent gardening group at North Kildare Educate Together National School have designed a postcard garden entitled ‘Growing While Learning.  Learning While Growing.’ which is sponsored by Coonan Morgan Solicitors.  Inspired by a belief in the importance of connecting children to the natural world through gardening, the blackboard and school furniture represent formal education, while the pathway symbolises the journey of learning, leading to a PoeTree, representative of nature’s creative inspiration.  The planting behind the path signifies nature in its wild form, while the vegetable planting represents the process of growing and harvesting our own food.