Take some tips from the designs of this year’s award winners at Bloom
WITH the Bloom garden show coming to a close in the Phoenix Park it’s time to take stock of what teh award winning gardeners at this year’s show are telling us about the latest trends in the garden.
Some say it’s time to say goodbye to decking - the love affair is over. That’s certainly the case, according to Alan Rudden of Outside Options, who designed the Savills Urban Retreat at Bloom. “We just don’t have the climate for it. We’re tearing out decks all the time and replacing them with natural stone,” he said.
Gold medal winner Kevin Dennis of Cityscape Gardener, who designed Bloom’s Living Oasis for Santa Rita, says decking does work in some areas, especially where there are changes in ground levels. However, Kevin said the trend is now towards using natural stone such as granite and hard limestones that stand the test of time.
Dennis is increasingly seeing a demand for porcelain in the urban and suburban gardens he designs. “With small gardens it’s very nice to do the garden up like the inside of the house so you continue the look throughout,” he said. “There are a lot of grey and off-brown shades. Porcelain tiles don’t look polished - they’re not high-gloss, they’re rough-textured but there’s no doubt that they are tiles. But they are thick and very big so it doesn’t look like you put down a kitchen tile.”
And, just as with interiors, polished concrete is making a big show. “It’s very bespoke in a colour that the designer would have picked,” says Alan Rudden. “It’s in different forms, some people are covering floors with it and some are doing huge big blocks for their floor of polished concrete.”
Theriseoftheoutdoor living room
The outdoor living room concept has been around for a while but this year has seen the traditional patio move away from the house to become a free-standing structure in the centre or at the end of the garden, often partially or completely covered.
“They are standalone, not connected to the house, and the whole garden is built around them,” says Alan Rudden. “It’s a place for people to go and enjoy the garden if the weather is not 100% on their side.”
Oliver Schurmann of Mount Venus Nursery, who designed FBD Insurance’s Transition garden at Bloom with Liat Schurmann, points to our love of large extensions with big glass windows as the reason builders tend to place a patio right beside the house - it makes both the extension and the garden feel larger.
However, by moving the patio away from the house “you really feel you’re right in the garden and not just looking at an extended living room on the other side of your glass, and watching your expensive outdoor furniture deteriorating in the bad weather.
“It’s much nicer to bring a curtain of planting between the patio and these large windows. It’s quite exciting to watch the development of plants at close range with a piece of glass between both sides.”
Places to eat and entertain are big on our dream garden list. Alan Rudden’s show garden had not one but two entertaining spaces - an open terrace and a sunken, half-covered space with a seating area, fireplace and feature wall. These provided options for all weathers and showed a shift away from situating dining areas in suntraps to building in partial or full shade.
Oliver Schurmann had some advice for those planning a dining space: “I do think people are understanding more and more that large outdoor seating areas in full sun aren’t as attractive any more because when the sun in Ireland does come out it gets so unbearably bright and hot that you prefer a dappled, shady place.
“We’re placing our patios in the wrong spot. I try to dapple them off with shade a bit.”
of nature.”
Last year, Alan Rudden’s garden for Bloom used purples and pinks, and a little orange and green. This year, he pared his palette right back for his Savills show garden. “My planting is very green and lush and we’re only using one colour - white,” he said. “We’ve a lot of topiary and pruned box hedging and we’re just using alliums and astilbe and small sprinkles of white throughout the garden. Very restrained. We’re trying to simplify everything and make a statement that you can be simple and complement each other.”
Have a seat
Hammocks are a garden perennial, but the 2017 update is a swinging chair and they are available in every material from wicker to plastic to wood.
Designer Joan Mallon, whose Enable Ireland ‘Life With No Limits’ show garden at Bloom featured a candy-striped helter-skelter, has used them to add a stand-out feature in a tricky space for a private client. Most are also available with a stand.
Return of the rose
James Purdy, of JP Architects and Landscape Design, designed the Cuprinol Kaleidoscope show garden this year for Bloom with Dan Henson of Boys and Girls. Its central blast of colour was set around with a rose garden in pinks, whites and reds.
Purdy predicts a revival for the lovely flower.
And he is not alone - the Strawberry Bed Garden, designed by Maeve O’Neill, also featured towers of palest pink blooms.
Purdy’s own favourite variety? “David Austin’s Gertrude Jekyll for its early flower, sweet scent and colour.”
A splash of water
“Water is very big this year at Bloom,” reflected Alan Rudden. “It’s not just a small ‘sound’ feature, everyone seems to be going for big pools. There are a lot of reflective qualities, and that’s what people are looking for.”
In his own show garden he constructed a large L-shaped pool, about 15m long and 1.5m wide that included sound and reflective qualities, while Oliver Schurmann created a garden inspired by the tidal landscape of the West of Ireland that takes up 80pc of the space. Every 90 minutes, 30,000 litres of water are pumped out into a reservoir revealing a stony low tide scene. “It’s supposed to really capture the dramatic transition between high and low tide,” said Schurmann.
“Water is becoming popular and people are becoming a bit more courageous. There is always the scare of little children and ponds and things, but once water is constructed safely so that children can feel their way into the water it’s not as dangerous and people are inclined to go for it.”
Keep it calm and carry on
A trend at this year’s bloom was for toning down hard landscaping, keeping it more natural with colours muted.
Alan Rudden’s Bloom garden used natural tones with Liscannor stone, cream limestone and chocolate brown. “We’ve no bold, bright colours. From what I can see across the board it’s generally very muted, a very elegant-looking colour scheme rather than the bright punchy scheme that has been there maybe two years ago,” he said.
Kevin Dennis agreed, saying that interiors’ tones of the moment are now moving outdoors into materials. “I’d say warm-textured greys are a trend. I’m even using some blues, which I’ve never used before last year,” said Kevin. Colours that have a certain tone that make a really good back-drop for plants.” In planting, this is translating into a turn towards greenery. “People are going a lot more for foliage,” said Oliver Schurmann, “and going back to ferns and enjoying that much more, they’re looking for texture rather than blowsy colour. People are a bit tired of the blowsy garden-centre look.”