What happened next? Our 2018 Show Gardens
Andrea Smith looks at some of the gardens that were the stars of previous Bloom festivals and discovers who is enjoying them now.
One of the questions that gets asked most often at Bloom is what happens to the show gardens when the festival is over? The answer is that most of the gardens are recycled and their plants and features resold, but in some cases, gardens are moved in full to a new location.
The Sanctuary Synthetic Garden
The Sanctuary Synthetic Garden from Bloom 2018 was a heart-shaped garden designed specifically for the Phoenix Park Specialist School, which caters for pupils aged 4-12 years old with emotional, behavioural and mental health difficulties. It was designed by Dominic O’Donohoe from Sanctuary Synthetics to be a safe outdoor learning space, natural playground and chill-out zone for pupils.
Dominic, the garden’s main sponsor, worked closely with school principal Matthew Swain on the project, and it also included various features that the children had on their wishlists. The fact that the school is located very close to Bloom helped enormously with transporting it there after the show had ended.
Matt also raised additional funding for the relocation of the garden and the OPW helped hugely too, which has resulted in the addition of extra features to the garden at the school. “We have constructed a nature trail that the pupils can walk through, with artificial grass on one side and sleeper beds running down the other side with multisensory planting,” Dominic explains. “The children were blown away when they saw it in Bloom, and it’s great now that it’s their own place to enjoy at school.”
The Marie Keating Foundation SunSmart Garden
The Marie Keating Foundation SunSmart Garden from 2018 aimed to shine a light on skin cancer, by making people aware of the importance of protecting themselves in the sun and of following the SunSmart code. The garden, sponsored by MSD and designed by the Hairy Gardeners, had a yellow theme and contained a Pom Pom oak tree offering shade from the sun.
Afterwards, the foundation donated the garden to the Solas Cancer Support Centre in Waterford. “It was such a stunning garden that we were keen to ensure the beautiful planting and its message lived on after Bloom ended,” says Jennifer
Cimerman, Communications Manager at the foundation.
The garden was disassembled and transported to Waterford on a large truck, where the men’s support group at Solas eagerly got to work, transplanting it into a new arrangement in the centre’s grounds. “Working with the Solas Centre was fantastic and their volunteers and the survivors who helped replant the garden were brilliant,” says Jennifer. “RTÉ’s Nationwide filmed the whole process and were there for the grand unveiling. The atmosphere and sense of pride on the day was amazing, and it was so worth the effort to see the garden being enjoyed again.”
Santa Rita Living La Vida 120 Garden
The Santa Rita Living La Vida 120 Garden won a gold medal at Bloom 2018 as well as the award for best show planting. When the festival was over, it went straight on to Hampton Court Palace Flower Show in London where it won a gold medal and the best in category award.
The garden was inspired by designer Alan Rudden’s travels to Chile in 2015. It was a modern, architectural garden, featuring arid Chilean planting and punchy, vibrant colours, notably the fabulous yellow colour he had seen all over the South American country. As the London show happened directly after Bloom, the garden was specifically designed with steel fabricated walls to facilitate it being moved. “The logistics worked out very well,” says Alan.“We loaded it onto two trucks and shipped it to London, and had cranes waiting on the other side to unload it and put it all together.”
Alan recalls how the team were delighted with themselves when everything was disassembled at Bloom, until they discovered that one shipping container had been loaded with too much material, and the crane couldn’t lift it. “We thought we were well ahead of the game, but we had to come back the following morning at 6am and take everything out of the container by hand,” he laughs.
After the London show, a lot of the elements were sold to private buyers for their own gardens. The team also donated plants to a charitable plant collection programme in operation there.
GOAL’s Damascus Courtyard – War and Peace
Goal’s 2016 garden was inspired when Julia, wife of garden designer and RTÉ Super Garden judge, Brian Burke, heard that the former Hazel Hotel in Monasterevin was being repurposed as a Syrian refugee reception centre.
She phoned Mick Power of the Kildare Volunteer Group offering to help, and the idea was conceived of creating a garden at the centre that would remind the residents of their home country. “The will was good but the money was lacking,” Brian explains, so the idea evolved into creating a garden for Bloom with the help of a sponsor – in this case GOAL – and then transporting the garden back to the centre when the show was over.
Brian created a stunning garden that is reminiscent of a classic Damascus courtyard garden, featuring olives and jasmine and typical Syrian features. The biggest compliment was when one of the centre’s residents told him at Bloom that it represented the “sights and smells of home.”
There were plenty of volunteers involved in deconstructing and transporting the garden back to the centre, and a fantastic event with music and food was held in September 2016 to mark its opening. The centre is now a direct provision centre, and the residents are still enjoying the lovely garden.