LeonieCornelius with the best of Bloom2016
Bloom in the Park which takes over the beautiful Phoenix Park every June bank holiday weekend is celebrating it’s 10th anniversary and is a wonderful place to enjoy the best of Irish food and stunning garden designs.
Visitors to the Bord Bia-sponsored exhibition seek and find inspiration for their own gardens and this year’s showgardens are bigger and better than ever. Many of the designers picked up on one of this year’s buzzwords, mindfulness, a concept so well reflected in Paul Martin’s Gold medal-winning design at Chelsea last week.
Bloom’s overall Best in Show winner is Alan Rudden, whose stunning garden for the Chilean Santa Rita wine brand has a powerful sense of space.
Rich terracotta architecture teamed with dusty blue eucalyptus and olive trees create a strong base in the garden, while the planting is a delicate tapestry of grasses and structure. Stipa tenuissima, balanced with structural evergreens, create just the right mix of prairie texture and desert heat and the stunning reflection pond gives the garden a central depth. I want to live in this stunning garden, it being both simple and lush as well as thoughtfully put together.
Veteran Bloom designer and author Fiann Ó Nualláin channelled a mindfulness theme in his Bronze medal The Tao Of Now garden which plays with the idea of green healing – using predominantly green foliage plants to create a serene space which has a positive, relaxing effect on the user.
He also created the much talked about 1916 Commemoration Garden taking a unique approach to design by asking the public for their own family stories and history. The result is a powerful, hopeful garden with historical references and lush, planting.
Last year’s Super Garden winner Brian Burke is back with a garden for GOAL which takes the same thoughtful approach to the space as his previous garden. He was inspired by the loss, devastation and displacement suffered by Syrian refugees. His honest design highlighting their plight won a Silver medal.
Andrew Christopher Dunne’s Face To Face garden for estate agents Savills, aims to reconnect us with our environment and with each other. He uses his recognisably subtle white and light planting palette with touches of deep purple Iris against rich warm rust tones in the garden, and the space draws you in and makes you want to relax. The garden, with its Corten steel and spires of white foxgloves, is bang on trend and echoes Paul Martin’s Chelsea winner this year.
The Yi garden – meaning friendship – from is the result of a stunning collaborative project containing traditional elements from the Yangzhou City region in China and is a wonder of detail and craftsmanship.
UCD’s fascinating Evolution Of Land Plants garden won a Gold medal and is actually open for the public to walk through and has stunning Corten panels showing the evolution of animals which are also used to guide you through the space. The planting is educational and the chunky pergola is modern and effective.
RTÉ Super Garden, sponsored by Woodies and Cuprinol, was represented this year by the lovely Alexandra Hollingsworth and her From Glasnevin to Granada garden won a Silver medal. It brought together the site context of her Glasnevin winning garden from the programme with the clean, elegant symmetries and lush planting of Moorish inspiration.
Built by Alan Smyth, it delivered on its promise and is a stunning space in a well-rounded show.
Bloom runs until tomorrow, see bloominthepark.com
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