Cork gardens are a hit at Bloom

THE Bloom festival is in full swing this weekend in the Phoenix Park in Dublin, and as always the show gardens take centre stage with sustainability, biodiversity and efforts to garden in a more environmentally friendly manner at the heart of the matter.

There are 21 show gardens this year, demonstrating ways of combining plants, incorporating features into your garden, and using new or re-purposed materials to create a space for relaxing and enjoyment throughout the year.

Trying to take it all in on a one day visit, as I did this week, can be pretty challenging, and after an initial walk through of the gardens, it is always worthwhile revisiting one or two that particularly appealed to observe the finer details.

This year, for me it was the Cork garden designer Hendrick Lepel who I revisited. He designed a small garden to showcase a beautiful and very practical glass pavilion, three metres in diameter, with two rotating glass shells which allow the doors to be opened right back 180 degrees, removing the glass wall between the structure and the garden. It won a silver medal in the Show Garden category at Bloom.

This allows the garden into the space, providing ventilation and shelter from whatever direction the wind is coming from as the glazing remains for the other 180 degrees. The ability to change where the glazed wall remains is genius and appropriate for an Irish summer where wind directions can vary.

Hendrick describes the 5m x 8m garden space designed around the glass pavilion as “a small garden designed for a retired couple that like gardening”.

There are strong permaculture influences to the planting, with fruit and nuts to the fore, cherries, amelanchier, hazelnuts and blueberries all producing edible elements in the garden and creating a woodland effect, enclosing the space and producing a favourable microclimate within the space.

Many of the larger trees for the garden were supplied by Cork-based Green Piece Nursery, which is located near Halfway and specialises in trees, shrubs, grasses and perennials, see www.greenpiecenursery.ie for more information.

The garden was designed to inspire calm and tranquility with many shades of green combined together and some subtle hints of colour throughout.

Speaking with Hendrick, he is ionate about microclimate, and with his background as a stone mason, he is very enthusiastic about all the benefits natural stone walls create by trapping the heat from the sun during the day, storing it and releasing this gradually at night.

The focus of this small space, designed to showcase the glass pavilion, is to create many sun traps within the horseshoe-shaped space, using elements like dry stone walls and layered planting.

The planting creates a woodland edge facing south and uses taller trees to create shelter from the north. The value of south-facing dry stone walls for wildlife is huge and we need to create more habitat for lizards in Ireland!

This garden is all about making the most of the light and heat from the sun, and sitting in the glass pavilion the heat on a dull and showery day was so welcome. The floor is insulated using a natural material called leca, which helps to retain the heat within the structure when the doors are closed.

For more details about siting, deg and installing one of these glass pavilions in your garden check out www.peppermintfarm.com/rondo

Oliver and Liat Schurmann’s garden, called ‘In Perspective’, looks at gardening into the future and is thought-provoking with a lattice structure sitting within and enclosing a landscape.

The garden looks to the future and our need to reconnect with nature if we are to become the first carbon-neutral continent by 2050.

The garden can be accessed along a walkway which looks into a flooded internal courtyard with some very beautiful planting. The plant list was cleverly executed, with all potted and hand labelled on display on a stand adjacent to the garden.

Nicola Haine’s ‘Coming Home to Nature’ focused on managing rainwater and encouraging biodiversity into the garden. There were interesting insights into the movement of rainwater once it is captured, and how to slow down surface water run-off and help to allow the soil to absorb water by incorporating different elements like Grasscrete, ponds and wetland planting into the garden.

Other Cork winners at Bloom included Ann Hester, of age West, a member of Cork Flower Club, who won two Bronze Medals, and Angela Heffron, of Cobh Flower and Horticulture Club, who won a Silver Medal.

Plant of the Festival

There are always a few plants that seem to feature in nearly every show garden, and at this time of year foxgloves are a popular choice with their spires of pollinator-friendly flowers in shades of white and pink. Cirsium, or brook thistle, was also used in a lot of gardens but the plant that caught my eye was in Oliver and Liat Schurmann’s concept show garden, ‘In Perspective’, and it was Zizea aurea or golden alexanders.

It is interesting when a plant features in a show garden similar to a weed in your own garden and looks gooD, it provides a new perspective! It reminded me a lot of ground elder which I am waging war with at present. The zingy acid yellow flowers create a colourful ground cover with their frothy umbel flowers and this plant is native to Canada and the US.

It prefers a moist-growing environment but is apparently tolerant of a range of soil types. I’ve been inspired to embrace the ground elder, I certainly will try to look at it differently after this weekend!