Bloom garden festival: 22 show gardens and 13 tiny postcard garden designs to view (2024)

It’s almost Bloom time, that weekend in the Irish gardening year when we collectively convince ourselves that the sun shines in Ireland all year round and that picnics on the lawn dressed in boater hats and gingham sundresses are a good idea.

As for Bloom itself, it’s no longer the tender annual that it was when it made its first appearance in the Phoenix Park back in 2007 but is now a hardy perennial. Its core attractions, however, remain mostly the same, with its show gardens still the main stars of the five-day event.

This year’s clutch of garden designers includes plenty of seasoned exhibitors well acquainted with the pressures of building a show garden to an immovable deadline while simultaneously balancing the demands of sponsors and the vagaries of Irish weather.

Among them is the writer, broadcaster, designer and interior architect Leonie Cornelius, whose small garden balcony design Óir: The Zarbee’s Garden celebrates the vital role that bees play in our world. From pollinating the planet’s food crops (according to the UN, a third of the world’s food production depends upon bees) and playing a key part in the life cycle of seed-bearing plants to providing food and medicinal substances including honey, royal jelly and propolis as well as bee’s wax, we owe an incalculable amount to these tiny creatures.

Cornelius isn’t the only award-winning designer who’ll be exhibiting at this year’s Bloom. Also taking part is the well-known design duo Liat & Oliver Schurmann, owners of Dublin-based Mount Venus nursery, who are back for the 12th time with their concept show garden In Perspective, sponsored by the European Commission. Always bringing a thoughtful elegance to their work, their climate change-inspired show garden explores how humankind leaves its print upon the landscape and how we need to heal our fractured relationship with the natural world.

Other experienced, award-winning designers exhibiting at this year’s show include the landscape architect Nicola Haines. Her show garden for Dún Laoghaire County Council is Coming Home to Nature. It highlights how responsible, tech-savvy design is helping us to meet certain challenges, from mitigating urban flooding through sustainable urban drainage systems to supporting biodiversity by creating different habitats.

Bloom newcomers Gavin Saunders and Stephen Mackle’s balcony-sized small show garden similarly focuses on how green-minded urban dwellers can garden in ways that are kind to the planet. Meanwhile, the designer Nóra Tombor’s show garden Rewild! shows how a formerly manicured lawn can be transformed into a biodiverse space where wildflowers and wildlife thrive.

Celebrating the beauty and history of the Irish landscape as well as its archaeology is another theme of this year’s show gardens. The design for Rathcroghan Ogham Alphabet show garden is inspired by the Ogham inscription at the entrance to Oweynagat (Cave of the Cats) in Rathcroghan, Co Roscommon, one of the royal sites of Ireland. Also sometimes known as the Celtic Tree alphabet, the letters in the Ogham alphabet are named after native Irish trees such as hazel, oak and holly, and feature in the design as an Ogham totem pole that visitors can use to spell out words and names.

Alongside its 22 show gardens, 13 tiny postcard garden designs will also be on display at this year’s show, created by a variety of community groups from around the country

Bloom’s garden displays aside, visitors can enjoy an array of displays of floral art by members of Aoifa (Association of Irish Floral Artists) and botanical art by members of Isba (Irish Society of Botanical Artists). Both can be found in the show’s Nursery Village, where visitors can also find stands from some of the country’s best specialist nurseries.

Bloom’s garden stage is another popular feature, with this year’s event featuring guest speakers Fiann Ó'Nualláin, Monica Alvaréz, Jimi Blake, Paul Smyth and Niall McAuley.

Last but not least is the location itself. Set next to the magnificent Victorian walled garden of Ashtown Castle and within the grounds of the Phoenix Park, it’s a spectacular backdrop that serves as a powerful testimony to the skill, craft and hard graft of the generations of gardeners who helped to create it.

• Bloom runs Thursday, May 30th to Monday, June 3rd; see bordbiabloom.com

This Week in the Garden

Keep a watchful eye out for common pests and diseases that can cause damage this year and take appropriate measures if needed. Young seedlings and transplants, for example, need careful protection from slugs and snails (for plants showing significant damage, use organically acceptable slug pellets such as Sluggo or Growing Success Slug Control) while vine weevil damage can be organically controlled using nematodes applied this month (Nemasys Vine Weevil).

In the kitchen garden, now is a good time to plant out cabbage, Brussels sprouts, kale, turnips, lettuce, chard, scallion, leeks and cauliflower, and to sow seed of carrots, parsnips, beetroot, chard, runner beans, French beans, peas, spinach and radish. You can also sow seed of the following under cover to transplant outdoors next month but hurry: courgettes, squash, Florence fennel, French beans and pumpkins

Q&A

Q: After treating for box caterpillar last summer, we were advised to cut the hedge back to bare. We did this in October, and the hedges still look as bare, with no green growth anywhere. Should we give up hope now and dig out or is it too early to tell if it will grow again? — SH, England

A: A relatively recent arrival in Irish and English gardens, the box tree moth (Cydalima perspectalis) is a very destructive pest of box plants (Buxus sempervirens) with larvae that are capable of rapidly defoliating an established tree, hedge or topiarised specimen over weeks, sometimes days. Its large lime-green and black caterpillars typically start to emerge in March-April to feed on the dense evergreen foliage and young shoots after overwintering in dense web-like cocoons concealed within the plants. They then quickly metamorphose into adult moths and lay their yellow eggs on any nearby host box plants, which is how this destructive pest so easily leapfrogs from garden to garden. Now widespread throughout Europe, it’s especially common in urban areas with plants at risk of infestation between March and October.

It sounds like the very harsh pruning of your box plants was done to remove any overwintering larvae as well as dead growth caused by the caterpillars’ defoliation of the hedge. This sudden defoliation and dieback followed by such extreme pruning would have shocked the plants badly. But their root systems may be still alive and capable of gradually producing fresh new shoots over the coming months. So I’d hold off from removing them and instead concentrate on a regime to boost regenerative growth.

Buxus is a famously greedy, thirsty species that benefits hugely from a generous mulch of well-rotted manure and sprinkles of slow-release, organic pelleted fertiliser around the base of the plants in spring, taking care to keep these away from direct contact with the stems. When and if they start to reshoot, regular foliar feeds of TopBuxus during the growing season will also help to nourish your hedges and protect them from box blight, a widespread, highly destructive fungal disease that’s similarly wreaking destruction on box plants in recent years.

Unfortunately, permanently eradicating box tree moth from your garden isn’t realistic as plants in a neighbouring garden may be afflicted, with any newly emerging moths capable of reinfesting your hedges. Instead, constant vigilance, regular inspection and routine treatment are required between March and October.

Various treatments are available, the most effective being a carefully timed combination of nematode control applied very thoroughly as a foliar drench from March-April when the caterpillars first emerge, plus pheromone-specific moth traps that catch the young adult male moths as they start to take to the wing in April. The caterpillars typically start emerging a fortnight later, so the moth’s appearance is useful in terms of timing your use of nematodes. A new, very effective professional product called Box T Pro Press uses synthetic pheromones to disrupt the male moths’ ability to locate suitable female moths with which to breed but is in the process of being relicensed for use.

Bear in mind that nematode control of box caterpillar will only be effective when the caterpillars are already present and have emerged to feed. For box moth, you can use the nematode known as Steinernema carpocapsae (available as Nemasys Fruit & Veg). This needs to be applied on a cloudy, humid but dry day and then reapplied a week and then a fortnight later, making sure to thoroughly drench the plants.