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LESS IS MORE, MORE OR LESS Respected Landscape Architect and garden designer, Patricia Tyrrell MGLDA shares her insights on this year’s Bloom in the Park show gardens
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range, yellow and gold were the colours predominating at Bloom this year. Gold medals prevailed, particularly amongst the large garden category. Golden yellow were the colours chosen in Alan Rudden’s Santa Rita garden, Life is Rosé for his main structural features. Also, orange and yellow prevailed in the Marie Keating Foundation SunSmart Garden, created by Peter Cowell and Monty Richardson to reflect bright sunny colours, and in Kevin Dennis’s Fruit Juice Matters Garden, where pots and planting echoed the theme. Bigger sponsorship from charities and public and private sectors was notable this year. This allowed for the creation of some well executed gardens, particularly in the large garden category. This seemed to have a kind of knock-on effect on smaller gardens, which were much fewer in number than previous years. To me at least, this gave an overall impression of fewer gardens and possibly fewer designers getting experience at this level. That said, the quality was up so perhaps less is more.
GARDEN DESIGN CATEGORIES Bloom garden categories are divided into small, medium, large,
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and concept gardens. Once again Ruth Liddle presented a wonderful sculpture garden (in the feature garden category), this year in conjunction with Ken Folans. Always a source of inspiration, it would be lovely to see more sculpture used within the show gardens rather than all together in one place. According to the Bloom rules, concept gardens ‘provide a blank canvas without aesthetic, horticultural or size restrictions’. They offer ‘an enhanced sensory experience’ and are used for ‘conceptual, interactive or play focused exhibits or spaces devoted to raising awareness of important social, economic, humanitarian or environmental issues’. The Cambridge dictionary’s definition of ‘concept’ is a principle or idea. It would seem unlikely that any garden gets to Bloom without an idea or principle, so perhaps the definition needs to be more firmly defined. In other garden shows such as Chelsea and Hampton Court, there is more scope to define your gardens style or principles. Other garden categories at Chelsea and Hampton Court include artisan gardens, world gardens, and gardens for a changing world and space to grow gardens. Understanding and interpreting gardens and their design and merit can be helped greatly by such categorisation and can also guide and inspire the designer in realising the potential for their ideas. It is confusing
HORTICULTURECONNECTED / www.horticultureconnected.ie / Summer 2018
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