Bloom’s winning garden has electric car and ‘living’ wall

Up to 115,000 people are expected to visit this year’s Bloom Festival in the Phoenix Park, which formally opened its doors to the public yesterday and continues

until Monday.

A total of 22 medals were awarded to show garden designers yesterday morning, with the Best in Show award going to Dublin-based designer Kevin Dennis for his large Renault Zoe: City Life Garden.

His environmentally sensitive, sleekly modernist design features rectangular steel pools and sculpture surrounded by lush planting, a green roof structure, a ‘living’ wall, and Renault’s 100 per cent electric car, the Zoe.

In the medium-sized garden category, Louth-born designer Andrew Christopher Dunne won gold for his Samaritan’s garden, You Talk, I’ll Listen. A newcomer to Bloom, he described his garden as “a peaceful, tranquil place where people can escape their worries”.

Reflective pools

Featuring a series of shallow stone terraces, reflective steel pools and a wrought-iron hanging seat set against a backdrop of multi-stemmed birch trees, ferns and foxgloves, it won the admiration of the judges who awarded it Best in Category.

In the small garden category, another Bloom newcomer came top of the medals board. Paul Foley, a second-year student at Senior College Dún Laoghaire (soon to be renamed as the Blackrock Further Education Institute) won gold and Best in Category for a delightful garden that showcases the collection of unusual southern hemisphere plants amassed by the late Lord Milo Talbot of Malahide Castle.

Foley’s interest in the Talbot collection was awakened on a visit to the newly renovated gardens last year, after his college began an innovative programme that saw its students undertake part of their studies at the gardens.

Seasoned Bloom exhibitor and respected garden designer Paul Doyle won the show’s Concept category with a stylishly idiosyncratic garden for the Jack & Jill Foundation.

The winner of RTÉ’s Super Garden, who also has a show garden called Tús Nua at Bloom, was Waterford-based Cian Hawes.

For details of all Bloom events as well as ticket prices, see bloominthepark.com