Bloom boom: Festival set for record attendances following Covid-19 pandemic

The June bank holiday will see Dublin’s Phoenix Park partially filled with Bloom, the Bord Bia festival which has had a two-year hiatus due to the pandemic.

Bloom has become a fixture on the Irish summer calendar since 2007 and, given the increased appreciation of the outdoors and gardens many developed during the Covid-19 days, organisers are expecting a large attendance.

“Interest has been huge, people are much more engaged in their gardens,” said Bord Bia’s director of horticulture Mike Neary, who expects this year to surpass the record attendance of 120,000 in 2019.

There will be more than 80 exhibitors and for many it will be a first chance to meet the public since the end of the pandemic.

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The show gardens remain the central feature of Bloom, but they bear the same relationship to the festival as the ploughing does to the National Ploughing Championship. Bloom has become a behemoth of a festival with food, music, arts and crafts and children’s activities. The site took 700 people seven weeks to erect.

During the pandemic, garden centres were the first retailers to open and gardens were places of sanctuary and safety given the view that indoors meetings were potential health hazards.

“The phenomenon of Covid-19 was either you fell off the cliff or you went through the roof. Horticulture was one of those industries that did quite well and plant sales went through the roof,” said garden designer and RTÉ Super Garden judge Brian Burke.

His Woodie’s Seomra Eile showcases the garden as another room in the house.

“It has been prompted by our experience with the Covid-19 restrictions. People have been exploring the space beyond their patio doors,” he said.

The Shared Spaces Family Garden is on much the same theme with the larger garden divided into discrete areas for children and adults, while Bord Bia’s own Green Cities Europe Garden is intended to promote the healing power of nature in an urban setting. Designer James Purdy’s garden has a lawn at its centre surrounded by an oval path, water features and a range of meadow and woodland planting with poppies, cornflowers, ferns, salvias and astrantias, which allow wildlife to flourish.

Sightsavers sensory garden is intended for those who are blind or partially sighted and has a west African theme. A QR code provides an audio description of the garden which guides those with sight loss around a circular path into a central shaded area.

Bord Gáis Energy Theatre’s Beauty and the Beast the Musical Garden is intended as a take on the old fairy tale and the theatre’s big Christmas production while Croí the Cardiovascular Garden provides a visual warning of the damage bad living does to the heart.

Prof Derek O’Keeffe, a consultant endocrinologist at University Hospital Galway, is also a keen gardener in his spare time. His garden features a large red empty cylinder is intended to symbolise a healthy artery and a second stuffed with plants to show what a damaged artery looks like.

“The whole message is about looking after your heart. A garden is a good visual aid,” he said.

For more information on events and tickets, click here.