Tara blooms on RTÉ’s Super Garden

ACavanhorticulturalist is one of five up-and-coming garden designers vying for a chance to display their green-fingered creativity at the ‘Bloom’ festival next year.

Dublin-native Tara Kate Linnane, who now lives and gardens on her own patch near Kilnaleck, had her garden project featured on TV series ‘Super Garden’ on RTÉ One last Thursday.

Tara and four other contestants were each challenged to apply their cultivated creativity to selected homes in a new housing development in Swords, North County Dublin.

Each were given identical blank canvases, with the completed entries judged by Gary Graham, manager of ‘Bloom’; Brian Burke, past Super Garden winner representing Woodies; and Monica Alvarez, Dulux Exteriors representative, and past mentor on the show.

Tara, who also writes the weekly Gourmet Gardener column forThe Anglo-Celtand its sister newspapers, said the chance to appear on the show was a “dream come true”.

The brand new series returned to TV screens last month, starting with Dermot Melia from neighbouring Co. Meath, a ninth generation horticulturist who transformed homeowner Nicola Clancy’s garden into a whimsical, low maintenance, social place to enjoy with her twin boys.

“I really loved every minute,” says Tara of her experience, who was tasked with building a garden for Aoife Doyle and Youssef Baotman (39), children Adam (11), Zakaria (6) and daughter Laila (4).

“I’m such a big fan of the TV show, and have been for years, so it was such an honour to be chosen.”

For her take, Tara impressed with an arrange of edible plants, and arranged them into a veritable pickable ‘food forest’.

Among her choices were herbs like the curry plant (no relation to the dish, but is used in some Mediterranean foods), and an arrangement of nasturtiums, tender slightly sweet, green, tangy, and peppery leaves and flowers.

She also planted co-habitable trees and shrubs, such as apple, cherry and pear trees, and underplanted them with blackberries, gooseberries and wild garlic.

The garden has a number of ‘wow’ factors too - a hydroponic vertical grow wall, a rainwater collection system for watering plants, and even an aquaponics system using fish to help grow herbs.

“I think the different types of gardens designed this year make this series really interesting. There is such a high standard, and I think if people haven’t watched it before, they’ll be hooked. Who knows what it might inspire in gardens around Cavan!” says Tara, a city-born girl with a country heart.

Incredibly Tara hasn’t yet had the chance to see her garden creation flourish to its fullest.

Filming took place last February, and finished up only a week before current restrictions around COVID-19 came into force.

But Tara has been in contact with the Aoife and Youssef, and been assured that all is growing well.

Sustainability

Sustainability is something Tara is as passionate about as gardening itself.

“I love the idea of sustainable living, growing vegetables, and so I wanted to design a garden all around edibles. Really looking at the ideas around permaculture, but adapting it for an urban garden backyard is how I approached my Super Garden. I hope people love it because its a garden that’s a little bit different.”

Tara works full time as a product owner for AIB on the mobile app, but it’s her “lifelong passion” for gardening for which she is best known. Tara has quite a social media following across a few different platforms - #gourmetgardener #adventuresofbarryandtara and @twopeas_inapolytunnel.

She studied Agricultural Science in UCD and, while she switched industry, later studying for a Masters in Marketing at DIT, she never lost her love for digging in dirt.

It was while studying horticulture that she met her husband Barry Kiernan, a mushroom farmer from Kilnaleck. They met in a Protected Crop class, and their relationship blossomed from there.

“It’s my absolute passion. When I get home I’m straight out to the polytunnel, checking on the vegetables, all of that. Just being out seeing what’s growing, and of course eating what grows, there’s no better feeling,” Tara offers.

Asked how her garden is growing at present, Tara is typically enthusiastic.

“I’m growing so many interesting things. A luffa, like the ones you use in the bath or shower for one.”

The fibrous flesh of the mature luffa gourd flourishes in hotter climes than Ireland, but this year’s humid weather has turned a corner of Tara’s ploytunnel into the perfect growing space.

“It’s a viney plant, so you grow it up, either on trellises or an archway. But it has to have plenty of heat. You dry the fruit and peel off the skin and you’ve got yourself a luffa. I got a couple of packs of seeds, and like with anything a couple have survived, so I’m excited about that.”

Tara explains that she has her polytunnel separated into two sides and laid out in a mixture of both raised bedding and boxed ridges. It allows for better organisation and more managed crop rotation.

As the interview continues, the call is interrupted by a loud crowing noise. It’s Tara’s rooster saying ‘hello’.

“With everything that’s happening and so many people working from home, I think we’re all at that point where everyone has background noises, and people are just getting on with it,” she laughs.

An avid fan of BBC’s Gardener’s World Monty Don, she even has two pet alpacas, one named after the famed television presenter (‘Monty’) and another called ‘Mo’.

Another of Tara’s heroes is garden designer Jimi Blake, but she hasn’t named any of her animals after him yet.

It’s Tara’s mum June though who gets the most credit for showing her daughter the way. An inspirational trip as a 10-year-old to see the tulip fields in Holland, coupled with showing a young and captivated Tara ways in which space can be utilised, sowed the seeds from which her deep rooted love of horticulture grew.

“She was always growing strawberries in hanging baskets, and that’s something anyone can do. Especially for people who don’t have large gardens, they’re an easy starter and great fun as well.”

She adds: “If you have a garden I think it’s always lovely to have some kind of fruit tree, but you have to be careful because, while some are self pollinating, others need sets.”