Plenty of local faces at Bloom

Those attending Bord Bia Bloom starting tomorrow (Thursday) can expect to meet exhibitors from the Breffni and Farney counties in many different areas from flowers to food.

Cavan will be represented by award-winning natural landscape designer Barry Kavannagh. The Knockbride native has had several successes at Bloom in the past including two gold medals, a Designer’s Choice Award and a People’s Choice award. He will be creating The Birdwatcher’s Balcony Garden and providing guidance on fostering biodiversity.

Meanwhile, Cornafean’s Health and Wellbeing group who were among the winners at the Celtawards last week (see page 12) will bring their Community Tea Postcard Garden.

The group will display a cup or mug within their garden which came from the homes of community members. Each cup will be planted and displayed, and will go back to that household afterwards.

“To put what Cornafean does on a national stage, anywhere we go in the county people always say we’re doing great stuff. To be able to bring that and show the country, this is what our small rural community in Cavan can do,” Thérèse Johnston, who is spearheading the project, previously told this newspaper.

Meanwhile, Julie Magee Karlshoj will bring her Tullyvin-grown, fresh Irish flowers to the Nursery Village where she will sell bouquets and host live demonstrations and interactive workshops with a host of other gardeners.

Julie began her new business venture Oak Hill Flowers one year ago and is delighted with its success to date. While Julie has attended Bloom many times, this will be her first time as an exhibitor and she is “very excited” about it.

“I just love the atmosphere, the vibe, and I am looking forward to hanging out with the other flower farmers because you will always learn something.”

The mum of three was in the Pheonix Park on Monday and Tuesday with other members of the Flower Farmers of Ireland group, building a flower cutting garden.

“To give people an idea of what a cutting garden looks like,” she explains.

The garden will contain peonies, roses, sweet pea, allium, achillea, fox clove, poppies and more in what will be a sea of pink, purple, blue, cream and white flowers.

Julie will attend the festival on Saturday and Monday, allowing her to cut and make bouquets at home on Friday and Saturday to sell.

She’s proud to be bringing the beauty of her garden to Bloom.

“It’s a dream come true the way it’s [the business] holding its own already at the start of its second year. That doesn’t normally happen with flower farming.”

An expression of her native language, Danish, comes to mind: ‘Slå et slag’

Meaning ‘doing your bit’ Julie is delighted to be able to showcase the potential of Irish flowers.

“Hopefully overtime we can compete more with the imported flowers.”

Meanwhile, Monaghan will be represented by Declan McKenna (above), the in-house designer at Silverstream Landscapes in Monaghan. The Truagh native has designed and built award-winning Show Gardens at Bord Bia Bloom in 2015, 2023 and 2024.

This time, he will bring the Celebrity Dream Garden to life at the festival. It’s inspired by fashion designer, Brendan Courtney’s recent project to redesign his garden at home in Wicklow.

Declan has curated a garden to Brendan’s lifestyle; a contemporary garden with an emphasis on wellness and recovery with a plunge pool installed and also entertaining space.

“It’s a garden that, hopefully when people see it, they will say ‘oh yeah I would love to have that’.”

With 15 years of experience behind him, Declan is putting the finishing touches on the 11x12 metre garden when the Celt calls. He has been working on the project for the past four weeks and on Monday he felt as though he was “very much on top of it”. However, the twenty degrees plus temperature was posing a challenge for all of the gardeners.

“It’s quite difficult at the moment with the weather, the heat puts the plants under a wee bit of pressure.”

Judging took place yesterday (Tuesday) and will continue today (Wednesday) with this year’s winners announced tomorrow (Thursday) morning.

Meanwhile, if you start to feel peckish while wandering around, you will see local faces in the Food Village too with Cavan’s Áine’s Chocolates, Moran’s Mega Jam and Shanky’s Whip whiskey, which is made by Terra Spirits and Liqueurs. From Monaghan, Emyvale’s Silver Hill Duck will be exhibiting at the festival, while Blacklion native Chef Neven Maguire is returning in the flagship Garden View Restaurant and will be curating the ‘Taste of Bloom’ package.

Bord Bia Bloom will take place in the Phoenix Park, Dublin from tomorrow (Thursday) to Monday, June 1 from 9am-6pm each day.