This past weekend has been all about Bloom 2013. Bloom is Ireland’s biggest gardening and food festival.
We’ve gone to Bloom every year since it started, 7 years ago. This year we were extremely grateful to recieve a gift of tickets to go on Friday. We’ve found in past years Thursday or Friday were the best days to go…. as the further it goes into the weekend the bigger the crowds.
So early start and off we headed to Dublin.
Thursday had been a scorcher of a day, so we armed ourselves with sunscreen…. needn’t have bothered the sun never shone on Friday but it didn’t deter us. In fact it probably made it more pleasant to wander about.
This was as close as we got to sun 
I love the Victorian Walled Garden. It is such a lovely area. The affect the weather has had on the growing season was really evident in the Walled Garden – so little flowers compared to last year. I always use the vegetables in the walled garden as a barometer for how my plants should be! This year we are all at about the same stage….. the courgettes up there are probably just a little ahead of mine.
Next up it was a visit to the show gardens. I have to say we were both rather disappointed with the show gardens this year. Maybe it is a sign of the times? There seemed to be less gardens. Woodies had a good display of 3 or 4 suburban gardens. And, yes, of course there were some lovely elements too.
Loved the use of old pallets…. and the perfume from all those herbs was amazing.
We loved the colour of this garden wall. Should we paint our yard wall? Or should we go with the lichen look?
Maybe I am becoming a more ‘experienced’ gardener, but one thing that struck me was that a lot of the gardens had plantings that were either out of season or would most definitely not grow outdoors in Ireland. I know, I know it is all about concept…. but come on we need inspiration to be a little real and achievable.
Chillies & Kumquats
Kumquats and chillies growing outdoors in Ireland?????
I loved this water fountain…. but his nibs says you’d need some water pump to run it…. but I can dream can’t I? I think it would be a lovely feature in the back yard
For us the postcard gardens were so much more interesting. There were some lovely achievable ideas there.
A lovely photo of Dee and Sandra from the Community Garden Network.
The highlights of the day for us….. catching up with friends, lounging on the Elephant seats and chatting with Dee from Greensideup (who was there with the Community Garden Network… look at their yarn wrap garden), and John and Colette from As Seen by C. Meeting the ‘real’ people behind some twitter names – Peter from Donegan Landscaping and David from Beyond the Wild Garden.
The lowlights…. everything seemed to be crammed in this year. I don’t know was there more exhibitors or less space. It was so difficult to find things.
And the PARKING! We wanted to park in the ‘red’ carpark as research beforehand had indicated it was closest to Entrance 1. So silly us followed the ‘red’ carparking signs, to only discover that all the carparking signs were red and we had parked in the ‘yellow’ carpark!!! (By the way, there was nothing to indicate that we parked in the ‘yellow’ carpark – it was just a sensible car attendant informed us as such). We weren’t the only people to be fooled by this… we met others who couldn’t find their car after the event as they too thought they had parked in the ‘red’ carpark! Dear organisers – it would be simple to use the colour coding on the signage too!
