Bloom in the Park visit 2010
We’re just leaving the Bloom Festival in Phoenix Park Dublin to miss the rush hour traffic on the way home. We’ve been at the event for 5 hours and in the heat of the sun we thought it best to leave before my bald patch set alight.
My lad and I took the initiative to come down from Inishowen yesterday, calling into Newgrange and Knowth in the Boyne Valley. At 5000 years old, these structures show that landscape design is certainly nothing new. People have been manipulating the land for thousands of years either for recreational use or for worshipping or for protection from marauding invaders.
We stopped over at relative’s house close to Phoenix Park, and after a lie in, we set off, all fresh faced and enthusiastic, to join the long queue of cars full of eager visitors to Ireland’s largest gardening, food and family festival.
Show Gardens
Our first port of call was the Show Garden area to get photos of the new innovative garden designs. There are twenty-two gardens this year so between us my lad and I had cameras to cover all angles. This year, I notice, Bloom is far more eco aware. There are energy saving gardens that collect your rain water and filter it back into the house. There are recycled wine bottles pushed into a lawn. The influence of energy conservation spread to Bord Bia too. They worked with the Carbon Trust to measure Bloom’s own carbon footprint this year, which included tightening up on waste management controls, reusing materials when possible and increasing the use of public transport to the event. 
Forfree
One of my favourite gardens at the show is Forfree by Sophie von Maltzan. Sophie took garden design to another level. The garden provides a platform for Crann (the national tree awareness organisation) to showcase their service of distributing free native trees to schools around the country. There were four rows of trees in the design, all mulched by old cardboard to keep the weeds down. Around the perimeter were bails of used paper and packaging up to a height of about eight feet to produce a dramatic wall. It asks a few questions. Do we need so much packaging? Can waste be reused without being sent to China? I like it because it reminded me of my own garden.Versatility
This year has seen a real increase in edible planting mixed in with more traditional ornamental arrangements. 2010 is the UN’s International Year of Biodiversity. And this theme is reflected in some of the designs. There are gardens that attract a lot of wildlife, gardens that produce food for the family and gardens that are a practical usable space for the family who with the recession are spending more time at home.
There is also an emphasis on children this year, which is highlighted by the fact that children get into the event for free. The Irish Preschool Play Association were onsite with their imaginative garden, again made from recycled materials such as straw bales, wooden structures (also making excellent use of old car tyres). Dublin zoo were also there entertaining the young ones and the children’s museum based in Sandyford supplied the education with a “Good to Grow” feature to get children interested in food sustainability.
The event is big enough to house all types of approaches to gardening. And everyone will get something different from the event. As my lad and I moved around the garden designs I concentrated on the ecological side of things. When I get home and trawl my way through the five hundred photos I will no doubt see a lot of other features I missed.
Another new addition to the event was a Lost and Forgotten Skills Marquee. Bord Bia recruited some of the top craftspeople in Ireland who demonstrated cheese making, butter churning and fish smoking as well as spinning, clay pot making and quilt making.
Seeing all that cheese made us realise we were quite hungry. Luckily there was no shortage of food stalls. The Artisan food market had over fifty producers of quality produce and they were giving free samples. Our diet for the day consisted of slithers of meat, sausages, cakes, olive dips with tiny bits of broken cream crackers, orange juice, topped off with chocolate and marshmallows, not the most balanced diet but enjoyable never the less. Bord Bia also gave hourly cooking demonstrations. Well known chefs including Neven Maguire and Donal Skehan (author of “Good Mood Food”) were preparing mouth watering wholesome dishes.
Frugal living
It is time to head on and as I negotiate my way through the local rush hour traffic, I ponder the sights and experiences of the last couple of days. On one hand there is the megalithic tomb at Newgrange, where everything was built for a practical useable purpose with natural materials. The latest trends at Bloom, too, emphasises sustainability and care for the environment. Perhaps the gap between the Newgrange and Bloom styles is closing, and perhaps that’s a good thing.
