Two Wicklow gardeners to showcase at this year’s Bloom Festival

Myles Buchanan

Fri 26 Apr 2024 at 09:00

Wicklow show garden designers, Tünde Perry and Robert Moore will showcase at this year’s Bord Bia Bloom festival.

Now in its 18th year, Bloom returns to the Phoenix Park in Dublin over the June bank holiday weekend, from May 30 to June 3.

At the centre of the festival, the show gardens are the ‘jewel in the crown’ and feature bold, thought-provoking and innovative designs from a pool of talented garden designers from around Ireland.

Among those is Tünde Perry, who is based in Kilcoole and has always been passionate about nature. On arriving in Ireland, she changed careers and started maintaining gardens. She also studied landscape architecture.

Her goals are to create places where people can slow down, let time go, and plant plants that increase biodiversity.

‘From The Ground Up’, sponsored by the National Dairy Council, is Tünde’s 10th show garden at Bloom. It is designed to forge a deeper connection between consumers and sustainable dairy production, while also promoting the nutritional credentials of Irish dairy. The garden will demonstrate the many different layers of nutrient-rich soil in an Irish dairy pasture, with a farmhouse that features an open kitchen where some of Ireland's top chefs, influencers, scientists, farmers, and historians will hold demonstrations and talks over the course of the festival.

Fellow Wicklow gardener Robert Moore, based in Kilmacanogue, is set to bring his fourth Bloom show garden to life this year.

‘Together We Grow’ sponsored by Tusla, will be a magical space, with flowing movement, delicate structure and naturalistic planting that represents this safe and caring environment. The garden will be a space where foster children and their foster families can share in fun, loving times, and the many social or solitary distractions a garden can offer, like planting, playing, growing and escaping.

Robert has always been passionate about landscape design, architecture, and beautiful outdoor spaces. His mission is to merge ‘landscaping and lifestyle’, whether in a private or public setting. He has won numerous awards at Bloom, including a gold medal for the Marie Keating Foundation ‘Catching Cancer Early’ garden in 2023.