This June bank holiday weekend, budding gardeners and green thumbs will be rewarded with an abundance of floral inspiration from the Institute of Technology Blanchardstown (ITB), Fingal County Council and the Dublin and Dún Laoghaire Education and Training Board (DDLETB), at their spectacular show garden at the Bloom 2017 Festival.
With a state-of-the-art innovative campus that has invested €1.25 million in a facility dedicated to the study of horticulture, and a seven times Bloom gold medal winning horticulture lecturer, it’s no wonder that ITB, in partnership with Fingal County Council and DDLETB, has created one of the most spectacular display gardens at this year’s Bloom festival.
The impressive ‘Flúirse Fingal garden is based on the Final County Council motto, ‘Flúirse Talamh is Mara’ meaning ‘Abundance of Land and Sea’, and is one of 22 awe-inspiring garden designs on display at the country’s largest showcase of best-in-practice horticulture.
Stemming from Fingal’s rich history of culture and diversity, the garden, ‘Flúirse Fingal’, was designed by multi-award Bloom Gold winner garden designer and ITB horticulture lecturer, Jane McCorkell. The garden will showcase the evolution of gardening styles and technologies over time in Fingal and emphasise the prominence of the county as a food and heritage centre of excellence.
Created by ITB in partnership with Final County Council and the Dublin and Dún Laoghaire Education and Training Board (DDLETB), visitors can soak in the aroma of fresh flora, as they learn about how the design of the display is deeply rooted in the history and heritage of Fingal’s Earthly Abundance.
Decoratively, the concept garden uses a cycle path to evoke the flavour of Fingal as experienced on a journey through a mosaic of the county’s landscape. The stone windmill is an eye-catching feature of the garden and represents the iconic Skerries Mills, a popular holiday poster symbol for the area in the past. A river flows through the site, making its way to the estuary and onwards to the sea, which represents Fingal’s rich riparian habitats and coastal biodiversity of international importance.
ITB’s horticulture facility is an up-to-the-minute technologically forward estate which includes glasshouses, poly-tunnels, 3rd generation synthetic and natural grass pitches, workshops and welfare facilities as well as a range of outdoor practical work areas for fruit and vegetable production and sports turf management.
“Given our significant investment in the horticulture industry, and our people’s passion and dedication to the art of gardening, we are proud once again to produce another show garden with Fingal County Council. We hope that visitors to Bloom find great satisfaction in the story behind its concept, as well as the visual cues and scents it’s brimming with,” said Ms. McCorkell, multi-award winning garden designer and ITB horticulture lecturer.
