[Greengage]

Imagine no mention of Bloom so far, On its 10th Annniversery I have been invited back to have a look. Hope he does not think the free tickets will mellow me, Ill let you know what I think and I will travel with an open mind.

[kindredspirit]

Good. Have ever been to the Mallow one?

[kindredspirit]

Good. Have you ever been to the Mallow one?

[Greengage]

No but I have heard good reports of it, are there not permanent gardens on site there. Must visit.

[Good guy]

I was at Bloom on Saturday - I've been most years since it started. I enjoyed it but I won't go on a Saturday again as it was too crowded for my liking. There were some lovely show gardens with some very effective naturalistic planting and subdued colour schemes. "plants de jour" were lychnis White Robin, together with a pink one the name of which I forget, white foxgloves and cow parsley.
One fascinating large garden was from UCD, showing the evolution of plants from mosses through ferns etc to flowering plants ans our food crops. It was not only interesting and informative but also aesthetically very pleasing, too. Something similar would go well in a public park or Bot. Garden.

[Greengage]

I was also there on Saturday, early, way too many people, I thought there were only three gardens worth seeing, The sculpture garden which was away from the main gardens, Oliver Scrumans garden from Mount Venus Nurseries and the one which won it was to do with social farming by Barry Kavanagh and O’Reilly’s Nurseries. I thought there was an over use of lychnis , foxgloves, and Birch in all the gardens, The UCD garden did not appeal to me but the concept was good i would have thought something like this would need a lot more space than could be afforded at Bloom. i thought the walled garden run by the OPW looked well and appealed to me more, I left here and went across to farmleigh much quieter and more pleasant to walk around. This has been my first time back since it moved to the Park and I cannot see myself going again anytime in the near future. It is generally a trade show that you have to pay to enter to buy stuff too much food and silly stands with poor quality garden products except for Fruit hill farm which had sensible tools. Also a lot of plants were imported which does nothing for the Irish industry. I listened to the farming programme on radio 1 on way up this is usaually a very good programme but missed an opportunity to promote the horticulture industry in Ireland with silly topics. last comment i think it was the syrian garden non of the plants there would survuve in Ireland outside, Bouganvilla needs a warm conservarory and the large Olive trees, shame that they grew for many years in their home country and were dug up to make room probably for development what will happen them now, they possibly will not survive outdooors and with the celtic tiger long gone there are no Golf clubs or Hotels willing to fork out big money on a whim to impress their custommers. All in all good day out but I wont be back

[Greengage]

Problem with site as it will not allow me edit spelling mistakes, spellchecker seems to be off somewhere.

[medieval knievel]

i was there on friday as a visitor, and sat/sun/mon on a stand.
there's little change in it; same things in the same places every year. familiarity was beginning to breed a little contempt for me.

saturday was definitely the busiest of the days. was noticeably slower starts on sunday and monday.

at least this year the monday ended a bit more calmly.

[Greengage]

We should have set up our own little tent Q and A and promote the site James could have paid us for our time, I would charge Tea and some dessert only.