Keen to boost her borders without breaking the bank, Hannah Stephenson consults Mark Gregory of Channel 5’s ‘The Great Gardening Challenge’.

Olympic gold medallist Tessa Sanderson is one of five stars taking an on-screen holiday together in Celebrity 5 Go Barging. She tells Georgia Humphreys about the highs and lows of boating in France with presenter Penny Smith, actor Tom Conti, gardener Diarmuid Gavin, and singer Tony Christie.

Gardening is a refuge, relaxation, a creative endeavour, and good for the body as well as the mind, writes Margaret Jennings.

Diarmuid Gavin, Garden designer, in conversation with Hilary Fennell

Kind-hearted electricians have wired a pioneering farm project for adults with Down Syndrome for the future.

The world of showbusiness collides in London this week with the world of gardening in the form of the colourful explosion that is the RHS Chelsea Flower Show.

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The approach Manon Border Chavene took when coming up with a garden design for the annual Kilsaren Student Competion was to put herself into the mindset of someone who was homeless — but who had just received a a house.

The groundbreaking Diarmuid Gavin-backed Field of Dreams project for young adults with Down Syndrome is poised to become a reality.

What we think of as the quintessential English cottage garden style — mixed herbaceous borders and some pomp and circumstance, and yes, by that we can infer a bit of Elgar and Victoria sponge) — the type of garden praised and replicated across Britain, and adhered to here by a certain type of Irish mindset and the open-garden brigade — is not so English at all.

Don’t forget the West Cork Garden Trail which offers the best of 15 gardens in sublime locations for the viewing public. Opening times are available on www.westcorkgardentrain.com 

An tIonad Glas, The Organic College in Dromcollogher, Co Limerick, holds its Annual Open Day on tomorrow, Sunday July 17 from 2-5pm.

Peter Dowdall took in the first few days of the international flower show this week and spent time talking to the some of the best and brightest gardeners and designers in the world of horticulture.

Gary Graham had a dream. The reality is bigger than anyone could have imagined, writes Fiann Ó Núalláin.

It’s the world championship of gardening and Ireland has just won gold.

An Irish gardener has won a gold medal at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show.

Members of Britain’s royal family and celebrities were the first to get a glimpse of this year’s Chelsea Flower Show, which features everything from a train carriage as part of a 550sq m planted-up station to a garden of bizarre gadgetry by Diarmuid Gavin which comes to life every 15 minutes.

Irish designer Diarmuid Gavin has backed a black Chelsea Flower Show designer who complained that gardening is filled with “double-barrelled” people.

 

Celebrity garden designer Diarmuid Gavin has agreed to work his magic on a farm project for adults with Down Syndrome which has just secured planning.

Committee member John Sweetnam and Robert McDermott talk to designer Diarmuid Gavin about the Down Syndrome Cork 'Field of Dreams' project. 

Good morning. Here’s everything you need to know before you start your day.

POLLEN WATCH: There are now more than 1m hay fever sufferers in Ireland.

It was Year Zero at the Ploughing Championships for Joan Burton. With an Irish Examiner opinion poll unable to find a single farmer who said they would vote Labour, the Tánaiste faced reaping a bleak harvest at the annual agri-fest.

Your guide to tonight's television.

The Irish-based garden design firm controlled by celebrity gardener Diarmuid Gavin has withered away while his UK firm continues to blossom.

This Cork period home has a pretty perch — with precious parking space aplenty, writes Tommy Barker.

An tIonad Glas, The Organic College in Dromcollogher, Limerick,is hosting an open day tomorrow, Sunday, July 20, from 2pm to 5pm.

For the lazy veg growers there is still time to catch up and make your garden into a harvest heaven, writes Kitty Scully.

I HAD the pleasure last Friday of strolling around the newly-restored Fitzgerald’s Park with my mother, on a beautiful May evening.

Fitzgerald Park on Cork’s Mardyke is once again open fully to the public in all its floral and artistic glory, flanked by Diarmuid Gavin’s controversial Sky Garden and the restored Fr Mathew Fountain.

Bright, fun, futuristic and a little fantastic — just what the man who gave Fitzgerald Park its name would have appreciated.

From a flying Sky Garden in Chelsea to a stunning viewing platform over the banks of the Lee — the transformation is finally complete.

The historic lord mayor’s pavilion in Cork’s Fitzgerald Park is set to get a new lease of life.

The curse of the Sky Garden has struck again.

IT is time to buy our Christmas tree.

I’VE OFTEN been asked what underpins my attraction to Simon Cowell — bad taste in men, a potential styling project, weird Machiavellian fetish.

The love affair started well over 20 years ago, when Eamonn Langton, owner of Langton’s Hotel in Kilkenny, was on one of his regular trips to the British capital.

The €2.3m regeneration of Cork’s landmark Fitzgerald Park will help attract more British tourists to Ireland.

Cork’s city manager hopes the signing today of a €2.3m contract to revamp a landmark park will finally put an end to the ‘Sky Garden’ controversy which has dogged the scheme for almost two years.

CELTS on the left, one, two, three..... RARRRRRRGH”.