Sky Garden finally flying into public view

It bloomed after winning gold at the 2011 Chelsea Flower Show but wilted when it became entangled in a thorny mesh of controversy and rancour.

But now, after years of uncertainty and months of construction, a reimagined version of Diarmuid Gavin’s Sky Garden is poised to be unveiled to the public in a landmark Cork city park.

City officials have confirmed that the installation of elements of the award-winning Sky Garden in historic Fitzgerald Park as part of a €2.3m park regeneration is nearing completion.

It is hoped it will be open to the public before the end of next month.

Council spokesman Stephen Scully said they are really looking forward to unveiling the finished park. “It has been one of the largest infrastructural parks project ever undertaken in the city,” he said.

“We are confident that the new park, together with elements of the Sky Garden, will make it a must-see destination for locals and visitors alike.

“With all the new elements, together with a new entrance, new lawns, and new performance space, it really lends itself to visits, and will be a very pleasant space in the city.”

It will be the first time in almost three years that the garden will be used for its intended purpose — as an iconic tourist attraction.

Aoife Mahony, a project engineer with the city council, oversaw the revamp. “The design team have reimagined the park, and tried to bring it back to its former glory,” she said.

“The pink pod from Chelsea, along with a lot of the flowers that were part of the award-winning garden, wrap around a new cafe which opened last week.

“Construction is almost completed and we hope to have the park open by the middle of May.”

It has been a long and difficult journey blighted by controversy since the Sky Garden, inspired by James Cameron’s film Avatar, won gold at the Chelsea Flower Show in May 2011.

Gavin was commissioned to design an iconic garden in a partnership project between Fáilte Ireland and Cork City Council. It was envisaged the garden would be dismantled after Chelsea and shipped back to Cork where it would be rebuilt and used as an urban tourist attraction.

However, relations between Gavin and city officials overseeing the project broke down.

The garden was relocated to Ireland a few weeks later but the behind-the-scenes wrangling meant its signature flying pod, which had been slung from a crane, had to be stored in the city’s former Showgrounds, and its plants and shrubs were stored in a nursery in Kildare.

The full extent of the breakdown in relations did not become apparent until the Irish Examiner secured access using Freedom of Information legislation to hundreds of documents which revealed the full extent of the difficulties.

Some city councillors branded the project a complete waste of public money. Worker’s Party councillor Ted Tynan described the flying pod as “more like the axle of an old tractor”.

Gavin publicly slated the local authority for its handling of the entire scheme and called for it to be scrapped, before he disassociated himself from it entirely.

The council has always defended its role in the project, insisting it acted at all times to protect public money.

The plants and shrubs were eventually shipped to a nursery in Cork before an auditor’s report highlighted concern about the €100,000 plant storage costs, fuelling even more outrage about the waste of public money.

Relations between Gavin and the city council eventually deteriorated to such an extent that City Hall cut all ties with Gavin and moved on with the project without him.

The plants were kept in storage and the flying pod became overgrown in grass before the council last year finally unveiled its vision for the Sky Garden.

Amid of blaze of publicity, it announced plans to incorporate elements of the Sky Garden into a €2.3m regeneration of Fitzgerald Park.

The Mardyke Gardens scheme — the single largest investment in the historic park in over a century — has seen the flying pod refurbished, painted pink, and installed on elevated stilts to provide a spectacular viewing platform over the River Lee, near the city museum.

The pod is the centrepiece of a gallery garden which wraps around a new cafe and terrace.

A central feature of this garden space is a series of stainless steel spheres and domes set among paths and planting arrangements from the original Chelsea garden.

Other features of the park revamp include:

- A new performance bandstand under a sweeping curved roof in front of a sunken lawn;

- The development of a Victorian walled garden;

- And an upgrade of the main park entrance and a new plaza associated with an upgrade to the museum entrance area.

The park’s ornamental pond and Fr Matthew Fountain, dating from the Cork Exhibition of 1902, have already been restored.

The scheme is 80% funded by Fáilte Ireland under its Tourism Product Development Scheme.

It is hoped the revamped park will become part of a world class horticultural tourist trail linking the Mardyke Gardens with gardens at UCC, Fota, Blarney Castle Gardens, and a number of private gardens.

Cumnor Construction were the main contractors on the entire scheme. Ms Mahony, and her supervisor, Liam Casey, worked closely with the design team, led by landscape architects Cunnane Stratton Reynolds in conjunction with Punch Consulting Engineers, Michael Barrett Partnership Quantity Surveyors, Carrig Conservation, and Darmody Architects.