'Each garden has to be different': Cork landscaper wins top prize for future-proofed urban garden
Lavender Landscapes designer and project manager Shane Murphy has won the 'Pro Landscaper' best international garden award. Picture: Dan Linehan
A Cork landscape gardener who has previously appeared on has won a prestigious international award for his garden design.
Shane Murphy of Lavender Landscapes, based in Ovens, Co Cork, was the outstanding category winner for the International Garden prize by , a leading UK publication for the landscaping industry.
His winning family garden was a future-proofed, urban garden, designed to evolve with the changing needs of a growing family.
His winning garden was in an inner city but designed to be very private and using high-end, exclusive materials, including Kilkenny limestone slabs.
It was designed to evolve with time so that it would still be enjoyable and suitable for the family as children grew up and moved out, he said.
Mr Murphy said that landscape gardening has become an increasingly specialist, professionalised, bespoke, and artistic industry.
“Each design we do is pulling from the architecture in the house. Each design is different. Other people do the same thing over and over again, they call it “a style”. But those days are gone.
“If you’re going to seamlessly and sympathetically merge a garden with the architecture of the home, each garden has to be different.”
Since Covid, people have found a new respect for the importance of gardens for people’s mental health, Mr Murphy said, and the emotional impact of a garden is more important than ever.
“We always try to bring emotion into the garden in some respect. I always say ‘spend 10 years getting good at hard landscaping, spend 10 years perfecting soft landscaping, and the next 10 years experimenting with emotion in the garden'.
“You can see what it does to different people. The garden is the last place the sun gets, and it’s the least stressful place because it’s furthest from the house and it’s in the sun. The family doesn’t realise it yet but they’re going to be here all the time."
Mr Murphy's garden includes an olive tree which, he says, "reminds everyone of being on holidays".
The rising cost of materials has hit the landscaping industry. Mr Murphy said he was shocked to find a piece of steel had jumped from €45 to more than €100.
Despite rising material costs, Mr Murphy said his customers have been understanding.
“A lot of what we’re doing is custom. A lot of my clients have money and they know what’s going on economically. They’ve seen me save them money in other ways and a lot of them are repeat clients so they trust you.”
Mr Murphy will travel to London later this month for ’s Small Project Big Impact awards ceremony.
He has previously collaborated with celebrity Irish architect Dermot Bannon and has appeared on an episode of in Fermoy, Co Cork.
He is also member of the Garden and Landscape Designers Association of Ireland.
