On with Mallow Show

Mallow Home and Garden Show is the province’s premier garden event, Charlie Wilkins reports

IN these glorious summer days one of the loveliest thoughts is that the frosts, wind and rain of early spring are well and truly behind us. I can relax now and work in shirt sleeves trundling and dragging succulent migrants out of the crush in the overheating greenhouse. Many of the occupants are wan and pallid looking, more again decidedly yellow about the gills, but all are prone to dropping bits of themselves as the rush of fresh air greets and tosses them about. My thoughts therefore turn to replenishing the odd casualty, but where better to do this than at Munster’s premier garden event: the Mallow Homes and Garden Show.

The show opens on Friday, Jun 29, and continues through to Sunday, Jul 1. Since its inception in 1999, the Mallow Homes and Garden Festival has gone from strength to strength, and this year nearly half of the 22 permanent gardens have been completely dismantled and rebuilt to new and exacting standards under the artistic direction of landscaper Darren Drummond. Even last year’s magnificent offering by Dominic Cullinane (the Aubergine Garden) has gone the way of the snowdrops and today not a single remnant remains. Some of the fully mature trees have been felled to not alone facilitate the new gardens, but to increase light all around and of those that remain, dramatic pruning, shaping, and pleaching have opened up their branch structure and elegant canopies.