A look inside Peter Dowdall's gold medal garden from Singapore Garden Festival
talks to top garden designer Paul Martin about his latest accolade — a gold medal at Singapore.
Our ladies hockey heroes aren’t the only ones to have brought honour to these shores this year.
Competing with spades and trowels at two of the top flower shows on either side of the globe, two of Ireland’s top garden designers brought home gold medals.
Firstly, at RHS Hampton Court which took place during the first week in July of this year, Dublin designer Alan Rudden created his “Santa Rita Living La Vida 120” garden in the magnificent palace grounds.
Inspired by a recent visit to Chile, Alan created a dramatic garden which used plants, mostly native to South America but which will also tolerate our climate and thrive in an Irish garden.
The one exception was Arbutus unedo, several of which took centre stage in his garden and are more connected with Killarney than Santiago.
Alan won a Gold Medal for his creation at this show in Surrey carrying on from his success at Bloom in the Phoenix Park earlier in the season.
And then there was an event which only happens every two years — the Singapore Garden Festival — which attracted over 600,000 visitors in July to make it the biggest flower show in the world.
A garden designer must be invited to create a show garden at Singapore and to qualify, the selected designer must have won a Gold Medal in one of the top flower shows in the world in the previous two years.
Paul Martin had won Gold at RHS Chelsea in 2016 and was invited to Singapore to create another garden at the festival this year. There were only three garden designers from Europe chosen to create show gardens at Singapore this year — all Chelsea Gold medallists, Paul, Andy Sturgeon and Kate Gould.
The rest were from Malaysia, Japan, Singapore and Australia. Competition was stiff and unlike Chelsea, where a designer gets twenty-one days to create their show garden, in Singapore, Paul and his crew had only ten days to create his ‘The Green Retreat’ garden, plus you have to deal with the high humidity and 34 degree temperatures. “It was intense,” said Paul in his usual understated manner.
Paul Martin and Andy Sturgeon both won gold for their efforts, making them the only two Europeans ever to win gold twice at the Singapore Garden Festival — Paul having won previously in 2012.
While Alan used plants suited to the dry heat of South America in his Hampton Court creation, Paul’s plant choices had to deal with the extreme humidity of the Singapore climate.
Many of the show gardens in Singapore contained various species of orchid which we would use as indoor plants in this part of the world. Paul’s design contained no orchids but did have many plants which we would be more used to seeing as houseplants such as Aglaonema ‘Silver Queen’ the Chinese Houseplant, Tradescantia ‘Zebrina’ also referred to as the Wandering Jew, and Philodendron ‘Emerald Green’.
Other plants such as Dracaena cambodiana will tolerate the humidity due to its shiny, waxy leaves.
Paul is quick to point out that plants which we are used to growing in Ireland and the UK wouldn’t last a week in the tropical rainforest climate of Singapore.
“Lavender would last only a week in this climate as the level of moisture in the air would lead to fungal rot setting into the middle of the plant and it would simply die off,” says Paul
That’s not to say that the plants used would not survive in Ireland, ferns such as Blechnum and Asplenium nidus, the Bird’s Nest Fern were used as understorey planting in the show garden.
These would be as happy in a garden on the Wild Atlantic Way as they were in this Show Garden in the shadow of the world famous Marina Bay Sands Hotel.
One of the more intriguing highlights at Singapore was the ‘Calligraphy Bonsai’ exhibition.
Created by 77-year-old Mr Lim Kuay Huat, these tiny, living works of art were created using the plant Wrightia religiosa. Displaying his immense skill for the art form of Bonsai many of the creations were as small as a one euro coin, with the smallest being no larger than a fingernail.
Be it as a sportsperson or a garden designer, to compete and to achieve gold at this level on the world stage deserves serious recognition and it is great to see a small country such as Ireland once again punching well above our weight.
And so, it was fitting that our Ambassador to Singapore, Mr Geoffrey Keating visited Paul’s garden at the festival to offer the country’s congratulations, and while he may not have been paraded in an open top bus, the plaudits continued in a letter of congratulations and appreciation from our President.
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