Peter Dowdall: Why Chelsea Flower Show and Mallow Home & Garden Festival mean summer is here

There is so much to enjoy at garden festivals, which offer inspiration and practical advice

Tue, 24 May, 2022 - 13:20

Peter Dowdall

I know it’s summer as soon once the hanging baskets are up and Chelsea Flower Show is on.

I won't be in London this year but I have the TV set to record from today, May 24 right up to May 28, as the world’s best flower show unfolds once more in London’s SW3.

Monty Don in the BBC Studios' Our Green Planet and RHS Bee Garden during the RHS Chelsea Flower Show. Picture: Paige Young

The Chelsea Flower Show is to gardening what London Fashion Week is to Fashion: aspirational, cutting-edge designs and products showcased for the world to see, admire and even criticise.

There is always so much to take from a show like that in terms of ideas and inspiration but it does tend to be just that — aspirational.

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And taking place at the end of this week is our very own Mallow Home & Garden Festival.

One of the highlights of the summer gardening calendar in this part of the world, Mallow is less about design dreams and unimaginable budgets and more about actual gardens you can visualise in your own space.

Over 20 landscaped gardens will be on display and of course, what makes this show different and special is that the gardens are permanently on display and the maturity that this has given to the site and to the show gardens is something that can’t be replicated.

Peter Dowdall at a previous Mallow Home & Garden Festival.

On Friday-Sunday, May 27-29, all roads, wheelbarrows and garden buggies lead to the racecourse in North Cork as the grounds become transformed for one of the biggest home and gardening festivals of the year.

This year, Cork Builders Products are back again as the festival’s main sponsor.

The CBP team has worked closely in partnership with festival organisers and produced five stunning landscaped gardens, designed and built by Cork-based JPK landscaping.

Working in partnership with Irish business and promoting local enterprise are key ingredients to CBP’s success, according to commercial director David Heaven.

“This year we have included some of our key suppliers’ newest ranges to showcase our gardening and outdoor living range.

“In all our show gardens you will find the latest landscaping materials, including Ultra-shield composite decking, Cedral wall cladding, Elite smartfence, Halo Italian porcelain outdoor tiles, Kilsaran landscaping and Finbarr O’Neill Aggregates.”

The festival gardens have also been completely transformed by Dulux whose very own colour consultant, Cora Collins, will be a guest speaker on Sunday offering great advice tips on how you too can add some colour to your outdoor space.

Queen Elizabeth II sitting in a buggy during a visit by members of the royal family to the RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2022, at the Royal Hospital Chelsea, in London, on Monday.

If you’re seriously looking at getting your garden done or doing it yourself then I urge you to get to the festival early in the morning.

Have a walk through the permanent gardens and then have another walkthrough and a third and fourth, for you will spot something new each time.

You may see a particular plant or planting combination, a type of paving, an idea for a small, shaded corner or perhaps a novel way of screening out an eyesore. You can take this inspiration and bring it home with you.

Billy Alexander, Kells Bay Gardens, won his second gold medal from the Royal Horticultural Society last year, after being invited to show his spectacular ferns display at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show.

There will also be opportunity to chat with the landscapers who created the gardens and you can pick their brains on what to do with your own space, an opportunity you simply don’t have at the larger shows.

When starting out on your design journey, it’s always good to have an idea of the style of garden that you would like to achieve. If you don’t know what your preference is when it comes to garden design and you’re unsure whether you want traditional or contemporary, formal or informal, and you have yet to decide on hard landscaping features and materials and positioning of same, then the Mallow Festival is invaluable. You will get guidance and ideas from the designers and from the gardens on show.

The age of many of the plants will help you see how certain things will look as they get older. The show is now over 20 years on the go and many of the hedges and trees between the gardens have been there that long and give a true feeling of maturity to the show.

Irish Examiner gardening columnist Peter Dowdall. Picture: John Allen

Festivals like this are dangerous for me, as I get to see all the specialist nurseries in one place once more, fuelling my plant collecting addiction.

Many of the specialist growers who will have been at the recent Rare and Special Plant Fair and other plant fairs around Ireland and the UK, will be at
Mallow and, not only will you have their ear but they will also be only too happy to impart their expert knowledge to help you get the best out of your new acquisition.

The great thing about buying from local and specialist nurseries is that all their plants are grown in Ireland, an important factor, as many plants now available have travelled across an entire continent in temperature-controlled transport onto supermarket shelves and the first time they may ever experience the outdoors is in your garden.

Having been grown locally means you can be certain they will not just tolerate but thrive in your garden.

Paraic Horkan and everyone’s favourite, Charlie Wilkins, will be speaking and answering questions in the seminar room throughout the weekend and I’ll be there myself at 2pm on the Friday and Saturday talking on the subject “Gardening Pleasures” so do drop by if you have a query or you just want to say hello.

Summer is here, we can travel and mix freely once more at last, so get out and enjoy the Mallow Festival this weekend.