Super Garden judge Brian Burke: 'Embrace the space outside your back door'

We discover how we can recreate our very own Super Garden and a bit of Bloom festival magic in our own backyards 

Brian Burke at his Woodie's show garden entitled Seomra Eile (Another Room) at Bord Bia Bloom in the Phoenix Park, Dublin. Pictures: Brian McEvoy 

We just can't get enough of garden-related events. 

A couple of years cooped up during a pandemic can do that to you.

It’ll propel any one of us on to a train and off up to Dublin to see what’s out there, whether that be plants or ideas to take home to make our corner of the world a greener, happier place.

It’s precisely why queues took root from all parts of the country winding tendrils around the block to Phoenix Park from early on Thursday morning for this year’s five-day Bloom festival — the first live version of the food and garden event since before pandemic times.

Seomra Eile is designed as an extension of the home. 

Yes, agrees Super Garden judge and Woodie’s expert gardener Brian Burke and newly minted Bloom silver gilt medal winner Brian Burke, we are all “embracing the space outside our own back door” now.

“Rather than begin a place for simply a bland lawn or some old-fashioned shrubs — a place they didn’t use; the space has become pivotal. People relied on it as a diversion. Because as much as we love our families, it was nice to get a bit of space outside also.”

Brian, a former gold and silver medallist at Bloom, has returned to the festival to design Woodie’s show garden Seomra Eile — the Irish for “another room”.

Brian is a landscape contractor and award-winning garden designer as well as Woodie’s garden and DIY expert and the RTE series judge. 

For his Bloom show garden he planted two large beds with "a mixture of herbaceous flowering perennials and perennial grasses", he says. "I wanted to create softness that works alongside a modern home," says Brian.

"I chose lychnis, salvia, calamagrostis, astrantia and astilbe and multi-stem birch trees also feature."

Many of the show gardens created at this year’s Bord Bia Bloom were designed to be accessible for amateur gardeners in order to provide those with a new-found interest in gardening with tips and tools to enhance their outdoor space.

“Seomra Eile shows what you can do with a simple, square space,” says Brian Burke.

“The central area is limestone paving, with a central structure that is a pergola — but a pergola with a twist: steel bars replace the timber joists you would normally find in a pergola.”

Seomra Eile is designed to glisten during sunshine and rainshowers. 

Why? “I want to do something different. Stainless steel glistens when it catches the sun — and more importantly when it catches a drop of rain. So, when you have intermittent sun and showers, you have shadows and light playing and this way you have sparkles and the way the light glistens can be really delightful.”

And can we reproduce all of this at home?

“Yes. That is the thing about designing a garden for Woodie’s. I am showcasing ideas and elements that anyone can have a go at. There is nothing bespoke about it, no big-ticket items, nothing customised. You just need that little bit of a spark, initiative or imagination to put them together.

“There is nothing I have that you won’t get in your local nursery or garden centre.

“Woodie’s in the business of DIY. My job is to reflect that and to showcase it.”

Brian won Super Garden on RTÉ One in 2015. “I joined the series as a judge in 2018,” he says.

“It’s a real thrill every year to visit the gardens and get to know the five diverse personalities of the competitors and the five briefs for each gardens — because all of these make for diverse and interesting gardens. “And you are always going to come across interesting design ideas.

“For someone like myself who just loves landscaping, it’s like mardi gras every year.”

Brian’s route to his own garden design career was organic.

Sisters Louiza Recks (age 8) and Nina Recks (age 12) at the Woodie's show garden.

He attained his B.Sc. Hons. (Surveying) from Trinity College Dublin in 1994 and has over 25 years experience in the construction, landscaping and gardening business in Ireland, the United Kingdom, and the States.

After moving to London, he worked in the United States, where he was smitten with what he describes as “these huge opulent New England gardens”.

“They were crammed with colour and strong design ideas that really inspired me,” he adds.

“After a couple of years, I set up my own modest design operation.” The father-of-five returned to Ireland with his family in 2006, to Killenard, Co. Laois.

In 2015 he applied to Super Garden and won it.

Brian Burke has been a judge on 'Super Garden' since 2018 and won the RTE One show in 2015. 

This year, some 110,000 visitors are expected to Bloom and, as Brian says, “the next few days are going to be intense” but he is looking forward to it.

As for our own patch of ground beyond the back door? 

“The biggest piece of advice I give people is just to absorb the space — spend time in it before you do anything. On a Saturday, put a chair out there and make yourself a cup of coffee.

“Absorb all those sensory experiences —what direction is the wind coming from, is there noise coming from another house, smells coming from a few houses away? All of this helps you build a picture. What area or aspects of the space do you want to exploit? Don’t rush in. Soak up its essence.

“I see it in my own place at home — the best decisions I made are ones that happened maybe five or six years or even more after we moved there. The space kind of speaks to you.”

• www.bordbiabloom.com
• www.woodies.ie