Florist and botanical pro's house is pick of the bunch

Eve Kelliher talks to Lorcan Burke and Adrian Sharpe, whose Kildare residence has won 2026 Home of the Year

Open-plan living space in Lorcan and Adrian's home. Pictures: Kelan Molloy

What happens when a florist marries a horticultural professional? They create a botanical-style dream residence, which goes on to become Home of the Year. Naturally.

Its captivating connection between indoors and outdoors has meant the Co Kildare property owned by Lorcan Burke and Adrian Sharpe was the pick of the bunch as it took the title in the 2026 series final.

The couple are both passionate about horticulture, floristry and interior design, and so they always intended their room outside to look and feel like an extension of their home.

Home of the Year 2026 winners Lorcan Burke and Adrian Sharpe with Siobhán Lam, Hugh Wallace, and Amanda Bone. Picture: Kelan Molloy

Adrian, a horticulturalist manager and plant buyer at garden and home store The Orchard, Celbridge, Co Kildare, and Lorcan, who owns a floristry business, Absolutely Fabulous Flowers, ensured exquisite planting and hidden rooms (such as a tearoom) make the most of the space.

Back in 2005, they laid the foundations for their “forever home” on family land.

Inspired by two traditional farm-style buildings, as they worked with their architect, Patrick Kerr, they little imagined the residence would earn the top honours in the grand finale of the 12th series of the RTÉ One show. “We’re over the moon, we can’t believe it,” says Lorcan.

Referring to the fact that the final was filmed months before broadcast, Adrian says: “We knew the result for quite a while, but we couldn’t tell. It’s been fun.” Lorcan interjects: “We made ourselves believe we didn’t know — we told so many lies to so many people that we almost believed them ourselves.”

So a bit of joyful explaining was in order this week as they watched the judges announce the results on the big screen at a special viewing evening with their friends and family in their local, Friels, just across the road from their home in Straffan. “It was still a little bit of a shock to win because there were so many beautiful houses in the running, and our house is a little bit different, a 20-year-old. It hasn’t had a complete renovation, and it isn’t a brand-new house,” says Adrian.

The couple adore spending time in their outdoor room.

Adrian and Lorcan outside their Kildare home.

Yes, inspiration for the build flowed in the era “before Instagram and Pinterest and all those things”, says Lorcan, originally from Longwood, Co Meath: “We were old-school.”

Developing an indoor-outdoor paradise was a very organic process as soon as he met Adrian, from Straffan. “I married my gardener!” jokes Lorcan. “When we designed the house, we designed it with our architect, Pat Kerr. We had made a scrapbook with ideas taken from magazines — like a mood board in a scrapbook. We said, here you go, Pat, this is what we’d like — go figure. And that is where the architect’s professionalism came into play.

“We guided the architect, and it was our design. The architect was great in advising on the positioning of rooms, but we had a very clear aesthetic in mind.”

The light throughout the Kildare oasis is what the judges, architects Hugh Wallace and Amanda Bone and interior designer Siobhán Lam, remarked on. “We wanted the design to make the most of light, where did the light come from in the morning, in the afternoon?” says Lorcan.

As for the colourful and elegant interiors, which reflect the owners’ personality, passions and tastes? “We’d no interior designer,” says Lorcan. “Our style is quite eclectic, and it is all quite personal.”

The gardens, which can be seen from all rooms, as Siobhán Lam notes in the final, were the brainchild of Adrian. “A friend of mine from work did some banking around the garden and got us some topsoil down in various places,” says Adrian. “We had a plan for the garden, so we literally did it a little bit like paint-by-numbers.”

Because there are different themes, Adrian chose different plants and had different plans in place for each. “We have a more Chinese-style garden as well, so we had all these different plants for all these different gardens.”

Key to the entire design is a weeping willow tree planted in the garden back in the 1980s, in memory of Adrian’s dad, Peter Sharpe. “The tree was central to the whole home design,” says Lorcan. “It is so important to Adrian and to the emotions and memories surrounding it, and so we built the house to incorporate it.”

Lorcan’s day job has also stood to him during their build. “I set up Absolutely Fabulous Flowers in Celbridge 28 years ago, and we do a lot of weddings, corporate work, as well as doing your everyday floristry stuff. And in the shop, we do a lot of interesting and one-off pieces. Recently, we added a wine shop as well — the ultimate!”

They’ve the grape to thank in part for their win. “People had suggested to us over the years, Oh, you should put your house forward for ‘Home of the Year’, and I never felt it was a good enough standard, and I always felt it wouldn’t be worth it,” says Lorcan. “Full disclosure, how we applied: I happened to have had one or two glasses of wine one Saturday night and was scrolling on my phone, and ‘Home of the Year’ popped up. So I said, I can do that! We applied, and it snowballed from there.”

The owners of Home of the Year 2026 echo sentiments expressed by fellow contestants and judges throughout the final episode of series 12. “Spending the day with lovely homeowners was gorgeous fun,” says Lorcan. “Everyone there was a winner, and for us to come out on top was a very surreal moment, but we were all winners.

“They are a lovely group. I never thought I’d be in a ‘Home of the Year’ WhatsApp group, but we are. Every night we’ve had little messages going forward and back, a great sense of love has come from the series.”

Hugh Wallace declared himself “smitten” by the home, while Amanda Bone adds: “When I stepped into their home, I felt pure joy. What a winner.” The botanical house “feels authentic, it’s playful, it’s joyful,” she adds.

While the couple enjoyed watching the episode in which their home was shown — particularly seeing Amanda and Hugh loll on their bed — the series highlight for them both was Hugh’s words to them after they won. (Series 12 of Home of the Year was completed before Hugh Wallace’s death.) “Can I just say when I walked around your house, I knew it was the winner?” Hugh Wallace confides following the announcement after his and his fellow judges’ deliberations in Palmerstown, Co Meath.

Adrian and Lorcan both cherish this memory. “He came up to us and told us how the minute he walked in from the main road, it was like coming into a completely different universe. He said he knew when he saw it that it was going to be the winner,” says Adrian. Lorcan adds: “Hugh asked us, ‘Who did the outside?’ and said, ‘Between both of you, you’ve created a beautiful home.’ And that’s what meant so much to us. Our home was never meant to be an interior curated showpiece.

“He spoke of how ‘Home of the Year’ is about it being the owners’ home and garden as opposed to interior architecture and a horticultural showpiece. And that’s our lasting memory of Hugh.”

A gate lodge in Co Down and a “serene” Dublin apartment were the runners-up. Hugh describes the apartment as “serene”, and judge and interior designer Siobhán Lam says the “magical, storybook” feel of the gate lodge is an inspiration.

For the first time, each judge was awarded one golden key to use throughout the series, to select one home to bring a runner-up from an episode, straight through to the final. This resulted in 10 finalists, rather than the previous seven in the previous series. “Ten finalists that represent Irish creativity,” says Siobhán.

Home of the Year airs on RTÉ One and is on RTÉ Player