Peter Dowdall: What to see and do at Mallow Home & Garden Festival this weekend

'Long before social media, gardeners swapped plants and advice over fences. Festivals like Mallow continue that tradition on a larger scale'

All smiles: Frances and Noel Horgan, Dromahane, with Barkley, at a previous Mallow Home & Garden Festival. Pictures: Eddie O'Hare

By late May, something begins to happen in Irish gardening that you don’t quite get at any other time of year. The garden is no longer an idea, a plan or a promise of what might be. It is happening right now. Lawns need cutting each week, hedges are stretching out in every direction, containers are filling, roses are beginning to move, and every garden centre in the country is full of people standing in front of benches of plants, wondering what they should buy and what will work in their garden.

This is why events like the Mallow Home & Garden Festival still matter so much.