Peter Dowdall: It's show time as Bloom festival gets set to mark 20th birthday

'When visiting the show gardens, let me give you one piece of advice, and that is, to move slowly through them rather than ticking them off like a list'

Sat, 23 May, 2026 - 10:35

Peter Dowdall

What began in 2007 as a showcase for Irish horticulture, food and garden design has grown into something genuinely hard to categorise, which is probably why Bloom has not just lasted the pace but adapted and improved each year, this year celebrating the 20th Bloom event.

It is not quite a garden show in the traditional sense, though the show gardens are at the heart of it. It is not purely a food festival, though food, given that Bord Bia exists primarily to promote Irish produce, has long since elbowed its way to perhaps beyond equal billing with the plants.

The festival is not only a family day out, though families come in their thousands. It is all of these things at once, spread across 70 acres of the Phoenix Park over five days, and for those of us who work in and around gardening, it functions as a kind of annual pulse-taking and a chance to reconnect with like-minded souls once more.

This year, the show runs from Thursday, May 28, through to Monday, June 1, open daily from nine in the morning until six in the evening. The weather will do what it will do, being late May in Ireland, but Bloom has long since made its peace with that. A bit of rain rarely clears the crowds, and in truth, a grey day in the Phoenix Park with the show gardens in full splendour is not the worst way to spend an afternoon. Throw in some blue skies and sunshine, and I struggle to think of any nicer way to spend a day.

Nature's Symphony: Celebrating Organic Growth by Oliver and Liat Schurmann, sponsored by Bord Bia and the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, at Bloom 2025. Picture: Fennells

The show gardens remain the centrepiece, and rightly so. These are serious horticultural undertakings, designed and built by professional designers working at full stretch, and they deserve close attention as, in the days before the gates open, the site is a controlled frenzy of lorries arriving at first light with plants that were still in a nursery 48 hours earlier, turf being laid, last-minute plants being sourced at dawn, and designers on their knees creating entire landscapes on a deadline that allows no margin for error.

Show gardens, such as the Caragh Nurseries Garden at the 2025 event, designed by Leonie Cornelius and sponsored by Caragh Nurseries, are part of Bloom's appeal. Picture: Chris Bellew/Fennells

By opening morning, seemingly inevitably, it is all resolved, and the miracle is not that the gardens look finished but that they look as though they were never anything else.

When visiting the show gardens, let me give you one piece of advice, and that is, to move slowly through them rather than ticking them off like a list.

Future Farmers competition winners at Bloom 2025 Trish Halpin, from Knocklong NS, Co Limerick, and Emily Lambes, from St Patrick's NS, Ballinagore, Co Westmeath, pictured at the National Dairy Council garden entitled 'The Grass Advantage', designed by Robert Moore. Picture: Robbie Reynolds

Notice the plant combinations, how the levels shift, where the eye is led and where it is held. You can learn more from 20 minutes in a well-made show garden than from a month of browsing online, because you are seeing how plants actually behave alongside one another.

I will be at the show on two of the days and would love to see you on either day. On Thursday, May 28, I will be at the Tirlan CountryLife stand at 2pm for a conversation about plants that thrive in Irish gardens and communities, with plenty of time for questions. If you have been wondering what to do with a difficult corner, a wet patch, a dry wall, or a garden that always seems to disappoint despite your best efforts, bring the question along.

The ’Cultivating Talent’ programme is designed to kick-start the career of motivated show garden designers and has seen emerging talent including Nóra Tombor, pictured at a previous Bloom festival. Picture: Fennells

On Friday, May 29, I will be on the Garden Stage at 11.30am with a talk called Pause Before You Plant. The title says most of what needs to be said. We live in an era of extraordinary plant availability, and the temptation to buy first and think later has never been stronger. The result, in many gardens, is a collection of individual plants rather than a coherent planting, and a persistent sense of mild dissatisfaction that more buying never quite resolves.

The talk will be about what to do before you spend, reading the site, understanding what the garden actually needs, and making decisions that compound well over time, rather than ones you may live to regret. I’m sure the show organisers will allow some time after my presentation for some gardening questions.

One of the parts of Bloom that I will make a beeline for and that I think deserves more attention than it sometimes gets is the Botanical and Floral Art Exhibition.

I am just about ok at making real planting designs work and look well throughout the year, but give me a trowel and not a paintbrush any day, as my jaw drops as soon as I enter this exhibition at the sheer talent of the creators.

Sisters Josephine Walsh and Geraldine O'Toole attend the opening day of last year's annual Bloom festival at Phoenix Park in Dublin. Picture: Liam McBurney

This year marks the 12th annual showing, running throughout the festival at the Visitors Centre at the Ashtown entrance, and continuing after Bloom closes until Sunday, June 21.

Michael O'Kelly, from Drumcollogher, Co Limerick, and John Flaherty, from Cordal, Castleisland, Co Kerry, pictured ahead of inspecting milk before a panel discussion on 60 Years of Dairy Farming in Ireland at the National Dairy Council Garden at Bord Bia Bloom in 2024. Picture: Robbie Reynolds

The exhibition brings together the foremost botanical and floral artists in Ireland, and medals are awarded to works of merit by a judging panel.

This is not decorative art in any simple sense, as botanical illustration is one of the most demanding disciplines in visual art, requiring both scientific accuracy and genuine aesthetic judgment. I have always adored botanical art, and the standard of work on display at this exhibition is consistently extraordinary. If you find yourself at Bloom and have not yet been, make the detour. It is quieter than much of the rest of the show, and all the better for it.

Beyond the gardens and the talks, Bloom offers something that is harder to name, and that is the chance to be in a place where a very large number of people are genuinely interested in plants. That sounds unremarkable until you consider how unusual it actually is. Gardening can be a solitary business, and the particular enthusiasms of gardeners do not always find a ready audience in ordinary life.

Julie Sebode and Eddie Lloyd, Federation of Irish Beekeepers, at the Pink Lady Balcony, at Bord Bia Bloom 2025.Picture: Chris Bellew/Fennells

At Bloom, the enthusiasms are shared, the conversation flows easily, and the plant stalls are navigated with the same enthusiasm and seriousness of purpose as kids enjoying a sweet festival.

Plan for a full day, wear shoes you can walk in, and if the forecast is uncertain, bring something waterproof. This is Ireland in late May. Twenty years of Bloom, and some things do not change.