About Peter Donegan…
I first got involved in horticulture when I was five years old after growing seeds in my back garden under the guidance of my Grandfather.
By the age of seven and as one of eight children I began cutting grass as a source of pocket money. This naturally, for me, led to garden maintenance and by ten years of age I had completed my first garden. It was a summer job however in a local secondary school alongside a mentoring gardener that thought me so much and fuelled what had by then become a passion rather than a hobby.
When I left school I went to study horticulture for 4 years in Co. Meath and Co. Kilkenny, sitting the Royal Horticultural Society examinations externally and working weekends and holidays in various garden centres and landscape companies to build up experience and pay my way.
By twenty four years of age I had been a teacher of horticulture, head of grounds for one of Ireland’s leading colleges, managed, designed, spoken and consulted on the subject. I returned from Scotland in the year 2000 to set up Peter Donegan Landscaping Ltd.
Within the years following also came a weekly article reporting with The Farmers Journal and on radio. I had also started to write freelance and [I still do...] and I had continued to teach gardening part time.
In 2006 I won my first award for garden design and landscaping. I have since worked on many different projects from Dublin to Galway, Donegal to Cork and from Germany to London.
It was however a love of plants that brought me into horticulture and to where I am today. It was a love of writing and horticulture that led to me start my weblog which I hope you enjoy. But it is more the people that I meet through my life with the great outdoors that makes what I do and my life with plants so very worthwhile.
