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Urban Living In Dublin City

Urban Living, Animating Our Civic spaces12pm to 6pm, [This] Sunday 26th JuneWolfe Tone Park, Jervis Street, Dublin

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For the last few years I’ve been involved with a gig called ‘Urban Garden’. In short, it’s based somewhere in Dublin City Centre and the gist of it is… well, my take on it anyway, is that it’s about brightening up a specific part of Dublin City Centre and making it something even more beautiful.

The last year I did the gig, I made a recycled garden…. It started with this….

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But this year, I’m going back to how it all started doing some really easy garden demonstrations and chats to help you brighten up your little space outside…. the press release [below] has all the details and more on the day.

To my bit…. If you have a wee balcony, a window ledge or just one or three pots you like to call your garden…. or maybe you wish to pretty up your existing space…. If you are in the city, drop on by and say hello. Did I tell you it’s also free, all courtesy of Dublin City Council. Should be a bit of craic. Always is. I’ll look forward to seeing you 😀

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For the Ulysses fanatics who prefer their directions by Dublin pubs… it’s just at the back of The Church [the Pub version]. For the shopaholics, it’s the space just opposite the Jervis Street car park.

The Official Blurb

Dublin City Council, as part of their SUMMER IN DUBLIN programme of events and in association with Down To Earth Theatre Company are delighted to announce a FREE fun filled family event – URBAN LIVING on Sunday, June 26th , an interactive event which animates an urban space in the City Centre through performance and colour.

This vibrant event maximises the use of Wolfe Tone Park, a key Dublin City public space in the heart of the Capital by animating it and transforming the space into a creative hub where visitors can relax, learn and be entertained by an engaging programme of music, circus and gardening workshops.

Ireland’s top Circus performers JOHNNY ‘D JUGGLER and THE OTHER BROTHERS, walk in Circus workshops, stilt walkers, face painting and a 24 piece Barbershop Troupe – Blue Heaven will engage and entertain audiences young and old.

The innovative, award winning landscape gardener Peter Donegan will preside over gardening demonstrations, sharing his thoughts and ideas on how to get the best out of our urban spaces including using quirky recycled household objects!

Naturally Wild’s, Dale Treadwell engages with young people as he looks at the different wildlife that enter our urban habitats with his highly entertaining show LIFE IN YOUR OWN BACK GARDEN.

Market stalls, trading in hot and cold foods, delicacies and confectionary will also be in Wolfe Tone Park – so why not dine al fresco in the open air picnic area?

Urban Living will take over Wolfe Tone Park, Sunday 26th June from 12 – 6pm, a FREE event not to be missed! Urban Living is brought to you by Dublin City Council as part of their SUMMER IN DUBLIN programme of events.

For more information on URBAN LIVING please contact Grainne or Shane on 01 4089750, check out our web page www.dteinc.ie or http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=153440944725027 and for information on SUMMER IN DUBLIN check out the Dublin City Council website www.dublincity.ie

Urban Living, 12pm – 6pm, Sunday 26th June, Wolfe Tone Park, Jervis Street, Dublin

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The Tribesman – Our Great Outdoors

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This week, nee the last twenty four months, have been a mass roller coaster of highs and some lows for me in every possible sense of being a horticulturist. I am fully aware it has been like that for a lot of businesses, but I can really only and honestly refer to myself and my experiences.

Back to it, in my mind and in my humour I like to say that that depends on how you look at it. In reality, I think I knew what I was getting into as regards the landscaping industry when I started growing plants under my bed as a nipper, when I went to college to study horticulture and further when I started my own gardening business almost eleven years ago – in Ireland.

The reason the last twenty four months have been particularly tough is more reasoned by the weather than anything else in my opinion and the snow last year did more than beat the stuffing out of plants. It really did take a lot from people like myself who are reliant upon the great outdoors for a living and as a way of life.

In terms of how tough it was…. well, you can quote me on this

I’d rather be held down by four hundred Oprah Winfrey fanatics and made watch the double season finalé episode of Desperate Housewives than go through it again.

But whilst hindsight is a great thing, I realise and know that the weather in this little island has always been contrary. What it has equally made me realise is what a great country we do live in and how more than ever when times become a little rocky do we depend on those we know best.

More than that, I think I began to realise that as a gardener based in Ireland – sub category – Dublin – sub category – North County, Fingal – that the guy who manufactures, invents, makes and creates, employs, sells and services in a sub category most closest to my home was the business I really should be going to. In short, shopping local. Or, as local as is possible.

In the grander scheme of thinking, the weekend past has seen Irelands largest gardening event, Bloom In The Park, just pass us by. It is phenomenal to think that just five years ago there was no garden show for Ireland.

To put in context what it has achieved, last year almost sixty thousand people crossed the ticket barriers of the largest annual gardening event in the country. That, one should bear in mind in just five years in operation. Contrasted with The Chelsea flower show, on the go since year dot and it attracts around one hundred and fifty thousand guests per annum.

But Irish garden shows don’t simply stop at the gates of The Phoenix Park – there are many,  many more around the country and in saying that I realise quite quickly that there are a lot more great people in this delightful little place I like to call home.

I’ve always had a theory in my head that to get a staunch non gardener, outside – into the great outdoors is a logic first stepping stone. Be that as discussed in last weeks article, via my non gardeners group or, as I found myself doing in the depths of autumn some years ago, down at the Irish Conker Championships in Freshford in Co. Kilkenny – and the more I think about it the more I see that all over Ireland there are so many unsung heroes in so many villages striving to make a something a little brighter and very much for the better.

In my own little village, a population I believe that at the last census had no greater than six hundred people and within, there sits a pitch and putt club. Two of the volunteers, a husband and wife team, aren’t even from the locality. That, makes me smile.

Vince, the husband, was seventy years young just two weeks ago.

I know that there are Tidy Towns committees, horticultural societies, village fairs and fetes, to name but a few examples, being organised all over the country, literally as I type. I also know that somewhere in between my front gardens and the end of the road I may have only enough time to say thank you, to applaud or even just to admire the work others have done. More than that I know that this business, in whatever format, that I like to call the great outdoors isn’t that bad after all.

Maybe, I just need to be a little more like Vince.

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Bespoke 17th Century Gazebo

brackenstown gardens file - peter donegan landscaping
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Recently the gardens of Brackenstown got the ‘peace de resistance’ that [in my heart] it so much deserved. The gazebo was installed 2 weeks ago in the centre of the tranquility garden after almost eight months since it was first considered. The funny thing I suppose was that within three days it was fitted, installed and painted as if it had been there all its life. When it is found difficult to believe that the life of the structure is one of such youth, I suppose it could be said that the job has been done and done extremely well. It is bespoke, the only one in the world and hand made, the old style way.

Credit when taking on a project like this must go primarily to ‘any’ client who has that ‘je ne sais quoi’ and forward vision to trust in a designer to bring something like this to fruition. I shall rephrase, when one does not know what the final outcome will be [obviously] and one has never seen ‘one’ before, it can be, difficult if you chose; only in the sense that if you are a ‘I need to see it first’ kind of person. If not, bespoke features for a garden are one off, special, specific, of true splendour and yours [and yours only].

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Judges Comments On The Garden Maintenance Award

herbaceous borders

I received the Judges comments on the recent award winning garden today.

They said for exemplary standard of landscaping the judges’ commented on the Private Garden Landscaping [award of merit] & the Private Garden Maintenance [overall winning garden]

the work illustrates a consisted commitment to horticultural excellence in a restoration project that requires a keen understanding of the client’s requirements. The herbaceous beds in particular deserve special acclamation for their restrained but inventive interplay between colour and foliage texture.

Commenting further on Brackenstown House Estate the judges’ noted the award goes to this project because the judges…

…believe it demonstrates a discernible excellence in maintenance.

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