Fingal County Council has worked closely with the Department of Horticulture at ITB for the past 4 years providing a training ground for their students in Beech Park Gardens, Clonsilla, Dublin 15. The students have gained invaluable work experience in garden restoration, plant cultivation and plant identification under the guidance of John Harrington, Chargehand Gardener in Fingal County Council who has worked in the horticultural industry for more than forty years.
This year at Bloom in the Park, Fingal County Council and ITB have created a show garden that will be a representative vignette of the famous walled garden at Beech Park, Clonsilla, Dublin 15 developed by the Shackleton family during the 2nd half of the 20th century. The design of the Bloom Garden will reference and draw on the archive of detailed planting and layout plans for walled garden at Beech Park prepared during its heyday in the 1980s. In particular, unusual and signature plants which were or are still part of the collection at Beech Park will be sourced and incorporated into the show garden to demonstrate the level of horticultural excellence planned for the fully restored garden.
The walled garden at Beech Park shall be opened to the public as an important local amenity, visitor attraction and tourism asset. The gardens are widely regarded as being internationally significant due to their long association with horticultural excellence and in particular due to the wide range of rare and exotic plants recorded there over many years. During the 1980s, the gardens were included in “The Good Gardens Guide” (with two stars). This is the highest accolade awarded by the guide and reserved for the very best gardens in the British Isles.
Garden designer Jane McCorkell, lecturer in horticulture at ITB and a six times Gold medal of Bloom has worked with her students on the design of the Beechpark Garden at Bloom 2015. Eamon Kealy, lecturer in Horticulture cultivated all the plants for the garden at the new ITB urban horticulture facility.
Visit us at Bloom between May 28th and June 1st in the Phoenix Park at show garden 2 and at our stand in the Pavilion.
