Clare Garden Festival

The annual Clare Garden Festival gets underway this week with a packed programme. As well as show gardens and over 60 plant stalls, there are demonstrations and talks by some of Ireland’s best-loved plants people.

The show is celebrating its seventh birthday this year, with its best-ever selection of garden and food stalls. You can enjoy a gardening masterclass on organic techniques with Jim Cronin; find out how to grow your own medicine cabinet with horticultural therapist Fiann Ó Nualláin, or discover which plants Mary Keenan of Gash Gardens suggests as her top picks.

The 2018 Show Garden is designed by Manus McGee, in line with the festival’s theme ‘A Garden for Mental Wellbeing’, and creates a tranquil, peaceful space with trees, water and relaxing open spaces.

There’s also the chance to get involved in creating your garden for the show: the Pop-up Garden Community Challenge is calling on gardening groups to create a wildlife-friendly garden based on their interpretation of the theme ‘Gardeners Friends’ Garden’, to be displayed at the show.

‘It’s all about creating a garden that accommodates those little friends in the garden that help us by eating garden pests, cleaning up and even fertilising for us,’ says Co Clare Environment Awareness Officer Karen Foley.

In the lead up to the event, check out the inaugural Clare Garden Festival Fringe, taking place throughout the previous week (24-29 April) with a pick’n’mix of garden-themed events around the Ennis area. Visit the Irish Seed Savers, offering tours of their fabulous gardens at Capparoe, Scariff; watch award-winning film Project Wild Thing followed by thought-provoking talks by garden experts Brid Hedderman and Marion Burke at arts and entertainment centre glór, and finish off with a Gardeners Dinner at the Rowan Tree Café Bar. It’s sure to be a fabulous week for all the family. For more details, visit www.claregardenfestival.com.