A well placed rock can create a focal point in a garden design, can act as a garden seat or simply complement garden planting

This Rocks!

The humble rock, stones, boulders; whatever you want to call them, we are surrounded by these features daily either as natural or constructed features. Be it the pebbles on the beach or a cobblestoned Temple Bar, rocks have an undeniable omnipresence. However, they are perhaps overlooked as a garden feature. Here are some of the elements that one could consider when planning to use stone in a garden design. Use of stone to create interest and contrast in one of my small garden designs in Dublin The above picture of a garden...

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Roots in to the garden!

I was lucky to have the opportunity to deliver a talk about the use of paths in creating interesting garden designs at Garden Show Ireland yesterday and I would like to thank the organisers for inviting me and other Garden and Landscape Design Association (GLDA) members to attend the show to both give talks and also run a popular garden design clinic where visitors could get free 15-minute design advice for their gardens. [caption id="attachment_3881" align="aligncenter" width="620"] The central gravel and Travertine path in my show garden at Bloom 2013[/caption] My talk...

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Construction story at Bloom in the park – Giardino della mostra

Ok, so things just got way too busy at Bloom to give you the rest of the updates on construction.  Apologies!  We obviously finished on time, thanks to huge efforts and ridiculously long hours over many days from all the team involved - I think we broke my previous record for length of time on site at Bloom on any one day with a cracking 17 hours of work put in by 12 people on the Thursday - but it was all worth it as we had a great show with...

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Garden design tip 2: paving

If you are contemplating a garden makeover this spring one of the main items of work could be the renewal of your existing paving or indeed, if you have a new garden design, introducing some paving where none existed before (hope that doesn't sound too obvious!).  Thankfully, there is an enormous range of paving materials available to the contemporary garden designer.  In addition to the huge choice of “ready-to-use” concrete paving manufactured by Irish paving suppliers, imported natural stone has become widely available.  This means that an almost bewildering variety...

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