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Welcome to Tim Austen’s garden design blog

Clondlakin Tidy Towns Awards Night

Very much enjoyed visiting Clondalkin to view the wonderful gardens, public spaces and shop fronts, looking forward to the evening ahead too! ...

Catch Helen Dillon in Kenmare!

The fabulously friendly and go-getting Kenmare garden club are having Ireland's premier gardener, Helen Dillon, to speak at their evening event to be held this Thursday, March 6th at 7.30pm sharp in the Carnegie theatre. I would thoroughly recommend this talk to anyone who is either a keen gardener or who...

Exposing Layers and Meaning in 21st Century Garden Design – GLDA Seminar FEB’ 2014

For a day of garden design inspiration and shared passion for all things gardening, I can recommend attending the forthcoming GLDA Seminar that will be held on February 8th 2014 at The Crowne Plaza Conference Centre Northwood. The Garden and Landscape Designers Association have put together an unmissable line-up of speakers who share not only a...

A garden anywhere

After spotting this planted roof to a bus shelter on Zaragoza's Paseo Independencia, it made me realise (again) that it truly is possible to grow a garden anywhere. All it takes is a little imagination, some basic horticultural innovation and possibly (as with most gardening scenarios) some perseverance. What's good about...

Garden boundaries and fences

In any garden design, close attention needs to be paid to the boundaries and how they are to be finished at an early stage in the project. [caption id="attachment_3437" align="aligncenter" width="614"] Traditional field stone boundary in the west of Ireland[/caption] The reasons for this are obvious but sometimes need to be restated: 1)...

‘To boldly go’ – being brave with garden design

[caption id="attachment_3429" align="aligncenter" width="259"] Powerscourt Church, Enniskerry Photo from Parish of Powerscourt website[/caption] Enniskerry Garden Club talk Really looking forward to a return visit to see my friends at the Enniskerry Gardening Club tomorrow evening when I shall be delivering a talk. I will be explaining how to revamp an existing garden with...

Emeralds and the gathering

Gardening trends Gardening, like other design-related professions has its trends. Sometimes these are created by the horticultural industry itself through clever marketing campaigns. At other times these fashions reflect wider shifts in the way society is thinking, an example being the recent move towards gardens with a grow-it-yourself element, something of...

Foraging for food – the good, the bad and the ugly, part 1

Whilst undertaking a road survey recently, I came across a super example of "food-for-free" in the Irish countryside when this apple tree presented its fruits to me. [caption id="attachment_3354" align="aligncenter" width="614"] Wild Irish apple tree![/caption] This native Irish apple tree is growing right alongside the N6 motorway in Westmeath and is a...

Great autumn perennial plants – Joe Pye Weed

I was delighted to catch Carol Klein extolling the delights of the Eupatorium plant on BBC's Gardeners' World this week having just selected the fantastic variety Eupatorium purpureum subsp. maculatum 'Atropurpureum' or Purple Joe Pye weed for a client of mine. [caption id="attachment_3341" align="aligncenter" width="585"] Eupatorium purpureum (Purple Joe Pye Weed)...

Musings on using water in the contemporary garden

Splish, splash, splosh: the tradition of using water in the garden goes back thousands of years. I have waxed hydrologically about the importance of water in garden design before and it is something that continues to excite and inspire me - from the Persian paradise gardens of the middle east...