Three top picks: Small-space garden design at Bloom, luxe loungers and sweet treats

Super show gardens and crafty ideas have been bursting into life since Thursday as Bord Bia Bloom celebrates its 20th birthday over the June bank holiday weekend.

The gardening, food and sustainable living festival, in Dublin’s Phoenix Park, continues until Monday, when it’s expected that 100,000 people will have passed through the gates.

Outer space

Highlights include the “celebrity dream garden”, a collaboration between fashion designer and TV presenter Brendan Courtney and award-winning garden designer Declan McKenna. 

For inspiration, Declan headed out to Brendan’s home in Wicklow to inspect the broadcaster’s recent garden redesign project. The result? A contemporary, carefully composed retreat blending clean lines, texture, and function.

Inspired by Brendan Courtney, Celebrity Dream Garden was designed by Declan McKenna.

Corten steel elements introduce warmth and architectural strength while floating sandstone steps lead down to a sunken terrace designed for relaxation and entertaining. “It’s designed with Brendan’s active lifestyle in mind,” says Declan. “The plunge pool offers an invigorating space to recover after swims or long runs.”

The water feature and an outdoor shower are a cooling sight to visitors experiencing flashbacks of the past week’s mini-heatwave. 

A dedicated lounging area boosts the garden’s role as “a restorative environment”, says Declan. 

The planting is layered and purposeful, merging strong structural elements such as sculpted topiary balls and elegant multi-stem trees with softer perennials and flowing grasses. 

Brendan Courtney’s Wicklow garden project inspired the Celebrity Dream Garden at Bloom 2026.

Declan is the in-house designer at Silverstream Landscapes in Monaghan and was a Horticulturist of the Year 2012 finalist and competed in the 2013 series of RTÉ’s Super Garden. This is his fourth garden for the festival.

The Master Gardener’s balcony garden, Debbie Brophy. Picture: Johnny Bambury/Fennells 

We love clever small-space ideas here at Home, so Bloom’s balcony gardens were always going to capture our imagination. Designed in response to urban lifestyles and those with smaller outdoor zones, they “demonstrate how to turn even the smallest of open spaces into an oasis”, Katie Boyle of Bloom tells us.

The Master Gardener’s Balcony, by Debbie Brophy, offers a blueprint for dedicated gardeners who live in apartments with balconies and shows how abundant gardens can be created in small areas through clever planning and efficient use of space. “By embracing vertical gardening and employing integrated seating and storage, this garden provides room for growing, working, and relaxing, while avoiding over-cluttering floor space,” says Debbie.

“Building upwards with waist-high growing beds, a green wall panel, trellis, and two pergolas, the garden envelopes the balcony space to create a sheltered oasis.”

Ferns, grasses, and perennials provide year-round interest. This practical design illustrates how you can use widely available materials to create an elevated outdoor space where the plants are the star of the show.

Kathryn Thomas the Q102 Garden at Bord Bia Bloom this week. Picture: Fennells

Debbie is back at Bloom this year following her success in Super Garden 2025, where she won the opportunity to design her first show garden, the silver medal-winning ‘Bee Happy’ Wildlife Garden.

Based in Newbridge, Co Kildare, Debbie owns Laurel Hill Gardens, a garden design business named after her own garden, where she propagates and grows plants that are adaptable to the Irish climate.

The Plant Collector’s Balcony Garden by Tom Bradford.

A garden for serious plant lovers, The Plant Collector’s Balcony, designed by Tom Bradford, is a densely vegetated space featuring shade-tolerant outdoor and indoor plants, grouped within their species and displayed in a series of shelves, mini-greenhouses, planters, trellises and a pergola.

Bathed in green light, it is created by the first-time Bloom designer as an intimate and enveloping space where people and wildlife coexist happily within a peaceful, biodiverse ecosystem. “It gives visitors an opportunity to see how jungle- and woodland-style plants might grow and thrive in the wild,” says Tom. 

Chef Mark Moriarty on the Where Trust Takes Root Garden designed by Scott D. Renwick and sponsored by M&S. Picture: Chris Bellew/Fennells

A horticulturist and landscape architect at Ardcarne Garden Centre, Tom moved with his family from London to Boyle, Co Roscommon, four years ago, and is passionate about nature and embracing an active lifestyle outdoors.

See Bordbiabloom.com.

On our radar

The heatwave this week sent some of us undercover — only to pore over picture-perfect images of outdoor furniture when we got there. Figure that one out. 

BoConcept’s outdoor furniture in matt ash grey.

The Cancún collection from BoConcept caught our fancy at Home HQ. Created from lightweight, galvanised steel, it’s available in matte ash grey and matte green and is designed for year-round use. Prices range from €289 to €1439; available from BoConcept at Beacon South Quarter and Navan.

See Boconcept.com.

Sweet treat

Who wouldn’t mind getting caught with their hand in the Red Blooms cookie jar? 

Part of the Nicholas Mosse summer collection, its vibrant design was created by Susan Mosse, the brand’s co-founder. 

The Nicholas Mosse Red Blooms cookie jar, €92.75.

A botanical artist, Susan’s love of flowers and the Irish landscape continues to inspire many of the pottery’s most recognisable patterns. Nicholas Mosse Pottery was founded in 1976 in Bennettsbridge, Co Kilkenny.

We think this handmade piece, €92.75, would be ideal for cramming with sweet treats to celebrate the fabulous 50th birthday.

See Nicholasmosse.com.