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#1
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International Garden Festival
Anyone visited the curiously named "International Garden Festival"
near Portlaoise, Ireland? |
#2
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International Garden Festival
On Aug 9, 2:51 pm, aquachimp
wrote: Anyone visited the curiously named "International Garden Festival" near Portlaoise, Ireland If you go let us know if its any good. precious few garden shows i get to hear about over here. mallow was ok |
#3
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International Garden Festival
On Aug 11, 10:02 am, paddyenglishman
wrote: On Aug 9, 2:51 pm, aquachimp wrote: Anyone visited the curiously named "International Garden Festival" near Portlaoise, Ireland If you go let us know if its any good. precious few garden shows i get to hear about over here. mallow was ok Well, for a starters, here's the link; http://www.internationalgardenfestival.com/home.html The day I went was miserable (weather wise). I thought it would be along the lines of something I saw elsewhere once, which took a whole day to get around. Admiteddly, to stroll around the general properties of the site concerned would probably take that long, but the err... "festival" site itself... an hour is more than enough. It costs 13 euro (adult price) to get in. So, you'll be wondering if that's worth it. Excluding the opportunity to explore a vast parkland ordinarily (I think) no open to the public, I'd say the garden festival bit is not worth looking at, let alone pay to get into. One woman passed us and simply uttered the exclaimation "Dreadful!" I can't disagree with her, though found that a bit strong. Yes, there was evidence of lack of care of the exhibits (weeds, rubbish, poor grass cutting ... if any) oops, gotta go, will gaet back later (I hope0 |
#4
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International Garden Festival
On Aug 11, 11:39 am, aquachimp
wrote: On Aug 11, 10:02 am, paddyenglishman wrote: On Aug 9, 2:51 pm, aquachimp wrote: Anyone visited the curiously named "International Garden Festival" near Portlaoise, Ireland If you go let us know if its any good. precious few garden shows i get to hear about over here. mallow was ok Well, for a starters, here's the link;http://www.internationalgardenfestival.com/home.html The day I went was miserable (weather wise). I thought it would be along the lines of something I saw elsewhere once, which took a whole day to get around. Admiteddly, to stroll around the general properties of the site concerned would probably take that long, but the err... "festival" site itself... an hour is more than enough. It costs 13 euro (adult price) to get in. So, you'll be wondering if that's worth it. Excluding the opportunity to explore a vast parkland ordinarily (I think) no open to the public, I'd say the garden festival bit is not worth looking at, let alone pay to get into. One woman passed us and simply uttered the exclaimation "Dreadful!" I can't disagree with her, though found that a bit strong. Yes, there was evidence of lack of care of the exhibits (weeds, rubbish, poor grass cutting ... if any) oops, gotta go, will gaet back later (I hope0 Ah, yes, the state of the place. Weeds, terrible maintenance, dead plants and so on. On the dead plants (including dead moss) I noticed quite a few "gardens" "growing" the same stuff, e.g. carpinus hedging, golden hop and moss, much of it left rotting.) Actually, some of the failures provide what might have been an unintentional advantage. So often, one sees a garden in a garden show, and a reasonably wary eye can see that its OK for the moment... IE, it's design is anti- maintenance. Strictly short, short term and wholly impractical. Some of the gardens of this show belong to that category and were it not for the somewhat painful waste of time going there, it would be amusing to see how pretentious designs, with no thought for after care, manage to come undone in such a short time, (-: The worst example being a garden, the name of which I forget, but I can see how the initial concept might have looked promising. It was a sort of skeletal computer graphics model of a mound, translated into reality , i.e. wooden battens were positioned to imitate such a computer generated model. There was grass and other stuff in between. Speaking of design... there seems to be a general trend to explore the origins/ roots/ ancestry of (garden) creativity and the link between mankind and nature but without any organisers *statement to that effect....and without any real nod to history. Along with no real nod to nature, natural evolution, geology... I could go one, though in fairness, if one were to create an opera around that theme, it might also omit such reference. Probably why I hate opera. *Statement, merely scattering the 15 "gardens" (OK, one was not great, but clever and one was really, really good and would compete with anything in UK shows) within a field of oats for that primitive stone-age look (inaccurate too) and lots of hop, albeit the golden variety, to suggest booze making hobbies... if there's such a thing as oats based booze, is not, IMO what amounts to a joined-up-writing sort of statement. Maybe they should have gone for barley In that sense there was no real honesty about the show or, maybe a simple lack of communication between the "Garden Festival" and it's audience Many of the only 15 gardens tried to explore this area. The computer model mentioned above might also have been trying to do so by way of a "garden" which emcompassed the beginnings of something (the skeletal lines), with the added dimension of being bang up to date by means of the 'beginnings' being computer generated. Geddit! Another actually mentioned the link between whether nature is of/ within man or vice versa. I can't remember how he put it. His effort to to explore that was a number of what looked like very high, wide and thin stone head-stones (graveyard), set out like soldiers rather than some sort of stone-henge feel. There was one side polished, the other sawn and the audience being invited to comment on the sawn side. The result.... graffitii all over (both sides). Ah, I've just that, what with that exhibit, the general decay of the state of the "Garden Festival", maybe the implied theme was not about origins of creation, creativity and it's links to mankind. maybe the whole thing was just about death and decay... and the end of creativity and the end of mankind. Good look to you if you go. I'd like to apologise in advance if your disappointment was of result of my inadvertently and wholly unintentionally having said something that might have accidentally created the impression it was interesting. That said, the best "garden" of all, other than the really good one mentioned, was hanging flags. Lots and lots of large flags hanging down almost to the ground and creating a sort of maze. There were only 3 plants in the centre. It was fun, unexpectedly looked good and physically felt good. |
#5
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International Garden Festival
"aquachimp" wrote in message oups.com... On Aug 11, 11:39 am, aquachimp wrote: On Aug 11, 10:02 am, paddyenglishman wrote: On Aug 9, 2:51 pm, aquachimp wrote: Anyone visited the curiously named "International Garden Festival" near Portlaoise, Ireland If you go let us know if its any good. precious few garden shows i get to hear about over here. mallow was ok snip lots of less than good comments! Just a thank you to those in the thread who have been to this, for several years we have received much glossy and very expensive stuff from them to go and exhibit there, it seemed very expensive to take part and research showed the money was from Europe not the result of a successful show, so we declined, but you always wonder if you got it wrong - seems not :~) -- Charlie, Gardening in Cornwall http://www.roselandhouse.co.uk Holders of National collections of Clematis viticella and Lapageria rosea cultivars |
#6
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International Garden Festival
On Aug 12, 11:58 am, "Charlie Pridham"
wrote: "aquachimp" wrote in message oups.com... On Aug 11, 11:39 am, aquachimp wrote: On Aug 11, 10:02 am, paddyenglishman wrote: On Aug 9, 2:51 pm, aquachimp wrote: Anyone visited the curiously named "International Garden Festival" near Portlaoise, Ireland If you go let us know if its any good. precious few garden shows i get to hear about over here. mallow was ok snip lots of less than good comments! Just a thank you to those in the thread who have been to this, for several years we have received much glossy and very expensive stuff from them to go and exhibit there, it seemed very expensive to take part and research showed the money was from Europe not the result of a successful show, so we declined, but you always wonder if you got it wrong - seems not :~) -- Charlie, Gardening in Cornwallhttp://www.roselandhouse.co.uk Holders of National collections of Clematis viticella and Lapageria rosea cultivars Did I mention the Tents. Now when I say "tent", think over-sized airy boy scout appeal. Not a lot going on there. Some bric-a-brac ...low quality rubbish, some dreadfully amateurishly produced 'plants for sale' Oh, and for a long term exhibit... did I mention the smell from the porteloos just behind said tents. |
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