General

I was in Leighlinbridge last Saturday week to deliver a talk as part of the annual Carlow Garden Trail. The festival takes place around this time every year and consists of a series of lectures, talks and workshops at various venues throughout the county. My presentation, which concerned the origin and evolution of my Bloom… Read more »

What is at the heart of our relationship with land, with the land? Indeed, we could extend that out to include property in general. Could it be that we are more strongly informed by our tragic history on this than we think? Somewhere deep in the murky recesses of the Irish psyche is the remembrance… Read more »

Many thanks to the folks at Carlow Garden Trail for the invitation to deliver the opening talk of this year’s festival. I had a great time in Leighlinbridge. Diarmuid wasn’t bad that evening either. Read more »

In any discussion on architecture we will hear a lot of use of the word “vernacular”. What exactly is the vernacular, what does it mean? It’s the name given to the type of building, in any country, that reflects local traditions and which has developed based on local needs and available materials. Supposedly planning authorities… Read more »

Every so often I am asked to do a design clinic at the Kilsaran showrooms in Dunboyne in Co. Meath. The showrooms up there, with their impressive facilities and even more impressive collection of mocked up gardens, attract a lot of householders who are in the market for some sort of outside makeover. The choice… Read more »

It’s funny how these coincidences work. Last week I talked about the endurance of the American streetscape, of their front yards divided (if at all) by “living” fences, of the value they place on mature trees. All of this positivity of course was countered, I remind myself, by a healthy slice of cynicism towards the… Read more »

This year’s post Bloom rest and resuscitation consisted of a ten day trip to New England, Massachusetts to be precise. I have been thinking and writing quite a bit recently about how it is possible to construct a potted social history of Ireland by looking at plants and planting trends. We can identify stark differences… Read more »

So sullied and abused has it become at the hands of all manner of eejit politicians that you’d nearly be afraid to use the word “context” anymore. At this stage it can rightly take its place alongside ”in terms of” on the list of perfectly good pieces of the language hijacked and destroyed by the… Read more »

There are many strands to the situation which is unfolding in Syria. Primarily there is the human cost; lives lost, horrific injuries, families torn apart, violent and traumatic displacement, the uncertain plight of millions of refugees. There is also the decimation of the country and with it a rich cultural heritage stretching back thousands of… Read more »

Marginal land. It comes up fairly frequently. How do we make it productive, how do we treat it, what can be done with it? A surprisingly large percentage of agricultural land in this country can be defined as marginal land. According to the OECD’s glossary of statistical terms, “Marginal land is land of poor quality… Read more »