Bloom - Chatting With Multi-Award Winning Landscape Designer Tim Austen

This weekend I was lucky enough to attend the Bloom festival in Phoenix Park, Dublin.

As well as getting to view some of the most beautifully designed landscapes, I also watched some amazing fashion shows take place on the entertainment stage, where Brendan Courtney and Sonia Lennon styled the models dressed head to toe in Arnotts gear.

While I got to enjoy a 99, walking around in the stunning sunshine, I also sat down for a chat with multi-award winning landscape architect Tim Austen.


The extremely talented designer, known as the baddy from RTE's 'Super Garden' told me that he had been working on his brand new garden, the 'Growise Garden' for "over five years."

The Wicklow man also revealed that this garden is in memory of his grandmother who just died recently:

"This garden is dedicated to my grandmother, she died about a month ago. She did lots of embroidery, and tapestry with lots of shapes and curves, so I really think she would have liked this."

Tim's original design

Tim's new garden design scooped up a Silver Gilt award over the weekend, and although he admits he was hoping for the gold, he said seeing people enjoy his design is more important:

"I won a gold medal in 2008 and 2009 but I think this garden is actually better, so the medal doesn't really reflect that. I would have been more happy with the gold but based on the public reaction, I'm happy."

The 'Growise Garden' proved to be hugely successful at Bloom's opening day, as it had an entertaining twist. The design contains a cat-walk right in the middle of the garden! I got the chance to walk around the actual garden while the models took to the catwalk and it looked spectacular. Magical may be a better word to describe this garden.

Combining gardening with fashion, Tim's garden transformed into a stylist's dream. On loan from the entertainment stage, two beautiful models walked down the red boardwalk on Thursday in floral themed outfits from Arnotts, styled by 'Off The Rails' hosts, Brendan Courtney and Sonya Lennon.



The red cat-walk looked stunning in the garden,



But it seems like building the garden was more stressful than the actual competition yesterday. All the designers were given just 21 days to build their designs, but Tim says visits from the Queen and President Barrack Obama, meant that Phoenix Park became blocked off and prevented construction:

"It was a nightmare. We were only given 21 days to build the garden, we lost at least two days because of the Queen's visit and Obama coming. But there was a lot security around at the time, so a lot of deliveries were stopped. I was ridiculously stressed. We were doing 16/18 hour days by the end of it all." 

Tim was made to look like the baddy on 'Super Garden'.

As well as gardening Tim has also been lending his talents to television. The landscape designer was shown to be the baddy of garden design, when he became a judge on RTE's 'Super Garden'. But the talented gardener says the show was edited to make him seem more mean than he actually is:

"I tried not to come down too hard on the contestants, but once once they put the program together they only seemed to use my negative comments, but that's editing for you."