Tick, tick, tick, tick ... BLOOM!

Countdown as our favourite garden festival opens today

- BY SANDRA MALLON

PRESIDENT Michael D Higgins is to open today's Bord Bia Bloom festival and welcome more than 100,000 people to the Phoenix Park this Bank Holiday weekend.

The festival will showcase some of the most stunning gardens you can imagine — but it will also feature live cookery demos and food and craft from local producers will be on sale.

This year’s event will feature 21 show gardens, 30 live cookery demos, 40 live talks and more than 100 of Ireland’s top food and drink producers.

Among the displays will be Laois native Debbie Brophy, whose garden just won RTE’s Super Garden 2025.

Debbie won over the judges with her “bee happy” wildlife garden, which was inspired by a honeybee colony that moved into her own garden.

She told us she is buzzing to have her garden on display for everyone coming to Bloom after keeping her TV victory a secret for months.

RESPONSE

She said: “I can't wait to meet everyone and see what they think.

“I mean, the response has been really positive so far. Yeah. So I'm just going to roll with everything and see what happens. I'd be open to coming back to try and build another garden of Bloom, for sure.”

She said her three-year-old daughter Poppy helped inspire her to create her garden.

Debbie added: “This garden was for the family who also have a little three-year-old themselves. So, you know, obviously, from playing with Poppy and knowing what she liked in the garden, it helped kind of incorporate things that I thought the little boy would like too.

"So that kind of inspired that, in a way, to see the bold colours and things but you want to make it elegant enough for adults but inviting for kids as well because he's going to grow up there so that was really important.”

And she said she also gave a nod to her late father as well, adding: “The fruit trees are a bit of a nod to him.