Kildare man John Dooley, the winner of this year's Super Garden competition, can clearly remember walking out of Bord Bia Bloom two years ago thinking, "I'd love to be here".
But despite being an avid and experienced gardener, it wasn't until his wife Liz signed him up without him knowing that he got a chance to prove himself.
"I missed the first showing of Super Garden and got the repeat, so he was gone to the shop or somewhere and it was over", Liz recalled, speaking outside of their winning garden at Bord Bia Bloom 2024.
"I just picked up the phone and went online. I knew his background so I filled in what I could of it and sent it. After a while then he got the phone call, so he was shivering and I said, 'What's wrong with you?' And he says, 'You know what's wrong with me!'
"We discussed it then and he said, oh I wouldn't do that, and I said, maybe we can do it together and get a few people together and go for it. So the rest as they say is history."
You can't get a bigger vote of confidence than that, and months later John is relieved that his wife made the fateful phone call.
"Shocked at first", he said of how he felt upon getting that call back. "I said to Liz I was glad she did it because if we had have spoken about it first I would have said 'no way, I wouldn't be able for it'. But when she put me in I was in shock first but then I said, 'we'll give it a go and see'.
"It was stressful in the lead up to it, but once we were two days into it we just totally enjoyed it. Had a ball."
As Liz quipped: "Behind every good man, there's a good woman."
Named 'Back to the Future', John's garden created a low-maintenance, sustainable, and bio diverse garden for Daija and her two daughters, Amanda and Amelia. John's design accommodated Daija's scoliosis and offered an easy-to-care-for space for the family to enjoy.
Speaking about his vision, he said he doesn't know where the theme came from but it carried a lot of weight for him.
"Basically what it is is, the left hand side of the pathway is the present garden. It's what people are doing wrong, they're buying plants, they're going to the garden centre, to the shops and [buying] the first thing they see because they look lovely", he said.
While these plants are aesthetically pleasing, they have no other purpose, he added, saying that he wants visitors to progress down the present day garden and look back on what they'll never do again.
As for the past garden, "it's what our parents or grandparents did", he said. "They didn't have much money, they had a small bit of ground to make their own produce, so that's all vegetables in there.
"I built a bridge to bridge the gap between the past and the future, so when you cross the bridge you're in the futuristic garden, which is all pollinating flowers, vegetables, fruit, medicinal.
"Basically what I want people to do is forget what they're doing in the present and bring the past into the future", he explained.
To make the garden accessible for Daija, John raised everything in the garden, including the flower beds.
"There's no such thing as a maintenance-free garden", he said. "You have to work on the garden, and you work on the garden and the garden will give back to you what you give to the garden. Apart from all that, it's therapy for her, she loves being out, she's all the time in it."
So much so that Daija was out helping the couple plant flowers in the lead up to Bloom!
The pair are keen to share how to make a garden more accessible and to take the pressure out of planning an outdoor space. "Our garden is complete and you could take everything in that garden and put it into your own. Go with your gut feeling", he said. "We don't believe in this 'colours have to match' and all this. Liz does the flower arranging at home and she's mad into colour and that's what we've done here."
He added, proudly, that the stunning technicolour layout of the garden is a "huge display of Liz's flowers".
On bringing their project to Bloom, John said that he felt "a bit nervous but it's amazing to be here", especially after the years of wanting to show at the spectacular event.
"But I would have never had the courage to enter it and just can't believe how well we've done at it."
Super Garden 2025
Applications for Series 16 are now open, anyone who wishes to apply as a designer can email supergardenshow@gmail.com or via this link.
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