FLOWER POWER?Leonie Cornelius will be in Westport this weekend to launch this year’s Clew Bay Garden Trail.
TV gardening star to launch Clew Bay Garden Trail
Award-winning garden designer and TV presenter Leonie Cornelius will launch the Clew Bay Garden Trail 2013 in Connacht Gold Garden Centre, Westport, this Saturday, May 18, at 12 noon.
Leonie, from Fivemilebourne, Co Leitrim, is well known to TV viewers as the garden-design expert on the RTE television show ‘Today’ with Dáithí Ó Sé and as winner of the RTÉ Supergarden competition in 2012. Her show garden at Bloom 2013, taking place over the June Bank Holiday weekend, is very appropriately entitled ‘A Love Letter to the West’ and is based on the beauty and spirit of the West.
The Clew Bay Garden Trail was a huge success last year, and for 2013 the brochure features a dozen glorious gardens. The Clew Bay Garden Trail is a chain of private gardens in Westport and the surrounding area which will open to the public on selected days during the summer of 2013. The gardens range from well established to newly created, and from compact town plots to two-acre expanses. Some are organic, some designed for wildlife, some mostly vegetable and some a profusion of flowers. The only charge is a donation to a specified charity at the garden gate. It’s a lovely way to spend a few hours on a summer day.
This year, most of the garden open days are at weekends, making it even easier to take a peek. The first open day is on Friday, June 14, at organic garden run by Cormac Langan in the grounds of Westport College of Further Education. It is used as a training facility for Fetac courses and has just been granted full organic status by IOFGA. One other garden on the trail also holds the same status, it is Western Herbs and Veg run by Chris Smith in Clogher. Other gardens on the trail include a coastal garden at Rossmalley; a small urban garden at Revenue Row, Westport; Drimbawn House in Tourmakeady; ‘Mountain Home’ garden in Liscarney; and Derrymore Farmhouse in Partry.
All of the garden owners will be at the launch and the garden centre staff will be on hand to offer advice and information. Refreshments will be served, and copies of the brochure will be available to everyone.
For more information on the Clew Bay Garden Trail, visit www.clewbaygardentrail.com.
