One of the great gardens of the world Mount Congreve in County Waterford is set to host its inaugural Garden Celebration Day on May 18th and its annual Special Plant Fair on Sunday, May 19th 2019.
The Garden Celebration Day will offer visitors an opportunity to enjoy a unique guided tour experience in the 70 acre gardens, take in an expert talk on gardening in the beautiful Mount Congreve House with four of Ireland’s well known gardeners plus an opportunity to meander the award-winning gardens and enjoy food from local stall holders and browse the garden plant shop.
Guided tours of the gardens will be hosted hourly from 11.15am until 3.15pm these unique experiences will ensure guests are offered insights to the world famous gardens and will be lead by the garden team at Mount Congreve who know the 16-kilometre paths, the plant life and details of the gardens inside out. Tickets for a guided tour are €10 per person and this also includes full access to the gardens before or after your guided tour experience. Advance booking for guided tour places is advised; as places on guided tours if you turn up on the day cannot be guaranteed to be available.
Expert garden talks will be hosted at the stunning Mount Congreve House from 11.30am. Each unique talk will be lead by one of Ireland’s expert gardens commencing with the Garden Curator of Mount Congreve Gardens Mr Michael White, Michael has been at Mount Congreve Gardens since he was a teenager, and worked directly with Mr Ambrose Congreve. He is, without doubt, the person with the deepest knowledge of the gardens and of the plants at Mount Congreve Gardens. Michael will talk on ‘Magnolias Through the Seasons.’
At 12.30 Paddy Tobin will take to the podium; the Waterford gardener and snowdrop collector is a member of the Irish Garden Plant Society. Paddy has a particular interest in snowdrops, plants of Irish origin and is also a keen photographer. He is the author of the blog, An Irish Gardener. He will take us through his highlights of the year at Mount Congreve.
At 1.30 Rory Newell is the Head Propagator of the beautiful Blarney Castle Gardens. He has been in recent years working on propagating material which he collected with others from Blarney on recent trips to Vietnam. Rory is a fountain of knowledge on new and interesting ranges of plants with insights on his growing successes and failures. Rory has also lead garden design and the building of the Blarney Castle/IGPS garden for Blarney at Bloom.
Completing the Garden Talks is Diarmuid Gavin at 3.30pm Diarmuid Gavin has had a fantastic career both in Ireland and the UK as a celebrity gardener but ultimately he is a gardener true and true. Diarmuid runs his own landscape and garden business, Diarmuid Gavin Designs with an office in London, and in Ireland. The TV host designs gardens all over the UK and Ireland and has even travelled to China to work.
Tickets to each of the garden talks at Mount Congreve House are €10 per person and this also includes full access to the gardens before or after your booking time. It is advised that tickets to speaker events are booked in advance, limited seating available. Tickets for tour and talks can be booked online in advance athttp://mountcongreve.com/ Regular access to the Mount Congreve Gardens will also be available on the day.
Also set to take place from 11 am on May 19th is the Mount Congreve Special Plant Fair. With an array of stallholders from all over Ireland offering expert advice and selling the very best in Trees and Shrubs, this is an opportunity to get something special for your own garden.
A plant creche and local food stalls will also be available. Admission is €7 per person and also includes access to the 70 acres Mount Congreve Gardens.
These events will take place as part of the Waterford Garden Trail Festival which will see a multitude of gardening events take place at venues across the city and county over the summer months, for details on all of these events see http://www.visitwaterford.com