Walk around the show gardens at Bloom this weekend and there is beauty at every turn. Cascading colours, blooming meadows, innovative light features, patios of perfection – a mix of inspiration and accessibility.

However, not all the gardens are there just to look pretty. Some have real meanings behind them and one garden that is already deemed to be a talking point is the ‘Grounded’ garden.

Sponsored by Janssen in association with Aware and See Change, the designer Maeve O’Neill wasn’t alone in coming up with the ideas for the garden. Instead, it was a group effort with the aim to grow the conversation around mental illness to reduce stigma and increase understanding.

Barbara Brennan, See Change project coordinator explains more: “This garden was such a great project for Aware and See Change to work together on. Aware as an organisation supports people with depression and bipolar disorder and See Change is focused on reducing the stigma around mental health, encouraging people to talk. Having these important conversations, not leaving the elephant in the room to fester, is crucial to helping people live more full lives and reduce suicide.

“We felt Bloom would be a great way to drive that conversation further. Right throughout the weekend, people will be stopping by admiring the garden and talking about its different elements, but it’s also an opportunity to open the conversation about mental health, whether it’s your own or you have concerns about a family or friend.”

As mentioned, the concept of the garden wasn’t just down to the designer. Workshops were carried out to get a sense from lots of different people about how the garden should appear. Lucie Kavanagh from Mayo was one such participant. She tells Irish Country Living about her own situation.

Bloom garden
“A few years ago I was diagnosed with depression and emotionally unstable personality disorder. It’s an awful mouthful,” she says, “but essentially what it comes down to is a difficulty in regulating your emotions, whether that’s feeling angry or happy, sad or anxiety. Everything is magnified. In my case, I actually shut myself off because it became too difficult to feel, essentially leaving me feeling numb, which is how the depression materialised.”

She looks back at her diagnosis in 2014 as an incredibly difficult time in her life but says she is feeling well now.

“It is a learning process and this is something I will have to manage my whole life but it was great to get involved in the Bloom garden, not just in terms of seeing a project come to life but because I know the benefit that nature and gardening can have on our mental health.

“The workshops were really interesting,” says Lucie. “At the beginning we were brainstorming, throwing out words, different feelings that we wanted to convey through the garden and they weren’t all negative. Yes, with mental health there is anger, darkness and feeling lost but there are also positive days, of feeling happy, of seeing a light shining through. We wanted to be real, and for the garden to express the good and the bad. There is no point in just having a beautiful setting because when you are in a dark place, being amongst all that beauty and happiness can sometimes make you feel even more isolated.”

Maeve took on board all these thoughts and has a beautiful array of planting and flowers, which is soft and pretty to look at, to convey the more positive thoughts discussed

Lucie adds that people from all different backgrounds were involved. “Some people had experience with mental illness, others were family members and others worked in the sector, but this common theme of celebrating the highs and the lows, the darkness and the light was a common theme that prevailed throughout the discussions.”

Barbara explains how this interesting concept has materialised into an actual garden this weekend.

“Maeve took on board all these thoughts and has a beautiful array of planting and flowers, which is soft and pretty to look at, to convey the more positive thoughts discussed. However, to communicate the more difficult areas of mental health, she used a range of materials. For example, a three-tonne stone sits in the middle of the garden to communicate the heaviness of depression, while a copper metal sculpture is sharp and pointy with hard lines.

“There are also three wooden round stools; one to represent the person experiencing the mental illness, another for the carer or friend and another for a therapist or someone from the treatment side, and to symbolise the importance of these relationships and the conversation between the three different people.

“Also, you can’t see all the garden at one time, you need to move through it to see the different pieces And this is like mental illness, you can’t tackle it all at once and as you move through it, it will change over time. But it is a very beautiful garden, summing up the message that if you tend your garden, it will bloom. If you don’t, it will overrun and become difficult to manage.”

Lucie adds, “It’s so exciting that this week all this planning will come together. We have pictured it and seen diagrams but it will be great to see it in reality. I am really proud to be part of something so powerful, and this garden isn’t just aesthetic, it has real meaning. We really hope that it will start many conversations this weekend, with people that may be suffering with their mental health at the moment or with someone who might think, ‘You know what, I need to check in with that friend of mine’. That would be the real long-term success of this garden.”

Bloom is run by Bord Bia and takes places in the Phoenix Park from 30 May to 3 June 2019.