You know, even Bloom winners face the occasional design dilemma when it comes to their own gardens.

“I just got a trampoline; like a gigantic, 13ft trampoline!” exclaims Leonie Cornelius.

“I was looking around everywhere thinking, ‘Where does this gigantic thing go?’ And I’ve loads of space. But I need to see it, it needs to be safe, it needs to be on level ground…”

But that decision might just have to wait for now.

That’s because, having just finished filming for her role as a judge on Super Garden – the TV programme she won herself in 2012, in which budding designers compete for a chance to exhibit at Bloom – Leonie is facing into an eight day build on her own project for the festival called “Everyone Has A Dream”, which is inspired by her first book: Dream Gardens.

“The idea behind it is that everybody should be able to create their dream space,” she enthuses, “that good design isn’t exclusive or shouldn’t be just for people who have €100,000 for their garden design.

“It’s so often I meet people and they’d be like, ‘Oh I don’t know where to start. I’ve kind of given up on it because I don’t know what to do with it. Where would you even begin?’”

GERMANY TO LEITRIM

As you might have guessed, Cornelius is not a surname you’d associate with lovely Leitrim – where Leonie now lives – but it is here that her parents, a town planner and a psychotherapist, chose to settle in 1985 after leaving Germany to give their children a more rural upbringing.

“They were thinking Portugal, Australia or Ireland,” smiles Leonie, who was seven when they moved to Dromahair.

Gardening runs in her blood; her great-grandmother was a plant collector, while her grandmother was a pharmacist who knew all the uses of traditional flowers. However, Leonie actually started her career indoors rather than out by studying interior architecture in Sligo, before setting up her own business and moving to Wicklow, where she had her son Armando (now 10).

But a move back west prompted her decision to study garden design by distance learning with the KLC School of Design in the UK.

“I’d split up with my ex and I’d moved back to Sligo, so I said, ‘Well, I have to do something that’s locally based,’” she explains.

“Armando was in a crèche, so I was like, ‘Brilliant, I can work on that.’”

BLOOMING TALENT

Having felt “starved of creativity” Leonie loved her course, but graduating smack bang mid-recession presented the challenge of turning her passion into a viable business.

So when she saw an ad for designers for Super Garden, she realised the TV show would be the perfect opportunity to get her name out there; even if she was initially “hesitant” about doing a reality series.

“I wasn’t that comfortable with the idea of something going wrong on national TV,” she admits.

She needn’t have worried: not only did she complete her project on schedule and on budget, she also was named the overall winner, which meant that she had the opportunity to re-create the garden at Bloom.

“Which was something I conveniently didn’t realise,” she laughs. “You have to do it all again!”

As well as winning a gold medal and “best in category” award, Bloom also proved the perfect launch pad for her new business, Blume.

“I probably immediately had 20 clients who I had to slowly work my way through, but that was amazing because that was exactly what the business needed,” says Leonie, who works with both private clients and businesses, such as cafes like Shells in Strandhill.

“It just started it all.”

The following year, Leonie went to Bloom with a show garden for Leitrim Development Company, winning a silver medal, and returns this time with a garden sponsored by Woodies, for whom she is a brand ambassador.

She describes the festival as “a real passion project” and gives an example of the attention to detail involved.

“In 2013, we taped the irises shut with cotton wool and little plasters, so a couple of hours before the judges get there, you take it off and they just go …” she says, finishing the sentence by fluttering her fingers to imitate a flower unfolding.

DREAM BIG

This year’s garden will be “dreamy”– think wild grasses, salvia varieties, foxgloves, medicinal herbs, climbers and an Osmanthus multi-stem tree – but also featuring architectural elements, like a copper wall, using easy-to-source materials from Woodies.

The theme is inspired by Leonie’s first book, Dream Gardens, which is a step-by-step guide to garden design for home-owners based on a course she delivered at the Leitrim Organic Centre. However, while it covers the practicalities, she really wants to inspire readers to “dream big” at the design stage.

“Stop thinking about compost bins and clothes lines and all the stuff that is obviously important; but it’s not going to make you happy in the garden,” she says. “Zoom out and dream big.”

This could involve everything from taking inspiration from a famous garden that you once visited, like the Alhambra in Spain, and seeing what elements might work in your home – such as the loose planting style or a water feature – to trying to imagine how you would like to see yourself “living in the space.”

“Do you want to lie in a hammock and read a book?” says Leonie as an example.

“I would always say examine your day and if there something missing in it – like a moment of calm before you collect the kids – have a space. You might be missing that half hour where you can just go, ‘Right that’s it, I need a bit of me time.’

“But make a space for yourself where you can do that and then you’ll want to go out there.”

Indeed, even if you hope to start with just one flower bed, Leonie still believes you should dream big at the design stage so that you have a long-term vision of what you hope to achieve, rather than going on a shopping spree to the garden centre and then trying to figure out afterwards where to plant everything.

“So even if you are going to do a tiny part of that dream, you have a plan,” she reasons.

“So you can’t go wrong, in a way, because you’re choosing everything for a reason or putting everything in the garden for a reason.”

Leonie’s own garden right now is a “wild” mix of cottage flowers like cornflowers, aquilegia, lavender, rosemary and poppies, as well as the preparations for Bloom.

“My patio is covered in copper sheets and wire brushes and different mixes of salt and vinegar,” she laughs of her efforts to get the perfect patina on her copper wall feature.

And after the show?

Well, there’s still the small matter of a certain trampoline…

Dream Gardens by Leonie Cornelius is published by Mercier Press, RRP €18.99. For further information about Leonie’s work, visit www.leoniecornelius.com CL

SHOOT CREDITS

· Photography by Suzy McCanny Photography

· Flowers by Annette Coleman of Sligo Garden Flowers

· Make up by Sharon McCormack Make Up

· Hair by Arron McDonagh @Salon2