Showing posts with label Ballymaloe Garden Festival. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ballymaloe Garden Festival. Show all posts

Saturday, August 22, 2015

Ballymaloe Garden Festival. 22-23 August 2015

Ballymaloe Garden Festival

22-23 August 2015
For sale
No shortage of food at the packed Ballymaloe Garden festival. You can spend as long as you like here and, in between, fuel up with tasty stuff from the likes of Green Saffron, Lolo, Loving Salads, Rostellan Chocolate and Golden Bean Coffee. Oh, yes and you can take away some fantastic vegetables from the GIY stall.

And if you’re thinking about the future, well then why not get some of the multi-seed packs from Brown Envelope Seeds. That stall is in the grainstore and the big eye-catcher here is the colourful creations by IncrEdible Flowers of Ballincollig.

Walled garden
Lots of craft stalls here too but it was two soap stalls that caught my eye. Stocked up with lovely handcrafted soaps by Bend in the Barrow. Then I got even more from Burren based Airmid (the Celtic goddess of healing herbs). They cure their soaps for 4-6 weeks to ensure a long lasting quality bar. Also got myself a shaving soap and brush from Airmid - back to the old ways!
IncrEdible!
Browse through the many plant and flower stalls, most with unusual items. Take a walk through the Ballymaloe walled garden. And no shortage of advice either at the stands. For professional insights why not drop in and listen to one of the many talks. Met Fiann O’Nuallain there today. He’s an enthusiastic advocate of gardening for health and will tell you in great detail how to grow and use your plants, including herbs. Full list of speakers here.

The fiver admission covers entry to all talks. Lots of parking there too. Don’t forget to bring your shopping bags. You will be filling them!
From seed to root

Saturday, August 30, 2014

Ballymaloe Garden Fest Blessed by the Sun

Ballymaloe Garden Fest Blessed by the Sun
On Again Tomorrow
The sun came out today and I followed it to the Ballymaloe Garden Festival. It was lunchtime and the question came: Where is the food? In the Big Shed, of course.

No shortage of options here but we stopped at the stall where Frenchman Laurent and his bubbly crew were dishing up the galettes. Mine was packed with Poached Ballycotton Salmon, Homemade White Wine Hollandaise, Chard, Tomatoes and Garden Leaves.

That deliciously satisfied the hunger pains. Well, almost. Just couldn’t resist stopping at the Yum Gelato ice-cream stall and helping myself to a double scoop. Superb, especially the mixed fruit element.

 Before we left the shed, we enjoyed a lovely conversation with Julie Calder-Potts of Highbank Orchards in Kilkenny and got lots of tips on using their famous and delicious Orchard Syrup. Julie tells me they’ll have Ireland’s “smallest legal distillery” up and running by October and will produce a limited run of Apple Spirit! Get your orders in.

We then took a stroll around, starting with the Walled Garden where a new garden has been laid out to celebrate fifty years of Ballymaloe. Lots of veg and flowers in this large enclosure including an amazing amount of rhubarb!

Irish Bees
 Garden stalls galore around  the sunny place today, everything from tiny pot plants to trees  and including some amazing furniture from Beara, the highlight being the picnic table that folds back into a seat or maybe the seat that folds out into a table!

Lots of talks and demos on as well and they'll do it all again tomorrow. Look out for Caroline Robinson, busy on the Coal Quay every Saturday, who will share her wealth of experience of running a small market garden enterprise, for Johann and Tom Doorley who will concentrate on the uses of edible flowers, and Michael Kelly who will present “A GIY guide to growing your own food”. Many more as well, plus all the stalls again (don't forget the food!) and you can see all the details, including times, here.

Yum!

Tuesday, August 19, 2014

Ballymaloe Garden Festival

Ballymaloe Garden Festival
Marking Ballymaloe's 50th Anniversary
Welcome!

Naturally enough, there will be quite a focus on food when the second annual Ballymaloe Garden Festival is held on 30th and 31st of August. Klaus Laitenberger will show you how to grow organic vegetables, Debbie Shaw will tell you all about raw food while Michael Kelly will present his guide to growing your own food.  

If you feel hungry after all that gardening, you’ll have choices. The Big Shed will be in use again and there will be food served by local market heroes. And that’s not all. Tom and Johann Doorley will be on hand on Sunday to show you “how to eat your garden”. They believe that good food should be enjoyed by everybody and that cooking is therefore a vital life skill.

The Festival, to be held in the grounds at Ballymaloe House, promises to be a wonderful weekend full of garden workshops, walks, and talks, says Aoife McCann. “We will have specialist nursery stalls filled with seeds, rare and old fashioned trees, shrubs, climbers, perennials, fruit, culinary and medicinal herbs and garden equipment all manned by experts.”

FORM Sculpture trail

“It will be all about sustainable garden design, layered pruning, saving seeds and our traditional native heritage, demonstrating different methods of propagation, growing interesting and unusual food, forgotten skills of  bygone times, foraging for cuttings and flowers for fabulous floral arrangements, growing your own vegetables from seeds, growing a market garden business, a photography workshop, cookery demonstration, first aid from your garden, native Irish bees and so much more.”
“We will be joined this year by Gary Graham, Brian Cross, Caroline Holmes, Fiann Ó Nualláin, Michael Kelly, Debbie Shaw, Tom and Johann Doorley, Thady Barrett and many others ……The timetable of events is available here.”
This year sees Ballymaloe celebrate its 50th year and to mark this Susan Turner has designed a new garden for the Festival, set within the walled garden. Susan will give the opening talk of the festival introducing the  50th Year Anniversary Garden and her design.


Borage.

Richie Scott of Artistic Alliance, together with some of the exhibiting artists, will give tours of  FORM,  an outdoor sculpture exhibition on the grounds of Ballymaloe House.
“The Big Shed will be back with a children’s area, plant, craft and gardening tools stalls. Lots of free talks given by our garden experts. There will be food served by our local market heroes. A delicious time to be had while learning about saving seeds, our edible landscape, first aid from the garden, conservatory plants and garden equipment demonstrations.”
Cost of entry to the festival is €5 per adult, with children under 16 free. Entrance tickets available on the day.
The garden lectures and workshops held in the Grainstore/Walled Garden will be priced individually, tickets will be available on the day and on website .
Any enquiries please email GardenFestival@ballymaloe.com or phone Aoife on 087 2675022.