Landscape Architect Peter Donegan Announces Designs For Melbourne International Flower Show 2023

March 2023 will see Peter Donegan Garden Design become the first Irish landscape architect to design and realise a show garden for the Melbourne International Flower & Garden Show, the largest and most prestigious horticultural event in the Southern Hemisphere.

 

 

 

 

Rated among the top five flower and garden shows in the world, MIFGS as it is known showcases only the finest caliber of garden design and landscape architecture talent selected from Australia and around the world, attracting over 100,000 plus visitors each year hosted at the World Heritage Site of Carlton Gardens and The Royal Exhibition Building.

“We are a small but beautiful design office completing designs at the very highest level for the last 21 years, but it is always an honour and another humbling compliment when invited anywhere – on this occasion to one of the world’s best and very beautiful part of Australia,” noted Donegan.

The design concept is ‘a contemporary vision of a love story, and hearts separated via a small island off the coast of Galway to the mainland.’

The garden will feature a series of natural stone steppings that symmetrically weave their way through a rocky, maritime landscape, recognising of the journey made across the Atlantic from the Connemara (Conamara) coast. The destination is an island featuring planting, shelter, and a single large bright tree, a beacon to those who wish to return.

Donegan will work alongside contractors Semken Landscaping. Since 1987, Martin Semken and his team have been showing garden building and contracting at the very highest level and are the most medalled contractor in the show’s history.

“Albeit somewhat, simplistic in its appearance, on this occasion and in part due to the fact that we cannot at all penetrate the ground of the Unesco World Heritage Site to create this wondrous design and a garden comprising 69.7% water, one 8 meter tall tree and a myriad of beautiful Bam Stone we have just met our most difficult show garden build to date“, noted Semken.

The realisation of the garden will take place amid an action-packed schedule that sees Donegan arriving in Melbourne on March 11th with the 9-day show garden build commencing March 20th. Within this timeframe, Donegan will also guest lecture at the Royal Botanical Gardens Victoria and at the University of Melbourne.

Melbourne International Flower & Garden Show 2023 runs from 29th March to 3 April.

Peter Donegan Garden Design is an international and local garden design, landscape architecture and project management practice based in Dublin, Ireland. Founded in 2001, aged 24, Peter Donegan Garden Design swiftly won a host of awards for 17th & 18th-century gardens & show gardens at the national competitions. From 2019 – 2022, the RHS silver medallist became the series garden designer for the country’s most-watched tv show and RTE television’s DIY SOS The Big Build Ireland.

Selected to represent Ireland to design & realise the Irish WW1 Centenary Peace Garden at Chateau de Péronne Historial de la Grande Guerre in 2018, he returned and designed a second inaugurated garden there in 2022 to commemorate the anniversary of Europe’s largest war museum housed within the castle.

2023 will see Peter Donegan become the first Irish landscape architect invited and accepted to design at Melbourne International Flower and Garden Show in March 2023 – the largest flower show in Southern Hemisphere.

The garden owes a very special thanks to Bam Stone (Melbourne), CED Stone Group (UK), and support from the Australian Embassy in Ireland

 

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