How to dyg

One half of us here at DYG is American. Anthea is born and bred in Detroit, Michigan, so it is a city we have been back to time and again. And although very different from Dublin, there is one thing in common: property prices have collapsed. They have done so in spectacular fashion and have been doing so for decades. The city has gone from a peak population of 1.8 million people to 900,000, leaving a lot of empty space. Whether this comes to pass in Dublin remains to be seen, but there are some lessons to be learned for the Irish context. Firstly that growing crops in or near a city can have a tangible value, more substantial that the 'lifestyle' one it enjoys here - it gets food on plates, for those most in need of it, at a lower cost, with less transportation and of greater freshness. And secondly, that there is a promising future for 'real' gardens: gardens which are made and loved by their makers, which have nothing whatsoever to do with professional garden makers or designers and which use salvaged materials out of joy and necessity rather than an earnest desire to do the right thing.

By the end of the summer, many bamboo plants have masses of new shoots at the base, and many side shoots off established shoots. A bamboo can be transformed by a bit of artful grooming, and we do this to any that we look after. The stems can be shown off by removing the majority (70-80%) of the small, new shoots. You can also remove all the small side shoots emerging from the bigger stems (correctly known as "culms") up to a certain height. Doing this gives the plants a much more architectural appearance, and it encourages some stems to grow really sturdy and thick. By and large, bamboo should not be sheared or trimmed, though there are cases where this looks good - ie, in a hedge which needs to kept at a certain height.

A un-thinned bamboo on the left, a thinned one on the right.

Many bamboos, such as Phyllostachys nigra and Phyllostachys aureasulcata have beautiful stems, and pruning them in the above way helps to show them off at their best. You'll need a good pair of loppers to cut the culms successfully, such as those sold by Felco, and also a pair of gloves.

Follow the following guidelines for healthy plants, or if you are trying to revive unhealthy looking plants:

Anyone who visited Bloom in the Phoenix Park this June bank holday had a chance to see for themselves just what our plants are like in real life. We are delighted to have supplied plants and pots for the Garden and Landscape Designers' Association's (GLDA) space - a sanctuary of foliage and flowers where members of the public could meet members of Ireland's only professional association for garden designers. Founded over ten years ago, the GLDA assures members of the public that its members are rigorously assessed and examined before gaining entry, and that they will receive the highest possible professional standards. Many of the designers at Bloom are Full Members of the GLDA. The GLDA organises a major seminar every February, bringing speakers from around the world to present talks on garden and landscape design, as well as worshops, talks and garden visits throughout the year.

The plants that we have supplied to the GLDA space are all grown in Ireland: a wonderful selection of bamboos enclose a cosy interior kitted out with tables, chairs, plants and pots - the perfect environment for 'meeting the designers'.

               Vist the GLDA website.....

A young Irishman goes over to England to seek his fortune in the world of gardening. Some years later he has set up a gardening magazine, has his name to a couple of books and become a household name. He is hugely influential - in Britain, Ireland and even America. But this isn't Diarmuid Gavin. This is William Robinson, and it's more than a hundred years ago. Founder of The Garden magazine and author of numerous books, he gave his name to 'Robinsonian' gardening, and is Ireland's most illustrious and celebrated gardener.

Starting his career as a gardener's boy in a Co. Waterford estate and moving on to other estate jobs around Ireland, he fled the country after quarreling with his employer and deliberately letting the fire go out in the glasshouses full of tender plants. Irritated and bored by the formal bedding schemes predominant at the time, and the clipping, hoeing and general manipulating of the garden, he was influenced by the beauty of plants in their natural environments than in their tortured, drilled and fussed-over garden state. His wonderfully opinionated tone is thoroughly refreshing, now as it must have been at the time, and he didn't mince his words when describing the gardening style of the time:

"I saw the flower gardener meanly trying to rival the tile or wall-paper men, and throwing aside with contempt all the lovely things that through their height or form did not conform to this idea..... The choke-muddle shrubbery, in which the shrubs kill each other, shews betimes a few ill-grown plants, and has wide patches of bare earth in summer over which pretty green things may crowd."

For anyone feeling a little nostalgic about the past, they will be happy to hear that one of its most charming features, the deck chair, is alive and folding in a range of cheery colours.  Well designed garden furniture, constructed from natural materials and made in our part of the world, is unfortunately not readily available. Most garden furniture these days is made of hardwood, plastic or woven polypropelene and the vast majority of it is produced a long way from home. Luckily, we have found a factory in the UK that uses two simple materials: beech and cotton canvas. They make their chairs to the proper design. They are supremely comfortable and allow you to sit at a number of angles. They fold into something about an inch thick, so they can be stored in the tightest of spaces - and they look fabulous. (Click here to purchase...)

As a van driver and scavenger, my eyes always scan over every skip I pass, and last year I was fortunate to spot three lovely deck chairs outside a smart house in Dublin 4. These chairs were the real article and reminded me of happy summers as a child when the whole family sat down on a Sunday to read the papers in the back garden. What we have on our site is much the same thing: built in Bournemouth in a factory which employs people with disabilities, beautifully finished and made of fine materials.

Where do we get our plants from? This is one of the questions we get asked all the time. Some people are understandably nervous about buying plants online - they like to see them in real life before putting them in their cart and paying for them. So, in the same way that shops like to tell you how your food gets from 'farm to fork', here are some photos showing just a couple of the many nurseries from whom we source our plants. When you place an order with us, we get the plants from a whole range of suppliers. Our ethos is to buy Irish-grown plants wherever possible. We have a wonderful nursery industry in Ireland, and after two bad summers and a hard winter it deserves all the support it can get. Irish-grown plants are adapted to our climate, have less 'plant miles' behind them, are of the highest quality and support Irish jobs. These nurseries are wholesale growers who supply garden centres and landscape professionals only. Irish growers know which plants perform best in this climate - they have years and years of experience. Plants which are shipped in from mainland Europe often look great when they arrive, but aren't cut out for our very particular weather - they mightn't be looking so good in a few months time! We at DYG frequently drop in to the nurseries to collect plants, so when you order from us, we have selected the pick of the crop.

Perennials growing at Schram Plants, Co Kildare.

Leamore Nursery in Co Wicklow: a wonderful range of outdoor-grown, unusual and rare perennials, including a stunning collection of Paeonies.

I am often faced, over the course of designing and improving gardens, with discoloured patios and terraces which have a bloom of green algae over them. Customers are seduced by the colours and names of Indian Sandstone (Somerset, Mint etc), and also by the relatively low prices; but these colours deteriorate rapidly, and more often than not I am being called in to suggest an alternative. But this is only one part of the problem. Think about it: these heavy stones have travelled thousands of miles, making them highly dependent on oil. And even after travelling so far, why are they still so cheap? Because they are coming from a part of the world that doesn't have the same regulations in place that we do here. Because the health and safety, environmental and labour laws that we have here don't apply there. There are exceptions, of course, and some of the larger companies in the UK have gone to great lengths to monitor the conditions under which their stone is produced. However, in Ireland there is nothing comparable, and when a stone is cheap, it's for a very good reason.

The following landscaping and garden materials are available from dyg - all delivered in the Dublin area in bulk / one ton bags or in loose loads above six tons - prices and details in 'Landscape Products' on your right.

• Rootzone (sand and soil) mix for lawns
• Garden manure / Mushroom compost
• Bagged, mature manure (Gee-up)
• Screened topsoil
• Screened topsoil and compost mix for raised beds
• Bark mulch, fine grade
• Bark mulch, coarse grade
• Light gold gravel 10-14 mm
• Light gold gravel blinding / dust
• Wicklow riverbed granite gravel
• Beach pebble (Irish) 10-14mm
• Beach pebble (Irish) 20-30mm
• Beach pebble /drainage pebble
• Purple / plum broken slate
• Untreated larch sleepers for raised beds
• Salvaged hardwood railway sleepers
• Treated new softwood sleepers
• FSC certified Chestnut paling fence on a roll

The above are some the products in our Landscapers' Yard. An order which includes any item or more from this list will incur a €30.00 delivery charge. Delivery is for counties Dublin, Wicklow and Kildare. If there is anything that you are looking for that we do not stock, please feel free to contact us. We can deliver further afield too, but you must contact us first for a delivery price. Visit the Landscape Products section of the site on your right for pdetails.

Ireland is rich in materials such as stone and wood, and these materials not only perform better in our climate - they haven't travelled across the world at vast environmental cost - always use local materials wherever possible.

Don't take our word for it! Over the last couple of months we have had plenty of coverage in the press. We have been featured in Image Interiors, House and Home, The Irish Garden Magazine, as well as in The Irish Times, The Sunday Business Post and The Sunday Tribune. If you want to read what others have to say about us (rather than ourselves, because you know what we'll say), just click on any of these links to read articles in The Sunday Tribune, The Irish Times and The Sunday Business Post. We have also just joined Facebook, so become one our fans and keep up to date with developments at DYG, including special offers, newly added items and other gardening news.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/magazine/2010/0522/1224270602778.htm...

http://www.tribune.ie/property/article/2010/jan/10/snow-time-for-gardeni...

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/magazine/2009/1212/1224260320098.htm...

http://archives.tcm.ie/businesspost/2009/12/06/story46050.asp

As people who care about the environment, but who also want to be warm, we built a house which is classed as a 'low-energy' house. This is similar to what is known as a 'passive' house in terms of construction and insulation, but with a lesser energy rating. We wanted the pleasure of having a real fire in our house, so our only source of heat is a large, wood-burning stove. The stove generates enough warmth to heat the entire house, and the heat is distributed by a heat-exchange system. It's really important, therefore, that the stove does what it's meant to do. For a while, when we moved in, we burned our own logs which we collected from the surrounding woods. However, these were difficult to light, provided poor heat and lead to our glass becoming blackened. In order to work properly they would need to be seasoned, under cover,for at least two years. We had been told by our stove manufacturer (Lotus of Denmark) that we should be burning wood with a low moisture content, so we turned to using logs which have been dried in a kiln.

Everything about these logs is superior: they light incredibly easily, with just a sheet or two of newspaper and a piece of cardboard; they give out a tremendous heat; they produce very little ash; they can smoulder for more than twelve hours when damped down; they are clean, bone dry and free from insects; they are the produce of sustainably-managed Irish forests; they are hardwood (ie ash, oak, beech etc); and they are efficiently delivered nationwide.