Did anyone watch RTE’s Super Garden on Tuesday night?
We thought the judges were super-mean on Emma Jane’s fabulous garden. Seriously, for a meagre €5,000 the fashion designer transformed this average Dublin back garden, with bare lawn and bare brick walls, into a wonderful modern space. Plus she even created her own bespoke wireframe sculptures and features that many would pay far more money for.

So we pitied the poor girl when RTE’s three snooty judges ripped her apart because she didn’t conform to their garden design laws and etiquette.
What’s a ericaceous plant when it’s at home?
Paddy Gleeson from Woodies, started by picking apart her plant choices, when he wasn’t lifting paving stones. Asking her is she knew anything about flowers and soil types, he scoffed at her lack of knowledge on the subject:
Why then would you plant an ericaceous plant into an mineral soil.
Emma Jane smartly retorted:
Because it looks beautiful!
Which to be fair, was her design brief. The owner was mad about colours and flowers, and Emma Jane had delivered exactly that, who cares if they are not in the right soil. Half a ton of top soil and compost will quickly correct that, and it’s hardly like the Bloom displays are in any way natural and native.
Not a Show Garden…
Bloom Manager Gary Graham then took up the roasting on this idea of colours and flowers:
“Does that make a show garden? Jamming lots of colour and tulips?”
When Emma Jane queried the rules of a show garden the judges were flabergasted that she hadn’t extensively research show gardens, with a look of disgust that she hadn’t watched ever Chealsea show for the last 40 years.
Didn’t you research what a show garden should contain… This is not college, this is not a training camp for garden designers.
At the end of the day, the owners of the garden were delighted. And too right. They got a fabulously transformed and useable garden for a fraction of the cost of a expensive poncy show garden.