Bloom: it's not just about the flowers
Reportedly, people spend about €240 each at Bloom
Bord Bia's Bloom festival is essentially the National Ploughing Championships’ well-heeled cousin.
It’s deeply invested in land, food and weather, just dressed in loafers rather than dealer boots.
I spent much of the past weekend working on the Agri Aware Bloom Farmyard in the Phoenix Park, while around us much of Dublin wandered happily between show gardens, artisan food stalls and outdoor furniture displays carrying price tags capable of causing mild distress among card weilding couples.
This year marks twenty years of Bloom and, if you have never been, people tend to describe it as “the flower show”.
Which is a bit like describing the Ploughing as “that tractor thing”.People rightly think Bloom is about flowers.
In reality, it’s about flowers, food, commerce and the surprisingly complex business of persuading people to spend on things for gardens they only occasionally weed.
Reportedly, The average visitor to Bloom spends €230 during their visit.
But for reasons beyond beautiful planting schemes and dangerously persuasive outdoor cushions, Bloom serves another function.
For Irish horticulture, growers and flower farmers, this is one of the biggest public shop windows of the year.
People sometimes forget that horticulture is agriculture too, just with significantly better Instagram potential.
In a country with surprisingly few large commercial field-scale vegetable growers left producing much of our homegrown produce (the figure can vary between 60- 70 farms), platforms like Bloom are significant.
They give growers, food producers and horticultural businesses visibility, customers, connections and, perhaps most importantly, appreciation.
Before the public even arrive, there are trade meetings, networking breakfasts, food showcases and quiet conversations happening between buyers, producers and Irish brands.
You can feel that commercial energy humming underneath the gardens.
There was a strong flavour of home there too. It was lovely to spot familiar Premier County names among the food producers Rivesci, Cashel Blue and O’Donnell’s bringing a healthy dose of Tipperary enterprise up to Dublin.
My own week, meanwhile, was spent in rather less curated surroundings beside two Angus weanlings, some crossbred sheep and a magnificent Holstein-Friesian cow borrowed from a farm in County Kildare.
We ran milking demonstrations twice daily, sheep shearing demonstrations, talks, questions and endless conversations.
And the crowds were hugely engaged. Which, if I’m honest, surprised me slightly.
Not because I underestimate people’s interest in farming, but because in a world increasingly designed to shorten attention spans, people stayed.
Children sat through demonstrations. Adults asked thoughtful questions. Families gathered around the milking setup with genuine curiosity.
The sheep shearing demonstrations, in particular, were crowd favourites.
There is something oddly compelling about watching a sheep emerge looking faintly bewildered and several kilograms lighter while a crowd collectively discovers that, no, shearing doesn’t hurt them.
The children absolutely loved it. By the end of demonstrations, small fists were quietly pocketing handfuls of freshly shorn wool a souvenir choice I’m sure parents later discovering warm lanolin deposits in car seats, pockets and washing machines appreciated enormously.
But what struck me most throughout the week was how many people told us they had never been this close to livestock before. They wanted to touch the cattle. Ask questions. Understand how milking works. Find out what sheep eat, what happens to wool and how farms actually operate.
As I write this, I’m on the train back up for the final day: World Milk Day while back home the weather has reverted to a more recognisably Irish setting and dairy farmers are watching the return of rain with mixed emotions and one eye firmly on grass growth. Typical.
But after a week at Bloom, one thing feels reassuringly clear. People haven’t lost interest in where their food comes from.Sometimes they just need a June bank holiday, a sheep shearing demonstration and a pocketful of stolen wool to remember they had it all along!