The popular TV gardener Brian Burke tells us about the start of his career, his favourite aspects of his varied job and mistakes to avoid in your own garden at home
Award winning garden designer Brian Burke at his Woodies show garden entitled Seomra Eile (Another Room) at Bord Bia Bloom in the Phoenix Park, Dublin(Image: Brian McEvoy)
With the weather slowly getting better, many of us will be looking out the window to our neglected gardens. It’s always great to get outdoors and prune, plant and weed our own space – but what is it like being a professional gardener?
Here, we chat to Brian Burke, a landscape contractor, garden designer and RTÉ Super Garden judge.
Brian has won medals for his work, but he didn’t start out his career in gardening. In fact, his original qualification was in construction economics. “I was doing my Leaving Cert at the end of the 80s. It was a different time, economically we weren’t in a great place. I was looking for a ‘stable career’.
“At the time, there was a shortage of quantity surveyors or construction economists in Ireland and the UK. There was a demand for them.”
After graduating, Brian moved to the UK and worked for some big construction companies there. In the late 90s, he got an opportunity to move to the United States, to work for a masonry restoration company.
It was here where his career in gardening began. Brian worked in very large houses in New England, which had massive private gardens. Here, Brian started to notice the level of detail, design and money that was going into gardening. “I found the whole thing inspiring. The landscaping was amazing, there was a real priority placed on it over there.”
From there, he developed a serious interest in plants and went to college at night and on weekends to get a qualification in horticulture. He then started his own small gardening company. “I felt it would be a beautiful area to have a career in,” he said.
In 2006, Brian moved home to Ireland, where he still has his own operation. “We were building and designing gardens, and that’s always continued.”
Brian entered and won RTÉ’s garden design show, Super Garden, in 2015, and later became a judge for the series.
In 2017, he was asked by Woodie’s to design their show garden at Bloom Festival. He also is involved in Woodie’s Budding Gardeners competition, which is aimed at primary school kids. Brian also works in further education, teaching horticulture and ecology.
Highlights
His favourite aspect of his work is that no two days, projects or clients are the same. “You meet all sorts of people who have different tastes, priorities and influences.”
Brian says he loves meeting clients who embrace the process. “The greatest rush is when you get really positive feedback. When people love the plans, it’s great.”
Another thing that Brian loved about his line of work is that he spends the majority of his days outdoors. “For the most part, we have reasonable summers. We have a temperate climate, we get no real extremes. We get a lot of rain but we don’t get prolonged sub zero or stifling hot temperatures. We have a nice, even climate.”
So far, Brian has created seven gardens for Bloom, the annual gardening festival. “To submit and build gardens for something as prestigious as Bloom is a real thrill. Four have been for Woodie’s, one for Dog’s Trust, the charity GOAL and one as winner of Super Garden back in 2015. You really get to flex your design muscles, showcasing different materials and planting combinations.”
One garden that particularly stands out to Brian is the Woodie’s garden he designed for Bloom in 2018. “It marked 30 years of Woodie’s in Ireland. We presented the garden as a chronicle of the social history of the country, from the 80s until now. We picked landmark moments like the marriage equality referendum, the Special Olympics in Croke Park, the Good Friday Agreement. We picked planting that worked with that theme and told the story,” he explained.
Advice
There are a few gardening mistakes that people often make. After moving into a new home, many people rush to get the garden done, when people should take a step back and analyse how they use the garden. “What is your lifestyle like? Do you have time in the evenings or at weekends to maintain the garden? Do you have the drive to get all those maintenance tasks done?”
Secondly, think about the best use of space, Brian says. He advises people to sit down in the garden on their day off and pay attention to their surroundings. “Is there noise from nearby roads? What is the aspect of the garden and direction of the sun?”
People whose gardens are overlooked should consider privacy by adding hedging or shrubs. Materials are also something to consider. “Do you like natural stone, pre-cast concrete or wood? Do you want a natural and rustic look or a sharp, clinical, contemporary look? Do you want low-maintenance and evergreen planting? Do you want to grow your own food?”
Brian says many people might be tempted to just do parts of the garden in a piece meal way due to budget or time constraints, but the garden can end up not being very harmonious. Instead, he advises people to come up with one master plan for the entire garden, and just work from that plan as you go along.
For people who want a low-maintenance garden, Brian says choosing three or four colours to work with is a good option. “Different shades of greens, whites, mauves, lilacs and purples can work. It’s amazing how many evergreen, woody shrubs and trees will fit that bill. They won’t require a huge amount of intervention. Evergreen Portuguese laurel, evergreen box, evergreen mahonia and viburnum. This can be peppered with a few simple shrubs like hydrangea paniculata, agapanthus and salvia nemorosa.”
For colour, Brian advises a deeper, broad herbaceous border. “Herbaceous planting is planting that has no permanent wood structure. It flowers every spring and summer then dies away, then returns again the following spring and summer. Herbaceous perennial planting can provide colour in the garden.”
However, these borders need a good bit of maintenance, as they need to be cut back, divided and given nutrients.
- To see more of Brian’s gardening advice, check out Woodie’s Facebook, IG: @woodies_ireland and TikTok: @woodies_ireland.
- RTÉ’s Super Garden airs every Thursday on RTÉ One at 7pm.
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