Gerard Mullen has hit the ground running. Or perhaps I should say he has hit it measuring and designing and digging and planting. Since finishing his three-year honours degree course in horticulture at Waterford Institute of Technology in May (from which he graduated with distinction), the Dungarvan designer has completed two assured and meticulous show gardens.
The first of these, a tiny urban space at Bloom in Phoenix Park, was a simple, but sophisticated offering, full of interesting leaf shapes and contrasting hard landscape textures (I loved the chalk-and-cheese marriage of smooth white concrete and grey, limestone cobbles). He was awarded a gold medal for his efforts.
While Mullen was wading through the crowds and early-June torrents of rain at Bloom, his mind was also on his garden at the International Garden Festival at Emo Court, where a contractor was working away, building the creamy white walls that defined the plot. The minute the Dublin show wrapped up, the designer set himself up in a cottage in the village of Emo and spent two weeks planting and fine-tuning his creation, entitled "Home Abhaile".
The garden pays tribute to the Irish landscape, which is framed by a series of rectangular openings, each offering a different picture. His view of the lake is sublime, its beauty focused by the window, and enhanced by sympathetic plantings of native plants. (Mullen is a keen hill walker, and has an experienced eye when it comes to natural plant associations.)
He raised many of the plants himself, including 90 pots of bracken propagated from root cuttings, crowds of foxgloves grown from seed, and several mature specimens of dark mullein (Verbascum nigrum) dug up from his back garden. The hart's-tongue and male ferns (Asplenium scolopendrium and Dryopteris filix-mas) that fill the frame of a low horizontal "window" with their alternating smooth and frondy foliage, had been culled from the ditch at the end of his property, potted up and minded until they were plump and perfect.
Such impeccable organisation, forward planning and clear-headedness are precious assets in a business where last-minutemanship and a breezy attitude towards completion are not unusual.
Yet, for Mullen, who worked as a consultant and project manager for a multinational, Dublin-based e-learning company for six years prior to going back to college in Waterford, the logistics and time management of these two gardens were a walk in the park. He had a definite advantage, too, when it came to the creative end of things, as he already holds a degree in industrial design, gained from the University of Ulster in 1992.
Add to these considerable skills a genuine love of plants, and we have a young man who has all the ingredients of a really fine designer. So what's next for this summer's rising star? Well, besides carrying out commissions throughout Ireland, Mullen has been nurturing a long-held ambition: "I'd like to bring a garden to Chelsea. That's my plan for the future."
And, judging by his progress in the past few months, that future will be sooner rather than later.
Gerard Mullen: 086-6023284; germullen@hotmail.com