Spring your garden into life

TV judges give their super green-fingered tips

- DAWN O'SHEA

SPRING is the perfect time to plant for a summer garden. 

But how can you create the perfect outdoor space in your home, whether big or small?

RTE’s popular Super Garden show is back on TV screens tonight with plenty of inspiration.

Five competing garden designers gather in Untangling, Co Meath, to each transform a garden in a new social housing development.

They have three weeks and a budget of €15,000 to do it.

This year’s designers are sculptor Beth Newman Maguire, landscaper Trevor Kinsella, career-break medic Carmel Ann Daly, quantity surveyor Colm Carty and civil engineer Cian Mc Avinney.

Resident judges Monica Alvarez, Gary Graham and Brian Burke choose the winner, who will recreate their design at the Bord Bia Bloom garden show in Dublin’s Phoenix Park in June.

Here’s the judges’ advice for the green-fingered who want to make the most of their home gardens.

BRIAN BURKE, former Super Garden winner 

USE the space above, says Burke, adding: "We tend to engage with what's at eye level and below, from the top of the boundary wall downwards.

"But it's always worth to engage with the space above your head.