Peter Donegan – Pocket Profile
We are thrilled to welcome back Peter Donegan to the 2024 Melbourne International Flower and Garden Show, Presented By Scotts!
In 2023, together with Semken Landscaping, Peter presented the BAM Stone Garden which was awarded a Gold Medal. We cannot wait to see what this incredible team will create at this years show! Peter has taken us through his garden for this years show, ‘A Moment in Time’ and provided some insight on his inspiration and journey into the industry.
Show Garden – A Moment In Time
A Moment in Time – Presented by Daisy’s Garden Supplies, is the story of an Air Force veteran who returns to a place he hoped to be able to recall home. The garden is secluded and remains as if he had never left.
The design aims to show what is when there is no head stone to one who has not fallen and, though a body is not lost, there remains a mind that can never be the same as it was prior.
The garden features a fragmented path winding to an aged, grassed roof wood cabin and a Piper PA-28 Cherokee aircraft, the project that once was a wished for return to flight of a then younger man, not complete in its repair or trajectory stalled by tree growth over time, stimulated only by the turbulence of what comes with the witness of conflict.
Set in South-Eastern Australia in the early 1980’s, the garden intends to highlight the difficulties some veterans may face when returning to their former lives or when trying to create a new path post service in the Air Force
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Show Gardener Profile
When/How did you get into the industry?
Growing plants under my bed aged 6 meets an overly-inquisitive brain and phototropism. First garden age 9. The rest is a far longer story.
What are you most excited about at this year’s #melbflower show?
If I can pick three ? The floral displays in The Royal Exhibition Building are splendiferously magical, Jason Hodges designs for The Welcome Garden and the Gardens at Night evening soirée – amazing, always.
What is the gardening trend of the season?
Well maintained but not manicured meets mature canopied trees, contained within one particularly eloquent design.
Who has been the biggest influence on your design career?
The trick to any brainwave is to first design it then, to make that a reality. To that note, Barry Corr of The Irish Australian Chamber of Commerce who taught me the real meaning of altruism and brotherly support.
If you could invite any three people to a garden party who would they be?
The legendary Clarence Slokee, Melbourne’s finest plants person Kim Moon and by no means least podcast maker and all round gentleman Joel Barnett.
