"The thing about Marty is, he genuinely is as kind a person in real life as he is on screen," Áine Lawlor says of her long-time co-host Marty Morrisey. "When you see the way he interacts with people, it's lovely, so that's the pleasure with him. I just adore being his favourite kind of fan girl."
Taking place over five days on the June Bank Holiday weekend (June 1st – 5th), and running from 9am to 6pm daily, Bord Bia's Bloom is set to celebrate its seventeenth birthday with spectacular entertainment and heavenly gardens.
The broadcast duo will return to the flowery festival for the first time since 2019 where they will be hosting live on Friday, June 2.
"There's a fantastic team behind it so we come in about a month beforehand and there are various meetings but they have an awful lot of the work set up," she explains. "The gardens are only being built now so we'll be getting in there once they start nearing completion. I'm looking forward to that in the next week or two."
An avid gardener herself, Lawlor insists that - as well as spending time with Marty - interacting with both the gardens and the gardeners is the thing she looks forward to most.
"I'm just mad about it," she says. "The thing I love is that when I go into my greenhouse - which I'll do now when I go home because I have French bean seeds to be potted before I go to work on Morning Ireland tomorrow - when I'm in there, my head... a nuclear war could be going on, my head is just focused on those beans.
"Your hands get dirty and your back gets sore but it's very cleansing for your head."
Although she jokes that she spends much of her time at Bloom directing fans towards Marty, Lawlor says she loves seeing the public get together to celebrate nature and spend time in the glorious surroundings of the Phoenix Park.
"The pleasure people get from gardens, you see them walking around with their shopping bags full of plants about six feet tall. You see people pulling in on those buses pulling into the Phoenix Park from early in the morning.
"Just the pleasure it gives people. I'll never forget after lockdown, people were just so glad to be back together. I think a lot of people did take to... well, they were stuck in their gardens in lockdown, so the pleasure they got from all things to do with the outdoors.
During their broadcast, Áine and Marty will cover the results of the judges and the medals awarded to the designers and we'll meet first-time designers at Bloom including this year’s Super Garden winner.
"Don't they get better year after year? The judges are so tough. I keep saying to them afterward that they are so tough, I'd hate to be in front of those guys," she laughs. "With a garden, it's like you're trying to paint a picture with living things.
"For instance, I had a whole load of coriander and it took me four weeks to bring it on in the greenhouse and the minute it goes outside the slugs come along and ruin it all. It's been a tough year for growers and for getting plants, even for the Chelsea flower show. It was a difficult spring for growing so that limits what you can have in Bloom.
"You'll have lots of people wrapping irises up in cotton wool or keeping them in the cold storage or bringing them into the heat to bring them on, so again it's the skill of the growers.
"That's the other part of Bloom, it's a celebration of Irish horticulture."
To find out more about Bloom 2023, click here.
