German-born, with an Irish soul, interior architect and landscape gardener Leonie Cornelius captured the essence of our outdoor demands with her apothecary-inspired garden.
Photography: Suzy McCanny
There is something transformative about this time of the year, early summer.
The air is fragrant with garden varieties; hedges heave under their intoxicating fragrances, and wildflowers bloom.
Not just fragrant and pretty, many also perform medicinal and edible functions, a compendium of ideas Leonie Cornelius brought together under one roof at her 2025 show garden at Bloom last year.
The botanical and food fest is underway at Phoenix Park.
As one of the key speakers tomorrow, Friday, May 29th, at 11 am, her show garden, Nourish: Mind, Body & Soul, in conjunction with Caragh Nurseries, last year really struck a chord with the public.
In it, she united her respect for form and shape in her training as an interior architect at ATU, Sligo, and her background in landscaping, fine-tuned at KLC School of Design at Chelsea Harbour, London.
The Irish countryside has also really helped shape her approach.
She was born in Germany and spent her first years in Mönchengladbach, an industrial city about halfway between Düsseldorf and the Dutch border in the western Rhine.
Her town planner father and psychotherapist moved to the Greek island of Ithaca in the Ionian Sea and spent a year there when she was a toddler.
She has no memory of it. “My parents were in search of a simpler way to live that was more connected to the land,” she explains.
They found the island too hot and presciently decided to move further north-west, to our climatically cooler shores.
The family first came to Ireland when she was about five years of age and moved here permanently to a place outside Dromahair, Co Leitrim, in 1987.
She was aged seven and recalls living wild as a child, wandering through fields.
“You can exhale here,” she explains.
Her ability to appreciate all the island has to offer has led to several TV roles, including being a judge on RTE’s show, Supergarden, where she started as a contestant, appearances on DIY SOS and broadcasting for RTE from the Ploughing Championships.
She’s also written a book, Dream Gardens, which was published in 2017.
Her concept is as old as time itself.
Grow herbs that are fragrant and can also be used in cooking and medicinally. It's one you can replicate at home, she says.
It included sage, oregano, camomile, lavender, thyme, rosemary, and eucalyptus, which she also dried and put into apothecary jars.
These were seen on counter shelves in an adobe-style arched structure that had neither windows nor doors, so that it was open to the garden.
It gave shelter but was part of the garden. It gave a real sense of enclosure.
The planting, too, had multiple uses. Certain types of rosemary could be used as evergreen hedging. Bay trees could be used similarly.
Creeping thyme could offer coverage
The fresh herbs were used in messy salads.
Walking through the garden, you wandered across slabs of Dolomite paving. The adobe-look building is finished in a taupe, a colour that changes with the light.
She’s now living at the homestead where she tests plantings from all of her show gardens. She also has a kitchen garden.
She also offers video consultations from €550, in-person ones from €950, plus travel, and can sketch up visions of how she might marry your interior and exterior, but collaborates with other architects on such projects.
Catch Leonie Cornelius at the Botanical Hub next to Entrance 01 at Bloom this weekend, Friday, May 29th at 11 am, where you can also see the 14 postcard-sized gardens, sponsored by Tirlán CountryLife.
For more details of Leonie Cornelius' designs and pricing, visit her site here
