“Look at the bees. They’re just loving it,” says Paul Dunne, standing in a garden full of alliums, peonies, coral bells and daylilies, among other flowers and herbs. Dunne is a landscaper and co-designer of the Met Éireann Show Garden at this year’s Bloom festival. The theme of the garden is “resilience”, to reflect the changing climate in Ireland. “We’ve used as many native Irish plants as we can, but native Irish is difficult for a Show Garden. We’ve used some, though,” he says. The garden features a pond with a refurbished small boat and a large umbrella for taking shade. It took three weeks to put together from scratch with a small team. “We’ve created a relaxing, soothing space. The planting is key to that with ferns and grasses, merging out to a more herbaceous mix,” Dunne says. “The whole theme is resilient planting. The plants used here will tolerate temperature changes, and are tolerant of more rain or less rain, obviously within a range." Another aspect to the garden is a display of older meteorological instruments, as part of the celebration of Met Éireann’s 90th anniversary. It includes a Campbell-Stokes recorder – a classic meteorological instrument used to measure the duration of bright sunshine in a day – as well as newer instruments that measure solar radiation, and more. Speaking about the theme of resilience, Met Éireann forecaster Aoife Kealy says it is “important to remember that May is, meteorologically speaking, still spring, but we’re seeing temperatures that’d be quite unusual even in the middle of July here, so it is quite extreme”. Oliver Schurmann designed a garden with partner Liat called Shared Roots, Common Shade which is sponsored by the European Commission. Photograph: Nick Bradshaw/The Irish Times Finishing touches being made at Bord Bia Bloom in Phoenix Park. Photograph: Sam Boal /Collins Photos “The weather at the moment is really sunny and warm with 29 or 30 degrees,” in part due to the heat dome off North Africa, she says. A record temperature for May of 30.5 degrees was recorded at Shannon Airport on Tuesday, beating the 29.7 degrees recorded at Oak Park, Co Carlow, earlier in the day. That was higher than the 28.6 degrees recorded at Shannon Airport on Monday, which had broken a record for May stretching back to 1997 when 28.4 degrees was recorded at Ardfert, Co Kerry.“It is unusual for it to be this hot. We’ve broken the May temperature record twice over now. It is going to change later in the week, though,” she says, with temperatures dropping down to the high teens or low 20s, and a bit more drizzle and cloud expected. “The idea of the plants here is that they’re well able to adapt to Ireland’s changing climate of drier summers and wetter winters. The pond also has the capacity to recede during the wetter winter and rise in the summer,” Kealy says. “Climate change is impacting all the weather we’re experiencing in Ireland. We’re a warmer and wetter country than we used to be,” Pádraig Flattery, senior climatologist, says. [ Bloom 2026: How to buy tickets, where to park and what is the weather forecast?Opens in new window ]“I’m sure there’ll be a study into this specific weather event because it’s so record breaking early in the year. The planting in this garden is resilient and prepared for this climate and the future climate, which is only going to get stranger.” “Resilience is the key going forward, the climate we face in the future is much more uncertain, so the garden reflects that.” The Bord Bia Bloom festival of gardening, food and sustainable living, now in its 20th year, opens to the public on Thursday and runs until Bank Holiday Monday.