Series 2, Episode 2
Summer has arrived and Phoenix Park gardeners Brian and Meeda have to get the Walled Garden looking it’s best for the internationally renowned garden show, Bloom, which takes place in the park every June. Due to the sweltering heat, a lot of the vegetation is in danger of drying up, and they have enlisted the help of some French horticulture students to help them. The students need the experience, the gardeners need the help; it all works out very nicely. That said, a few French lessons wouldn’t go amiss…
Speaking of Bloom, we’ll be going behind the scenes with John Durston, as he prepares his debut garden for the week ahead and, most importantly, the judges! John is one of Ireland’s most respected landscape designers and, with a reputation to uphold, the stakes are high, and so are the temperatures. The plants have been manipulated so that they are flowering for the weekend, as the garden must look it’s best for the 5 specific days, but controlling nature is never easy.
With the sun splitting the rocks, we join park rangers James and Kieron as they patrol the park in what is its busiest season. However, the increase in temperatures means an increase in people, meaning an increase in rule-breaking. They have to warn people against feeding and taking selfies with the deer, drinking alcohol in public and hanging tents from the trees.
TX Thursday 24th September at 7PM on RTÉ One
Series 2 Overview:
‘Returning to RTÉ One this Autumn is the second series of the hugely popular ‘It’s a Park’s Life’: a fly-on-the-wall documentary set in Dublin’s Phoenix Park, which truly does have something for all the family.
Gardeners Brian and Meeda have their work cut out for them in getting pumpkins ready for the autumn, while also making sure the walled garden is in tip top shape for last year’s Bloom garden show. Brian will also be taking a trip to Trinity college where he’s been taking part in a study on the habits of urban pollinators, by monitoring the eating habits of the bumblebees in the park.
We join the hilarious rangers, Kieron and James, on their rounds as they patrol the Ed Sheeran concert, help with the cleanup of major storms and, as always, keep the users of the park in check.
We’ll get a unique insight into the All-Ireland Polo Club, one of the oldest polo clubs in the world which has its headquarters in the park; we go to the top of the Farmleigh clock tower, as the clock at the top is repaired for the first time in over a century; and we meet two men whose family have been lighting the lamps of the Phoenix park since the 1890s and much, much more. With the evenings getting shorter, and the fires being lit, this wonderfully charming documentary is not to be missed. ‘