Small Talk with landscape contractor and garden designer – Brian Burke

Landscape contractor and award-winning garden designer - Brian Burke

Brian Burke talks about his journey into horticulture, the challenges and opportunities facing the industry, and why attracting a new generation is vital to the future of Irish horticulture

Horticulture

8 October 2026

In association with Gardenworld Nurseries

At Growtrade, we’re running an interview series titled ‘Small Talk’, where we talk to various influential members of Ireland’s horticulture trade.

This week’s conversation is with a landscape contractor and award-winning garden designer – Brian Burke.

How did you first get involved in the horticulture sector?

Back in the mid-1990s after graduating in Construction Economics from Dublin Institute of Technology and spending a few years living and working in London, I moved to Cambridge in Massachusetts to take up a job with a masonry restoration company. A lot of our projects brought us directly into some of the city’s most opulent, verdant gardens, and spending so much time in those remarkable outdoor spaces sparked a deep personal inspiration in me. Seeing how structure and nature intersected made me want to pivot away from strict construction work. I decided to break away, set up my own modest design and build outfit, and things simply grew organically from there as I increased my knowledge, undertook further study and honed my craft.

What was one of the proudest moments in your career to date?

Winning RTÉ’s Super Garden back in 2015 was a massive personal milestone and validation of my ability to design and execute to a high standard, but being invited in 2018 to become a brand ambassador for Woodie’s and to also represent Woodie’s as a judge on Super Garden really stands out as a career highlight. It is a role I adore and thoroughly enjoy. Being in a position to mentor, evaluate, and highlight the fresh talent coming through the Irish design scene every year is something I take huge pride in.

What was one of the greatest challenges you’ve faced in your career to date?

Without a doubt, it was keeping everything afloat during the lean, barren years following the 2008 economic crash. Navigating the commercial realities of a devastated construction and landscaping market while carrying the heavy responsibility of supporting a large family was difficult. It forced me to be adaptable, resourceful, and resilient – qualities that sustained the business through that dark period and continue to serve me today.

Could you give us an example of a recent success you had in your work?

I’ve been fortunate to celebrate several key milestones over recent years, including designing seven medal-winning show gardens at Bord Bia Bloom between 2015 and 2023, as well as maintaining regular radio and television broadcast slots alongside my Super Garden judging duties.

In parallel, developing my teaching career in the further education sector since 2016 has been immensely rewarding. Teaching a broad range of subjects across construction, horticulture, and ecology allows me to share real-world experience and shape the skillset of incoming practitioners.

What are the greatest challenges facing the industry today?

Our biggest hurdle is attracting the younger demographic and projecting the reality that horticulture is a genuine, viable, and highly rewarding career. Right now, the industry has an image problem; while it successfully attracts older people looking to change career gears, it fails to engage school-leavers in sufficient numbers.

We need a coherent national strategy to capture the types of young people who currently gravitate toward traditional trades, like electrical apprenticeships. These are individuals who clearly want to work with their hands and avoid desk jobs, so horticulture needs to make a structured, aggressive effort at school-leaving age with clearer career pathways and attractive apprenticeships.

What are the greatest opportunities facing the industry today?

The flip side of our recruitment challenge is that business is genuinely booming, and we have a massive window of opportunity if we can just get the younger generation involved. As a nation, we have never had more mainstream public interest in all aspects of our sector – ranging from growing your own food and understanding ecology, embracing biodiversity, protecting indigenous floral species, garden design, and floral art. Public enthusiasm is at an all-time high across the board; our big opportunity is seizing this momentum to professionalize, expand, and bring new talent into the field.

What advice would you give to someone just starting their career?

My single best piece of advice is to try everything before you decide to specialize. Get a real taste for every corner of the sector – whether that’s hands-on like plant propagation, hard landscaping, ecological restoration, nursery management, or design work. Experiencing the full breadth of the discipline early on gives you the practical insight needed to make a fully informed choice when you eventually commit to a specific career path.

What are your hopes for the future of Irish horticulture?

My core hope is that we can capture more of our younger people and introduce them to an industry many of them are perfectly cut out for, even if they don’t realize it yet. I want us to build on recent strides around lighter-touch gardening, environmental rehabilitation, and restoring local ecosystems. Lower-impact techniques – such as a coherent national strategy around rainwater harvesting – need to become normalized, while local authorities should offer stronger incentives for community initiatives like urban pocket forests.

Ultimately, I want to see horticulture and outdoor classrooms integrated into the standard national curriculum in every primary and secondary school across Ireland. If we want to secure the long-term future of Irish horticulture, right now is the time to start.

Small Talk is produced in association with Gardenworld Nurseries, one of the country’s leading wholesale plant nurseries, specialising in high-quality specimen trees, hedging, shrubs, and perennials.

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