Betty hopes to Bloom with ‘Garden of the Senses’

Kells sculptor, Betty Newman Maguire, featured in the RTE Super Garden competition last week, and is one of five competitors vying for a chance to showcase their garden at the Bloom Festival.

Betty, who is well known for her public art works around the country, designed a 'Garden of the Senses’ for a Dunshaughlin family, and the transformation seriously impressed the judges.

The five contestants each designed a garden in the new Lagore Lawns estate in Dunshaughlin.

Betty created her fabulous garden for Martin Hislop and Dominika Blonska and their children Franek and Pola.

Martin is recovering from an acquired brain injury, so their new house and now their garden are very welcome for this family after a tough couple of years.

Beth is hoping her 'Garden of the Senses’ will get her to Bloom. Last Thursday's episode of Super Garden focused on Betty's garden, but the next four episodes will feature the four other contestants.

Betty set out to create a garden that would play to all our senses and it featured a lovely water feature and one of her own sculptures. It was tough work and Betty lost some time because of a short illness.

As an artist and professional sculptor her work is already well known. She created public works of art in Northern Ireland, Meath, Cavan and the iconic "Baithe Viking Ship" evoking a beached vessel on the Dublin Quays.

Among her work was the recent sculpture of Kate Kennedy which was unveiled in Duleek, the bust of Maureen O'Hara in Kells and the 'Becoming' sculpture at Kennedy Place in Navan.

Her work is in numerous private and public collections worldwide.

While Betty loves working on her own gardening, the Super Garden challenge was a whole new departure for her.

"I really enjoyed creating the garden. I only entered two days before the deadline for the competition. They rang me because I had filled out something incorrectly, they interviewed me on zoom and told me I was one of the contestants."

Since her garden aired on Thursday night, Betty has received a lot of phonecalls of congratulations, as well as enquiries from people interested in her sculptures, having seen the piece she incorporated in the garden.

Betty has exhibited widely and is the recipient of many awards, public commissions and residencies in Ireland, France, Germany and America and has mounted 16 solo exhibitions in Ireland, Germany and America.

She has lectured at Frobel Teacher Training College, Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art and Design and University of Ulster, Belfast. She is arts coordinator at Beaufort College, Navan and was appointed to the board of the National College of Art and Design in 2003 and was a member of the Board of the Sculptor’s Society of Ireland.

She lives and works from her studios at Castlekernan, Carnaross.