Mark Grehan: ‘There is a lot more to The Garden than a flower shop in The Powerscourt Centre’
As acclaimed florist Mark Grehan, founder of Dublin-based floral design studio The Garden, celebrates 15 years in business, he speaks to Ruth O’Connor about working with high-end clients, expanding his business and his exhibition ‘BOG – 15 Years of the Garden’.
Landscape and floral designer Mark Grehan may now count luxury design houses and celebrity brides as some of his customers but he still remains grounded. He may have a beautiful store in the elegant Georgian surroundings of Powerscourt Townhouse and a second shop and studio in trendy Dublin 8, yet he still remains tethered to the wilds of a youth spent wandering the fields and bogs of Barna, Co. Galway, in the West of Ireland. Indeed, it is this very upbringing, with its access to freedom and nature, that defines Grehan’s style and craft.
Grehan founded The Garden in 2010, having previously worked as a landscape gardener. The financial crash had hit and it was a strange time in business for many creatives who found themselves at the coalface of the recession and a drop in private spending. Having trained as a florist, Grehan had been selling bouquets at a weekly market on Coppinger Row in Dublin once a week, and had spent some time in London, but the idea for a flower shop had lingered in the back of his mind.
Having done some floristry work for the Powerscourt Centre, he realised that the foyer of the building would work well as a flower shop and would satisfy the footfall requirements required by a small business. He approached the owners of the property with a business plan and a presentation on the look and feel of the shop and the rest is history.
The elegant setting of the 18th-century building, once the townhouse of Richard Wingfield, 3rd Viscount Powerscourt, suited the elegance of Grehan’s style, yet its formality also served as the perfect foil to the loose, natural style of floristry he was keen to develop at a time when a tighter, more formal floristry style was de rigueur. “I thought I would give it a go and see if people liked my style,” he says. “At the same time, I thought if people didn’t like it, I didn’t want to open up a typical florist shop.”
That quiet confidence in his own taste, style and intrinsic knowledge of plants has paid off over the past 15 years and Grehan has grown his business to encompass two city centre locations, a large team of florists and the respect of some of the most fêted brands in the world.
Over the years, Grehan has worked in international cities from Dublin to London, Sydney to New York and for illustrious brands including Chanel, Gucci and Hermès and he and his team are frequently called upon to create world-class floral displays for fashion shows, films, luxury weddings and brand activations for everyone from Guinness to Brown Thomas, COS to Electric Picnic. A dinner hosted at Ballyfin Demesne in 2015 kick-started a 10-year relationship with Hermès.
“A customer event in Ballyfin Demesne kickstarted a relationship with Hermès and I have been working with the brand ever since,” says Grehan of his work with the luxury brand for whom he regularly collaborates with other designers and production companies to create the garden on the rooftop terrace of their Bond Street store in London.
“The most important thing when working with my clients is that I respect that they are exactly that – the client. My ethos and aesthetic might align with theirs but it is also about being capable of delivering projects on a scale such as this. There is a huge level of perfection required when working with luxury brands,” he says. “They also have their own guidelines on their aesthetic and on the look and feel that they want to achieve. I might have my own aesthetic but l have to ensure that I deliver projects the way my client wants them.”
There is as much pressure producing flowers for a wedding as there is when working for a corporate client, he says: “It’s the most important day of a bride and groom, groom and groom or bride and bride’s life. Each job is as important as the next in my business.” Talent may be one reason for Grehan’s success but discretion is another. Many of his clients, be they commercial or private, expect a high level of privacy.
Mark Grehan's work with Hermès.
“A lot of my work I don’t share online or shout about and clients respect that. I sign a lot of NDAs. When you’re working at a particular level, private clients often want to maintain their own privacy and similarly, when you’re working with production companies or on films, you can’t have your work all over social media before the release or while the activation is live,” he says.
“Sometimes it is only after an event that I can share my involvement in a project – if I’ve been given permission to do so. It’s not about me, it’s about the client. I can’t understand vendors sharing photos of events online before the actual event has taken place. In my mind the flowers aren’t really mine, they’re the client’s – after all they’ve paid for them.”
Having said that, one recent high-profile wedding that Grehan designed the flowers for was the recent nuptials of actor Saoirse-Monica Jackson and her husband, Hector Barbour, designed by Tara Fay Events at Dromquinna Manor, Co Kerry.
“The bride was a pleasure to deal with as well as her husband. It was beautiful that they wanted to take in the Irish countryside and to use flowers that had meaning to them,” says Grehan. “Hector requested Sorbus – Rowan or Mountain Ash – because there was a connection to that plant with one of his sisters. We used Crocosmia, Heather and Beech foliage in the arrangements and Saoirse-Monica wanted Sweetpea in her bridal bouquet. It was lovely to be able to use Irish Sweetpea grown in Lusk by Grainne McKeown.”
Mark Grehan's work with Hermès.
The landscape of Grehan’s native Connemara – bogland, heather, bracken and gorse has inspired his unique approach to floristry and landscape design and his natural look is something that customers have come to associate clearly with The Garden over the years. How, I ask, did he develop this particular style of floral design?
“The world was very different when I was young. It was very safe and as a child, I would get lost in the fields. I liked being outside and being out in nature and the playfulness of it all,” says Grehan of his rural upbringing in Co. Galway.
“Constance Spry’s work has influenced me too. Then it has been about not being afraid to use what I see in nature or in people’s gardens in my floral arrangements. I would never cut plants or flowers from the bog, but I have been influenced by how plants grow in that environment – for example, in using Heather in arrangements or grasses like Panicum or Stipa within my floral arrangements to echo what grows in nature.”
Was he confident about his own style when he established the business? “Professionally, I would say that the more established the business has become, the more confident I have become in my own work and in the look and feel of my own style of floristry, whereas at the start I was a little bit more reserved about the look and feel of The Garden,” he says.
As the business has grown, so too has his role within the business evolved. On stepping into the role of employer, Grehan says that he has had to learn to trust his team and not to micromanage them. “A lot of people start in The Garden quite young and learn from me in the business and one or two of them have gone on to establish their own businesses, which is nice to see,” he says.
“I think it’s important that people have a good work ethic and they’re not afraid to learn. A lot of people who work for me have their own signature taste and style but obviously, when they work for The Garden, there is a particular look and feel in how I want to present ourselves so it’s not that they need to conform but they need to work within our aesthetic.”
In 2023, The Garden’s second location at Mill Street opened, serving as both a shop and a studio space. “We had a smaller unit in Rathmines in Dublin 6 and we had outgrown it after the pandemic. We needed a larger space to handle the amount of work we were getting but I also wanted a retail element to it too so that people could come in and see the work we are doing and get excited about it. A lot of big florists have warehouses where they are creating beautiful work but no one gets to see it.”
With an ever-expanding business and a portfolio of exacting customers, how does he manage stress, I ask. “Going to the quietness of my childhood home is a great help to me, as is getting out on the bike,” he says. “I cycle a lot – I’ll cycle maybe 60kms or 70kms at the weekends with my social cycling group Piano Piano. I run once a week and I go to the gym after work, which helps me to finish the day.”
An exhibition currently running in the Powerscourt Centre seeks to celebrate Grehan’s 15 years in business as well as the connections he has made with other creatives during that time. ‘BOG – 15 Years of the Garden’ features more than 20 Irish artists and creatives whose work echoes the quiet power of the bog and is rooted in time, place and the enduring presence of craft.
“The inspiration for the exhibition was very natural – I’ve had my hands in the earth since I was 12 years old. The bog is where I grew up,” says Grehan. “I have worked with a lot of talented people over the years and I wanted to do something to celebrate that. Their work resonates with me and they have the same ethos as me in their work. I gave them the theme of the bog and they responded to that by producing work in many forms that invite reflection on what we keep, what surfaces and what lies beneath.”
This exhibition includes photography, print, film, ceramics, glassware, fashion, jewellery and textiles from artists and creatives including Amo Kilfeather, Brian Teeling, Cliodhna Prendergast, Domino Whisker, Endless Rhythm, Fermoyle Pottery, Finn Richards, J Hill’s Standard, Julie Connellan, Linda Brownlee, Maggie O’Dwyer, Mourne Textiles, Noel Byas, Phillip White, Simon Walsh, Superfolk and The Tweed Project.
An accompanying film by videographer Dave O’Carroll explores Grehan’s background and the origins of The Garden. The film is shot at the florist’s family home in Barna, in the nearby bog and in The Garden’s Dublin shops and features beautiful interactions with Grehan’s mother Mary, as well as with the natural environment surrounding the family home.
“Dave suggested interviewing my mother, and, as the day went on, the film turned into something different and unexpected. I hope when people see the film they’ll understand what has influenced me and will join the dots and realise that there is a lot more to The Garden than a flower shop in The Powerscourt Centre.”
Mark Grehan was perhaps ahead of his time when he started out in business and fashion has very much turned towards looser, more natural, floral designs since then. “Nature is having a huge influence at the moment in fashion, in interiors and other aspects of design,” says Grehan. “But when I started out in business, I didn’t see it as a ‘trend’, it was just my style of doing things.”
‘BOG – 15 Years of the Garden’ runs until 9th November 2025 at The Garden, Powerscourt Townhouse, Dublin 2. Curation by Ciana March. Art Direction by Keith Nally. Film by Dave O’Carroll. Printing by Hugh Grehan, Atlantic Print & Design, Galway.
An image, ‘Mary’s Hands’ by photographer Doreen Kilfeather, features Grehan’s mother’s hands holding the hardy but ethereal bog cotton that surrounds the family home. Reproduced on a limited run of locally printed t-shirts, all proceeds go to Green Sod Ireland, a non-profit land trust organisation that works to protect biodiversity, create safe habitats for the free movement of wildlife, and restore Irish peatlands to ensure the continued and enduring presence of the bog. €35. A special new tote bag has been designed for the 15 year anniversary. Water-resistant and hard-wearing, it is made using sacking traditionally used to gather turf on the bog. €25.
Available from The Garden, Powerscourt Townhouse, Dublin 2 and thegarden.ie, @shopthegarden.
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