Back in Bloom on a €200k budget

Budding Bloomers (from left) Kiki Deegan, 6; Chloe Walsh, 6; Liah Mann, 5; and Eabha Scully, 6, with Bloom garden festival organiser Gary Graham, at the National Botanic Gardens in Dublin for the launch of BloomRobbie Reynolds

Bloom, the annual gardening festival, is gearing up to spend €200,000 on marketing this year.

Set up by Bord Bia, the festival costs about €2.4 million to run and already scores well on awareness.

Gary Graham, manager of Bloom, said that the marketing spend was small in terms of the size of the show, which attracts up to 110,000 visitors.

The bulk of the spend is on public relations, where Bloom focuses its ...