Floating fabric balls, red balloons, flying carpets, colourful flags, stacked wood, see-through walls and sparkling glass teardrops in birch trees… these are just some of the details that stay in the memory after my visit to the first International Garden Festival (IGF) to be held in Ireland.

The show, in the stately parklands of the neo-Classical mansion Emo Court, in County Laois, is the latest entry to the IFG's growing list of international festivals that encourage designers from around the world to push the boundaries of landscape and garden design.

Working here to a given theme of Roots, the 15 gardens include Frog's Dream, by Project Landscape Architect Remi Salles, who also transformed the flat site on the Emo Court estate into a multi-level showground, each level being planted with oats and each garden placed so that it appears to sink into or rise out of its own individual crop circle.

Highlights for me included Being & Collecting, by French designers Laurence Garfield, Francis Cossu, Nic Grove and Sophie Barbaux. The design incorporates stacked wood, moss-encrusted branches and oddly shaped, jewel-like pieces of coloured glass, combined to make collections that have a naturally sculptural appeal. I also liked the wittily named Kanguroots, from Australian landscape architects Neil Hobbs and Karina Harris, which leads you through an imagined trail from Ireland to Australia by means of fragments carved on stepping stones.

Home Abhaile by Ireland's Gerard Mullen also made a pleasurable impression on me with its strong horticultural elements and walls with wonderfully placed windows that framed the landscape beyond.

And then there was the delight of seeing small children whooping with excitement as they rushed into Amelie Leroy's garden, The Family Tree, where birch trees were hung with glistening tear drops of glass, and seeing the floating fabric balls that blew in the breeze and which could be pushed and shoved across massed borders of Alchemilla mollis in Flower & Roll by Philippe Dutertre, Grégorie Dutertre and Arnauld Delacroix.

All the gardens are constructed to survive healthily in situ for several months, and by now will be quite mature and well worth seeing.

Visit www.igf.ie for full details of opening times and ticket prices.

BARBARA SEAGALL