Ireland's Secret Gardens
Our guide round Beaulieu House, Patrick Barrow, now directed us back to his own house at nearby Listoke. After being greeted by his wife, Patricia, and with glasses of chilled white wine in hand, we were escorted on a gentle journey around their garden of delights.
A profusion of flowers, roses and climbers leaned over the paths between the borders, seducing us with scent and color. By the time the first drops of rain began to fall, we were comfortably ensconced in the garden loggia and eating (again) an excellent lunch of salmon and home-grown raspberries.
Next day we headed north, taking in St. Patrick's grave at Downpatrick. After the short ferry ride from Strangford to Portaferry, we made the beautiful scenic drive up the side of Strangford Lough to Mount Stewart, Northern Ireland's jewel of a garden. Here in the north, the soils are mainly lime-free and the benign climate allows a rich and diverse range of plants to be grown, many of them rare and tender.
The garden at Mount Stewart was created in the 1920s by Edith Lady Londonderry, whose particular genius was to realize the full range of plants that could be grown on this beautiful and favored site. Laid out as a series of discrete spaces, each garden has a particular mood or theme, including the Italian Garden, the Peace Garden, the Lily Wood and the Dodo Garden.
Most extraordinary of all is the Shamrock Garden, designed in the shape of the shamrock and featuring a curious assembly of figures and emblems. From the top of the surrounding yew hedge, weird and wonderful topiary creatures emerge; in the center of the garden a table bearing a harp is carved out of yew. Most surreal of all, the legendary "Red Hand of Ulster" is laid out on the ground, given form as a giant hand planted entirely of scarlet begonias.
Another day, another sublime garden: Rowallane. Rightly regarded as a plantsman's paradise, it offers collections of rhododendrons, azaleas and other acid-loving plants growing in a naturalistic woodland setting.
Its chief architect, Hugh Armytage Moore, was a passionate plantsman with a gift for planning as well as connections with some of the greatest plant hunters of the early 20th century. For those of us gardening on non-acid soils the sight of Meconopsis, the glorious and difficult blue Himalayan poppy, growing like weeds was inspiring and envy-making in equal measure.
On our way back south, we arrived at Belvedere House, Mullingar, just as the rains came down. But a tour around the 18th-century hunting lodge with its beautifully conserved interiors was memorable and gave us wonderful views over Lough Ennell and the spectacular folly known as the Jealous Wall.
This sham Gothic ruin, three stories high and 180 feet in length, was built by Lord Belvedere in the 1760s as an act of fraternal spite. Its purpose - to block the view of his brother's newly built mansion, which threatened to eclipse the grandeur of his own. With perfect timing, the sun came out for our visit to the two-acre walled garden where herbaceous borders and rare Himalayan shrubs share space with an ornamental herb and vegetable garden.
At Ballindoolin, the very last garden on our tour, lambs and calves frolicked in the field by the old Georgian house, while black pigs, a turkey and several cats roamed the barnyard. Arriving in time for tea (of course) we sat eating home-made scones and brack (a fruited, spiced bread) with owner Esther Moloney, whose family have lived here since 1895. She described how they have reclaimed the garden from beneath a mass of laurel and ivy and, using old photographs as reference, brought it back to its original 19th-century glory.
Walking through the walled garden it was hard to believe that so much could have been achieved in just nine years. The borders overflowed with shrubs and climbing roses, a glorious herbaceous border extended for over 300 feet and the kitchen garden featured box-edged beds of old-fashioned annuals and vegetables.
Clocking up 150 years, the original espaliered apple trees still hang onto life, their branches mossy with age and leaning at eccentric angles. They aren't giving up the ghost just yet.
Gardens, like people, affect and move us in different ways. Some appeal to the mind, others to the senses. Ballindoolin, we all agreed, speaks straight to the heart, as does the whole of this magical island.
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