With St. Patrick's Day around the corner, I am reminded of my visit some 15 years ago to Ireland, the Emerald Isle. And what better occupation during these frigid, wintery days than to think green thoughts. The highlights of my trip remain the stunning countryside and seascapes, but most of all the gardens! A few in particular stand out - Helen Dillon's garden, Ilnacullin and the Ballylamoe Cookery School.
Plants person, writer and lecturer, Helen Dillon is considered the grande dame of Irish gardening. In the middle of Dublin, she has created an ever-changing oasis of colour. Her garden starts with a mini-birch forest in front of an elegant Georgian house. A mews (a building originally used as stables, but now converted into residences) backs the garden. Between the two buildings you'll find a large but narrow garden, nearly an acre in size, of perfectly grown plants. The two buildings create a feeling of peace and privacy in the midst of a bustling city. The long rectangular "canal" built of limestone adds to the serenity and heightens the sense of length in the space. Its parallel herbaceous borders are blue on one side and red on the other. I particularly remember the red tulips when I visited that spring. Behind the borders are garden rooms including ones with vegetables and an aviary. A gravel garden with drought tolerant plantings has recently been added.
The second Irish garden that I remember fondly is the garden at Ilnacullin, located on Garinish Island off Glengariff in Bantry Bay, County Cork. To get from the mainland you take a ferry, often sailing past seals sunbathing on rocks. The sea journey gives one respite, preparation for the magical world of Ilnacullin.
The garden was begun over a century ago, in 1910, by Violet and Annan Bryce on what was then a barren island owned by the War Office. The only building was a Martello Tower (still there) built in 1800 for the purpose of fending off Napolean, who, as it happened, never came. The Bryce's first tasks were to bring in sufficient topsoil from the mainland to maintain a garden and to plant shelterbelts along the perimeter of the island to ward off storms. Harold Petro was commissioned to design of the garden while Annan Bryce selected the plants. One hundred men worked steadily for four years until the outbreak of World War One. The formal Italian garden with its rectangular pool and wisteria-clad temple overlooks the sea and the mountains on the mainland beyond. Mushroom-like staddle stones, once used to protect grain from rodents and today much in demand as garden ornaments, border many of the paths. The walled garden contains lush herbaceous borders.
The third Irish garden that comes immediately to mind is Kinoith, part of the Ballymaloe Cookery School in County Cork. Appropriately, it consists of a kitchen garden or potager, with vegetables, salad greens and edible flowers. Here is home-grown food at its very best. Selected for their flavour and their sometimes unique colours, they are all laid out in a delightfully formal but intimate manner. You'll also find fruit gardens, an herb garden edged in boxwood and set in gravel, a maze and herbaceous borders leading to a Victorian shell house - the only one I've ever seen. Only 25 years old, the gardens look like they've been there forever.
If touring these and other Irish gardens appeals to you, why not join us May 4-19 for the University of Saskatchewan's Centre for Continuing and Distance Education's "Ireland: Gardens, History and More". For more information or a brochure, call 306-966-5546, or email [email protected]. Erin go Bragh.
- This column is provided courtesy of the Saskatchewan Perennial Society (www.saskperennial.ca; [email protected]).
Upcoming
Feb. 27, 7:30 p.m. - Saskatchewan Perennial Society annual general meeting and video night. A chance to learn about the society first hand and then later watch A life in a Landscape about Kim Ondaatje and Blueroof Farm in Ontario. Emmanuel AnglicanChurch, 607 Dufferin at 12th street, South West entrance in the basement. Open to all.
