The art of the great gardens of Ireland
The demand is for instant results. New houses go up, new occupiers move in, furnish, hang pictures on the wall, and want a garden. They want it now and they want it all. Design, shrubs, flowers, climbing plants, garden furniture, a water feature, you name it, they want it.
I was recently told of a couple who spent ?60,000 importing a ready-made garden, as it were, for their daughter's first Communion. And tens of thousands of euro seem a reasonable approach in the context of what houses, new and old, are costing. It takes the waiting out of wanting, and it leaves great gardeners, like Helen Dillon, gasping at the speed with which the environment she works in has revolutionised itself. It is not even a matter of argument or debate. "I want my garden now, fully grown. How can I have it?" And the factual answer is: "You can have it. This is what it will cost."
I drove down into Wicklow more than once in the glorious summer weather we have been having, bowed down by thoughts of these changes and eager to see some of the great gardens that are there in a county which, more than any other, is itself like a garden.
Lush green meadows are bordered by tall stately oak trees and ashes. Their rich new foliage is thickened and tinged by shadows of deep cobalt blue within the green. Beyond, craggy granite creates a boundary and a backdrop. The air is still, the sun beats down, and the never-changing sequence of bud and blossom and flower tells us that the measured, limpid days that wake us with early bird call will then stretch into late twilight filled with the scent of this peerless year.
The idea of Wicklow as a garden is exemplified by Powerscourt, where the terraces, the parterre, the pond with its huge fountain and the plantings of trees and shrubs have ten thousand acres stretching away towards valley and mountain, all of it encompassed in the original design. This is gardening at its greatest. The Lord Powerscourt who constructed this garden never needed Capability Brown to plant a hillside with trees or move acres of earth in order to 'improve' the landscape. The scale and design were there anyway. But it took many years to develop the quintessence of a romantic garden on a scale that is breathtaking.
Not everyone wants their garden to be breathtaking. Perhaps the greatest garden of all, in Wicklow, is the opposite. Killruddery, where the design is on a grand scale, derives from a pure sense of design and balance. This came to us from the seventeenth century and from the great French garden designers led by Lenotre. He was responsible for Versailles and Fontainbleau as well as Kensington Gardens and St James's Park in London.
His hand and inspiration is visible at Killruddery, in particular in the formal stillness of the twin lakes. These contrast sharply with the wooded walks, the smaller pond set in trees and the outdoor sylvan theatre.
What appeals about Killruddery is its intimacy, quite the opposite of the flamboyant grandeur of the setting at Powerscourt. And it is a major aspect of garden design, to manage a sense of privacy and the inward focus of one's attention. Moreover, it has to work from season to season. Snowdrops, daffodils, tulips, early spring blossom, trees breaking into leaf, and then autumn colours when the summer is over. This takes time. Sometimes it takes centuries. And it belittles the urge to have an instant garden.
Killruddery has been in the Earl of Meath's family since 1618 and the garden was essentially a creation of the latter end of that century though added to later, along with the house. The present house dates from 1820, its magnificent orangery from 1852.
This kind of garden extension, elaborate for grand houses, has become another form of instant requirement for everyone with garden space. Conservatories - the poor person's orangery - so suited to our normal climate, gives us a middle territory for being inside and outside at the same time. From its protected warmth for indoor plants and from those many glass windows, the sometimes dismal spectacle of a garden blasted by rain and wind can still be observed.
Another form of garden intimacy on a grand scale is to be found at Mount Usher, outside Ashford; this is a wonderful woodland planting threaded through by the moving waters of the River Vartry and by the informal paths that allow one to see eucalyptus and magnolia, davidia and euchryphia.
Edward Walpole created the garden, coming to stay well over a century ago at the nearby Hunter's Hotel, which also has a fine garden, a temptation to lunch there especially on Sundays in summer. Like all great garden creators, Walpole relied on plantsmen including the famous Augustine Henry who was a friend and neighbour of Jack Yeats.
The garden is one of Monty Don's 'Top Ten'. This listing includes Killruddery as well, the two gardens being the only Irish ones in the list. They are great glories among Irish gardens and must be top of any visit to Wicklow during its summer garden festival.
How to arrive at this kind of achievement, if you have many years at your disposal, great patience and can make do with a temporary instant garden for the time being, is to be learned at two other establishments in Wicklow, the Avoca Garden at Kilmacanogue and the National Gardens Exhibition Centre in Kilquade.
The Avoca Garden is a magnificent collection of trees, famous for at least two which are in the Guinness Book of Records. One of them is the Weeping Monterey Cypress, the only such mature specimen of this tree in the world. There is an ancient yew walk as well. But its value derives from one of the finest garden centres there is in Ireland, magnificently presented with fine examples of every kind of plant, indoor and outdoor, as instant as you might wish if you are careful and patient as well.
The National Gardens Exhibition Centre is made up of several distinct types of garden and offers a notebook-and-pencil job of choosing and buying and taking home.
Wicklow is astonishingly rich in gardens to visit. It has an excellent website which you can visit at www.visitwicklow.ie/gardens and this list all the details, with seasonal choices and good descriptions of what you will find. The art of the garden has changed - to the despair of people who once saw themselves as 'serious gardeners' - and what was once normal is perhaps becoming eccentric. But you would not think so, standing above the terrace at Powerscourt and gazing over the landscape, or walking at Killruddery or along the banks of the River Vartry at Mount Usher.
