The Scenic Gardens of Ireland

Welcome to Dublin. Check-in to the Grafton Hotel.

Your tour starts this evening. Meet your Tour Leader Colin Barlow & fellow travellers for our Welcome Dinner.

Enjoy a guided city tour of Dublin including the National Botanic Garden, Trinity College and the famous Book of Kells.

This afternoon you travel to Howth a scenic peninsula just north of Dublin with its scenic harbour, pretty beaches and wildflower-covered sea cliffs.

Visit Ardan Garden, a dynamic and ever evolving garden on rugged mountain slope that Nuala and Conall have terraced and subdivided with wind breaks to create a series of intimate and sheltered spaces. There is a White Garden, Exotic Garden, Pond and Bog Garden, Woodland Garden and Vegetable Garden. Ardan has been recognised as a garden of the UNESCO Dublin Bay Biosphere because of the created habitat for wildlife, embracing the environmental conservation status of the peninsula.

Travel to the outskirts of Dublin this morning to Lamb to meet Jimi Blake. It’s hard to describe the enthusiasm of Jimi Blake, whose garden Hunting Brook has attracted such acclaim. “I’ve spent my life discovering stand-out plants. I like to be bold, adventurous, and unexpected. My planting style is creative and unconventional. I don’t play by the rule book. I grow exotic plants here in Hunting Brook that no one would have imagined possible. I’m always trialling new plants and surprising plant combinations from very different habitats”. Lunch will be served before we leave for the garden of Jimi’s sister June.

Abundant and exuberant, June’s Garden is intimately connected to the place. The bones are perfect, giving proportion and balance to the profusion in her borders. Jane Powers says it all! “June Blake has created … a piece of poetry … deeply integrated in the landscape and rooted in history.”

Travel back into Dublin with the remainder of the day at leisure.

Meet TJ Maher in his ground-breaking Patthana Garden in Kiltegan, County Wicklow. There’s a lot happening here; a lower cobbled courtyard with its potting shed and sunken meditation room. The main courtyard has a small wildlife pond and an extensive collection of hardy and exotic plants. Circular granite steps lead to the Inner Garden with borders of herbaceous perennials, tender plants, annuals and unusual shrubs and trees. See his exciting new ‘Torc’ garden. Patthana is gardened organically with many plants chosen for their attraction to wildlife.

This afternoon we travel to Stradbally to see Ballintubbert Gardens, Ireland’s first organically certified formal garden. Situated between the Wicklow Mountains to the east, and the Slieve Bloom to the west, Baile An Tobair – ‘Town of the Wells’ is located in a beautiful tillage valley, sitting on a bed of limestone rock and giving the garden wonderful alkaline free draining soil. ​

Say goodbye to Dublin and travel to Waterford today.

On the way, visit Powerscourt, grand in the high Victorian tradition, with a fascinating history that reads like an Edwardian novel. Take a gentle walk through a series of magnificent garden spaces: the Italian Garden with its lake lies at the core of this garden. The Japanese Garden that is a delightfully Edwardian nestles in its hollow grotto, installed in 1908 just as Japanese fever was captivating Western Europe. Every flat space is garnished with statues. A huge flight of granite steps bisects the space and descends triumphantly to the pond. The walled garden with its ornate gates is home to a spectacular double herbaceous border, a bouncy bold multi-coloured affair. This is Ireland’s grandest garden!

After lunch, meet Rachel Darlington in her fabulous Douentza Garden in Wexford, with large herbaceous borders and exotic plants. You will see carnivorous plants, hardy orchids and a large integrated greenhouse filled with tropical plants. Rachel is a master gardener, journalist and lecturer, and runs her You Tube channel ‘Gardening at Douentza’.

Check-in to your hotel, ideally located in the heart if Waterford city, nestled idyllically on the banks of the river Suir.

You’ll visit the House of Waterford Crystal this morning before making our way to Cork. Stop at Blarney Castle, built nearly 600 years ago by one of Ireland’s greatest chieftans, Cormac MacCarthy.

Check-in to your hotel in the city centre with the remainder of the day free for you to explore the museums and the lively shopping district. Meet up for dinner this evening in the hotel restaurant.

A day around Cork. First stop is Mary Byrne’s remarkable Hillside Garden, situated on a gentle south facing slope, enclosed by woodlands with a view overlooking Cork Harbour and the Lee Estuary. Sprawling over two acres with old trees, pine, beech and larch with an under-story of hazel and holly, and a haze of blue bells in the spring. Planted with rhododendrons, azaleas, camellias and hydrangeas in a mixed border including Betula jacquemontii.

We will be ready for lunch when we arrive at Ballymalloe House restaurant. After lunch, visit to Darina Allen’s famous Ballymalloe Cookery School. Darina has created a series of kitchen gardens, part of a 100-acre organic farm, which produces fresh vegetables, fruit, meat, and dairy products for the kitchen. High quality ingredients… is the mantra of the entire operation here at Ballymaloe; “it’s a serious food-raising enterprise” says journalist Jane Powers in her grand book ‘The Irish Garden’. Travel back to Cork.

Our destination today is Killarney, with a stop in Glencarriff where we take a ferry across Bantry Bay to Garinish Island and Ilnacullin off the coast of West Cork. It’s the wildly romantic partnership of Annan Bryce, then owner of the near-barren island and Harold Peto, architect and garden designer. Bryce and his wife Violet dreamed of an island paradise where sub-tropical jungle would surround a structured classic garden, designed by Peto. Financial constraints curtailed their plans, but the resulting garden is monumental in its singlemindedness.

Ferry back to Glencarriff and lunch in Bantry. Continue to Killarney, check-in to your hotel for two nights.

Explore the bewitching Ring of Kerry, a 179 km circuit of the Iveragh Peninsula. It’s a place of wild excess, with the sandstone flanks of Ireland’s tallest mountains, the Macgillycuddy Reeks, pleated and folded by glaciers, that descend into moist valleys. Narrow roads make a rickrack braid-like track around the circuit.

Visit Cahersiveen that sits at the bottom of Bentee Mountain and overlooks Valentia Harbour. Lunch stop in Sneem (own expense) then travel back to Killarney via Moll’s Gap a narrow mountain pass named after Moll Kissane and Ladies View, another scenic viewpoint.

Visit Muckross House which is situated on the shores of Muckross Lake within the stunning surroundings of Killarney National Park. This magnificent Victorian mansion, one of Ireland’s leading stately homes has elegantly furnished rooms which portray the lifestyles of the landed gentry, while downstairs in the basement you can experience the working conditions of the servants employed in the House back in the day. Many exotic trees and shrubs flourish in the mild climate and sheltered location of the Muckross gardens. The gardens include a fine collection of rhododendrons and azaleas, an outstanding rock garden on a natural rock outcrop, a sunken garden, a stream garden and beautiful tree-fringed lawns.

We are travelling to Galway today across the historic Burren region of County Clare. First stop is Ballyvaughan, with a dramatic Burren limestone backdrop overlooking Galway Bay.

Meet plantsman, Carl Wright in his Caher Bridge Garden near Fanore, that is designed and planted around a restored riverside cottage that Carl rescued and rebuilt. He added walls with nest chambers for birds. The Caher River, that drains the Burren, runs through the garden.
Carl is an expert about the flora and fauna of the Burren. He maintains two thirds of his property as a nature reserve.

Follow the Burren Way through some of the most spectacular scenery in Burren National Park. From the rugged Atlantic coast to ancient woodlands, the Burren is a rocky and diverse landscape that covers 130 sq kilometres. Over 600 flowering plants grow here, 70% of the country’s native flora. And the light is quite magical reflecting off the pale stone karst limestone. It’s a scenic drive to Doolin, a dramatic landscape on the edge of the Burren and close to the majestic Cliffs of Moher and the Aran Islands. Continue to Galway and check-in to your hotel.

Travel via Leanaun Village, a small mountain-side town (setting for the 1990 film ‘The Field’ starring Richard Harris and John Hurt) before we discover the Connemara with a visit to Kylemore Abbey with its Victorian Walled Garden.

In its sublime location at the head of Pollacappul Lough, Kylemore was built as a castle by Mitchell Henry, completed in 1871. This fairytale castle needed a fairytale garden with one of the largest walled gardens in Ireland, a model of Victorian horticulture. There were twenty-one interconnected heated glasshouses growing grape vines, fruits, palms, plant house, stove house, ferneries, and banana house, that offered warm shelter in the eternally damp conditions. The garden was divided by a stream, with flower garden, kitchen and herb garden, rock garden and double herbaceous border.

The estate changed hands and languished until finally in 1920 it was sold to a community of Benedictine nuns who had fled Ypres in First World War. The next chapter (Kylemore Abbey) saw the nuns raising vegetables for the nuns and girls’ school they operated, in a corner of the once immense walled garden. The whole estate was desolate. But the nuns raised funds for its restoration; from bank loans, from EU funds, they gathered 1.5 million pounds. Now the abbey and gardens welcome 200,000 visitors a year. Two of the glasshouses have been restored. What a triumph!

Explore the unique Connemara, this afternoon, this scenic corner of County Galway, a stunning patchwork of soft grey mountains, wild terrain, rugged bogs, hidden valleys, waterfalls, shimmering lakes and golden beaches. At times austere, at times sublime, Connemara is a place of legend, folklore and profound beauty. The late writer and cartographer Tim Robinson spoke of the landscape’s “huge, luminous spaces”, and it’s no surprise that artists and photographers, poets and playwrights have found inspiration here. Connemara is not just about the landscape, it’s about the Irish language, cherished by the locals.

Late arrival back in Galway.

Travelling to Belfast today via the Hidden Heartlands. Delve into Athlone’s rich history, founded in the 12th Century. Lunch stop (at your own expense) in picturesque Cavan, nestled by the serene River Shannon.

Afternoon visit to Rowallane Garden which lies in the beautiful drumlin landscape of County Down where Rev John Moore started making his estate in 1858. He joined fields to make a large pleasure ground where he planted trees. His nephew, Hugh Armytage Moore inherited the estate in 1903. This was the exciting plant-hunting era, especially in China, where he sponsored collectors such as George Forrest, Ernest Henry Wilson and Frank Kingdon-Ward.

Rowallane is now in the hands of the National Trust, and the beneficiary of a famous plant collection. See the Pleasure Grounds, Edwardian Rock Garden, Water Garden, Inner walled Garden, Spring Ground with rhododendrons and daffodils and the Paddock with delightful wildflower meadow.

We are travelling east this morning to Newtownards, County Down to Mount Stewart. Irresistibly flamboyant describes Mount Stewart, and its owner Edith, Lady Londonderry, who built the garden with her husband Charles Vane-Tempest-Stewart in 1921 with ex-servicemen from WWI as her labour force. Built as a series of compartmentalised gardens to the south and west of the grand manor home, it was completed in less than 10 years.

In this subtropical corner of Ireland, Edith’s Mount Stewart is an intense, fairytale world of frivolous myth-making all now safely held in the hands of the National Trust. A guided tour at the Mount Stewart Manor (house interior) is included and its fine suite of gardens.

Edith’s Italian Garden was her first (inspired by Villa Gamberaia near Florence), Spanish Garden, Lily Wood, Peace Garden where family pets are buried, Mairi Garden, Dodo Terrace with its famous and humorous collection of Portland cement creatures, Shamrock Garden with the Red Hand of Ulster picked out in bedding plants and an Irish harp fashioned in topiary yew. Lunch in the café (own expense) before we return to Belfast.

Afternoon visit to Titanic Belfast with interactive galleries to discover the sights, sounds and stories of the ship, and the people and city that made her. Walk along the slipways where Titanic was built and launched 115 years ago.

The Giant’s Causeway is a dramatic geological wonder nestled along Northern Ireland’s dramatic Antrim Coast. Famous for its 40,000 interlocking, geometric basalt columns, this UNESCO World Heritage Site was formed by rapid-cooling lava over 60 million years ago. It is steeped in legend, often said to be stepping stones for giants.

Farewell dinner at a local restaurant tonight.

Your tour finishes after breakfast this morning.