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00:00МУЗЫКАЛЬНАЯ ЗАСТАВКА
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00:55Powers Court County Wicklow derives its name
00:57from the Anglo-Norman de la Peur family,
00:59who settled and built a castle here,
01:01hence Peur's Court or Powers Court as we know it today.
01:06The Wingfield family in the 18th century
01:08became the Viscount Powers Courts,
01:10and they commissioned the spectacular mansion
01:13you can see here behind me.
01:16Subsequently, around it,
01:18they created one of the world's greatest gardens,
01:21and it really represents the apogee
01:22of country house garden design in Ireland.
01:25And I'm now going to be meeting Alex Slassenger, head gardener,
01:29to talk a bit about the place's history
01:31and to take us around the main features of the site.
01:37In the 18th century, Alex, when the house was built,
01:39this area, which is so famous now, looked totally different.
01:43Completely different.
01:44What you see now is not what would have been back then.
01:46It very much would have been a kind of a rolling landscape
01:50down to what would have been a smaller little pond
01:53called Juggies Pond, down at the bottom,
01:55and then interacted with the greater landscape.
01:58It basically dissolved into the wider landscape.
02:01It dissolved, yeah. It was a sort of a meadow,
02:02a flowing meadow.
02:04So the story of the gardens as we know them today
02:06really begins 1843 with the sixth Viscount,
02:10and he's proposing a man called Daniel Robertson
02:14to design, redesign this area.
02:16So, yeah, he commissioned Daniel to put plans together
02:20to create this sort of Italian-style symmetrical garden.
02:24So the gardens were begun in 1843
02:27and famously, the boy who would become the seventh Viscount
02:30lays the foundation stone.
02:32So he's brought out of his classes in the house
02:35to lay the first block in 1843.
02:39And subsequently, the year after, 1844,
02:42his father dies on a statue-hunting expedition to Europe.
02:46Right.
02:47This boy is now left with all of this, so what happens?
02:51Everything is put on hold for about 14 to 15 years
02:55until he becomes of age.
02:56What's interesting about the seventh Viscount
02:58is that he completely adopts that scheme.
03:02In other words, he wants to continue what had begun
03:04but had then been put on hold for a long time.
03:06There's a big issue in the area where we're standing
03:08because there's the terrace up above,
03:12immediately in front of the house,
03:14but then you have this midpoint, this drop,
03:16before you reach the terraces below.
03:18And it was how to negotiate.
03:19What was the best design for that?
03:21So he came up with this, which is called the Perron.
03:23Yes, exactly.
03:24So Perron is basically two staircases leading to a platform.
03:29So quite simple.
03:30But a really, really good way of a sort of a centerpiece within the garden.
03:35So this was created in 1874.
03:381874 and then finished in 1875.
03:42And actually, all of the stones, the pebbles that were here,
03:44were taken from the local beach, from Bray.
03:47You can see the elaborate pattern from a sort of bird's eye view
03:50is really where it shows its magic.
03:52Creating this extraordinary, formal amphitheatre was a very long, complex and, I imagine, expensive process.
04:01Absolutely. I mean, if you think of this now, what would we do now?
04:04We'd bring in excavators and tractors and trailers and everything.
04:08They didn't have that option back then.
04:09So this was 100 men, 12 years to dig out these terraces.
04:13A really spectacular feat of engineering when we look at them today.
04:17The form and the structure is absolutely perfect.
04:20They're still very much intact.
04:21The banks back then would have been left to meadow.
04:24And they would have been used with sides.
04:26They would have cut them maybe twice, three times a year.
04:28Sure.
04:29We now cut them with sort of fine machines,
04:32and we have a specialised machine that will cut the banks.
04:34So really, they've never looked as good...
04:37As pristine as they do today.
04:39As pristine as they do now.
04:40Yeah.
04:41And then the formal bedding that you have here,
04:43the design is very much as it was originally laid out in the 19th century?
04:47Yes, yes, you're correct.
04:48The beds would have a bit more of an intricate design.
04:51It would have been an inner circle of box hedging, more kind of shrubs.
04:55What we have here is roses, which were in 1976.
04:58Acres and acres of roses in this garden, which is wonderful.
05:01But really, again, the spectacle of this garden can really be seen from above.
05:05It really shows off its formality and the symmetry.
05:08Yeah, absolutely.
05:09And then we continue down further flights of steps, further terraces,
05:13until we reach what was called Juggies Pond originally,
05:16but has been enlarged to create something of a lake.
05:20Yeah, so we call it the Triton Lake now.
05:22You've got Triton out in the middle, holding a conch, spurting water.
05:26This fountain would have gone up to about 100 foot, being gravity-fed.
05:30This is the only one now that we have on a pump.
05:32OK.
05:33At a party or someone coming to visit, turn the tap on,
05:36and you'd have this amazing 100 foot tower of water coming out.
05:39Something really spectacular.
05:40Yeah.
05:41Yeah.
05:42Yeah.
05:43Power's Court's elaborate terraces are so dramatic that they can catch
05:47and hold the attention of visitors to the exclusion of everything else.
05:52But the gardens laid out here in the 19th century actually extend much further
05:58and include a number of other areas well worth exploring.
06:02So we're in the double herbaceous borders here.
06:08These are plants that were taken from the colonies.
06:11High level of maintenance in here.
06:13Obviously you've got a lot of weeding, deadheading,
06:15but a real mix of plants from all around the world.
06:19And how like is it today as it would have been when Julia Postcourt created it?
06:25The area that we're in here, the walled garden, traditionally was very much so for production.
06:30Sure.
06:31So we're talking about fruit, which we have espalier, apples, pears and plums on the walls.
06:36Mm-hm.
06:37It would have been vegetable production and herb production.
06:39And all of that would have been based for the house.
06:42The wall would have had a cavity that runs through the wall.
06:45And at intervals you would have had small fires.
06:48And they would need to be kept stoked during the night to keep the frost off.
06:52The border is ended by these high yew hedges.
06:56And beyond that on either side was the actual productive, the high productive part of the garden.
07:01So you've got a productive side to the walled garden and then you've got a pleasure garden.
07:05And the walled garden here is divided into two sections.
07:08And beyond that gate there, Alex, is a much less productive, much more decorative part of the whole enclosure.
07:16What you have there is the pleasure garden.
07:18So you'd be looking at, you know, annual flowers, cut flowers.
07:21It would have been where you could leisure around.
07:24There was actually two tennis courts in there as well.
07:27But the planting of the beds there with the hydrangea and roses and things like that, that's more recent?
07:33Originally what you would have there would have been, say, mixed shrubs.
07:36You would have annuals, some perennials, stuff like that.
07:39It was actually my grandmother in 1976.
07:42She decided to plant roses.
07:44So we've got a lot of different coloured roses in there.
07:47And they're absolutely spectacular this year.
07:49Very, very labour intensive.
07:51Speaking of labour intensive, another feature of that part of the garden are these very handsome, very clipped Portuguese laurels.
07:58Yes.
07:59And it's a feature of Powerscorp that the whole garden is high maintenance and must always have been so.
08:05Because it's so formal, it requires very precise order in its maintenance.
08:10Absolutely.
08:11I mean, even today, 75% of our time is spent in the formal part of the garden.
08:17You know, you've got to have straight edges on your grass.
08:21My personal favourite feature here are the gates that you find at entrance and exit points in the walled garden.
08:28They're especially fine.
08:30And there's a couple that I particularly like.
08:32One is the Bamberg Gate.
08:34The Bamberg is from the 17th century, an inner gate from the Bamberg Cathedral.
08:39About four years ago, we underwent a huge project of lifting these gates off and completely stripping them down,
08:47shot blasting them down with sand, repriming them, painting them, and then eventually 24 karat gold gilding.
08:54And they absolutely look stunning.
08:58Powerscorp is the greatest surviving example in Ireland of this style of 19th century garden.
09:05Many others were created, but few remain, not least because they're very high maintenance.
09:11But in West Cork, another such garden has somehow endured against the odds.
09:17The house and gardens here at Bantry in County Cork display the imagination and indeed the determination of one man,
09:25Richard White, 2nd Earl of Bantry.
09:28From the 1820s onwards, for several decades before he inherited the estate,
09:33he and his wife travelled throughout Europe and even as far as Russia,
09:37collecting works of art with which to fill the rooms in the house.
09:41But at the same time, he was filling sketchbooks with drawings of follies and gardens of terraces and summer houses,
09:49which he would use to inspire the gardens that were created directly behind the main building.
09:55Immediately behind the house is an elaborate Italianate garden designed by the 2nd Earl himself.
10:07It's made up of a series of patterns of boxwood commonly known as a parterre.
10:14At the centre of it is a circular pond filled with river stones and seashells.
10:19And this in turn is encircled by wrought iron drenched in wisteria, which is now just coming into flower.
10:26Bantry house is situated on sloping ground.
10:33So the Earl's great idea was to divide that into seven terraces.
10:38Two of them are in front of the house.
10:41The third one is where the house and the great parterre is situated.
10:44And then there's another four that rise up.
10:47And it took hundreds of men several years to divide the ground and bank it up in order to create those terraces.
10:54Reached at the very top by a hundred steps, otherwise known as the stairway to the sky.
11:02And when you finally get to the top of those 100 steps, slightly out of breath in my case,
11:08the view is extraordinary, stretching beyond Bantry Bay as far as the border with neighbouring County Kerry.
11:15Julie Shelswell White is the four times great niece of the second Earl of Bantry and the latest generation of the family to live in Bantry House.
11:29The gardens here at Bantry are incredibly elaborate because that's the way the second Earl planned them.
11:35But he probably had 40 to 50 gardeners. How many have you got?
11:40So at the moment we have one gardener, Adam, and my brother Sam who manages the estate with me.
11:46He would be very hands on and does an awful lot in the garden as well.
11:49So two really. And my mother Birgitta does an awful lot too.
11:53And yourself?
11:54Not so much. A bit of weeding last year during lockdown, but I think I pulled out the wrong thing at one point.
11:59Because there's so much here, what's your priority?
12:02The priority really is the formal garden. We have 100 acres of land.
12:06I think it's divided about 60, 40, formal and kind of the wilder woodland.
12:10Around the house, the garden is very formal. Then there are parts of the estate that are wild.
12:15And we can lean into that a bit and let that stay wild.
12:18And, you know, down by the stream on the other side of the estate, there's woodland there and it's almost tropical.
12:23I mean, it's absolutely beautiful. That can be left to its own devices to an extent.
12:28Obviously a lot of maintenance, we still have to look after it.
12:30But the formal garden surrounding the house, that's always a priority.
12:34Keep it looking neat and as the Earl would have wanted.
12:37It's the first thing people see when they come up to the house,
12:39whether they're having a wedding or staying in the B&B or just visiting for the day.
12:42It's the first impression really, so the formal garden is.
12:45And are there problems every year, for example, with plants dying and having to be replaced and things like that?
12:50Of course, there's challenges all the time.
12:52What was wonderful last year is that we got some really generous donations,
12:56one in particular from a local lady who comes up to our tier room every day.
13:00And in spring this year, we used her donation and we bought new rhododendrons for the estate.
13:05So, we've named them after her.
13:06Oh, fantastic.
13:07Yeah.
13:08You know, because gardens are, even when they're historic like this, they're living organisms
13:13and they need to be allowed to develop, don't you think?
13:16Absolutely, yeah.
13:17And our gardener Adam is very aware of sustainability
13:20and he's very clever in terms of biodiversity and everything like that.
13:23We don't use any pesticides or weed colours or anything.
13:27It's all kind of natural weeding sort.
13:29Oh, great.
13:30Yeah.
13:31Which does make a bigger battle with the weeds.
13:33Yes, absolutely, it does.
13:34And certainly when you don't have the manpower to be pulling weeds, I mean, we could have, I think,
13:38probably 20 people here all the time pulling weeds and doing nothing else.
13:41Is it a big challenge being responsible for a historic place like this, carrying it into the future?
13:47Absolutely.
13:48It's a huge responsibility.
13:49My parents in the 90s, they did a huge restoration of the gardens based on what the Second Earl had designed.
13:54They got a grant from the EU and my brother and I were lucky in the sense that our parents did that huge restoration.
13:59They really brought it back to its former glory.
14:01They did so much work.
14:02Great backdrop or a good foundation really just to keep it, to maintain it and keep it going.
14:07That restoration was really key in the 90s.
14:12While the Earl of Bantry was bringing treasures from all across the world to fill his fine house,
14:17other property owners were developing gardens that featured plants gathered from every corner of the globe.
14:24The name of Doreen here in County Kerry derives from the Irish word dira, meaning oak,
14:34and indicates that the ground here was once covered in these trees.
14:38But by the 19th century, all of those had been cleared away,
14:41and there was only holly and some scrubland left.
14:44That was until about 150 years ago, when the estate was inherited by Henry Petty Fitzmaurice,
14:505th Marquess of Lansdowne.
14:53He visited here for the first time and was so captivated by what he saw
14:57that he decided to return every year for several months during the summers.
15:01And over those periods, he totally transformed the landscape
15:05into one of the most surprising gardens here in Ireland.
15:09It's very easy to understand why Lord Lansdowne was so captivated with Doreen.
15:20It's overpowering, I think, when you stand on the shores of the Kenmare River,
15:25and you don't just see the place, but you feel the place.
15:28You know, you stand here, you look out, you gaze, and everywhere you look,
15:32the beauty just gets deeper and deeper.
15:34You can be sucked into the detail of what's at your feet,
15:37or you can be thrown into raptures by the distant view of the mountains,
15:41you know, underplanted with the forests.
15:43Lansdowne couldn't have not been in love with the place.
15:46Of course, it's entirely natural.
15:48Part of that understanding of the natural landscape
15:50really hadn't existed for earlier generations of his family.
15:53Well, they certainly hadn't understood
15:55or kind of thrown themselves at the landscape at Doreen
15:58the way they had at their home in England, at Bowwood, for example.
16:01But the sense of the natural landscape being in vogue
16:04and, I suppose, developing over the hundred years previous to Lansdowne's time
16:08and ending up somewhere like this,
16:10it couldn't have happened or collided at a better time,
16:13Lansdowne's passion and that development of the landscape movement.
16:17Absolutely.
16:18And what's particularly special about here at Doreen
16:21is what he then brought to it,
16:24this unexpected twist to the design in a natural landscape
16:28such as we find here in Kerry.
16:30And I think that's what's really special about Doreen.
16:32And I think Lansdowne unlocked the key.
16:35You know, they talk about that being the genius of the place.
16:37You know, he unlocked the key and discovered the secret
16:39that would make the garden at Doreen
16:41somewhere utterly unique and totally special.
16:45Down by the shore, visitors to Doreen
16:48will meet the familiar beauty of the west of Ireland coastline.
16:52But when you venture deeper into the gardens here,
16:55you become unexpectedly transported out of this country
16:59and carried away to the other side of the world.
17:05You know, Alan, if I weren't with you,
17:08I would imagine myself to be somewhere like the jungle in Borneo, frankly.
17:14It is truly amazing.
17:16It's one of my favourite reveals in the garden at Doreen
17:19when you come up through the King's Uzi
17:21and because you're elevated,
17:23you're above this amazing array of plants.
17:26What I'm seeing immediately in front of me are tree ferns.
17:29They're from...
17:30They're from New Zealand.
17:31They dominate your view here
17:33and I think that's why you feel as if you're in the southern hemisphere,
17:36you're in the jungle.
17:37But if your eye travels through here,
17:39suddenly you can catch the pink colour of the rhododendrons
17:42on the left-hand side,
17:43you know, the kind of Himalayas and the India.
17:45So you're back into Asia.
17:46Then left-hand side,
17:47these towering conifers from North America,
17:50they're western red cedars.
17:51So actually you've got kind of continents meeting here
17:54in the valley of the King's Uzi in front of you
17:56and then kind of western European conifers
17:58protecting us from the sea.
18:00Lord Lansdowne, first of all,
18:02he was Governor-General of Canada
18:04and then he was Viceroy of India.
18:06So was he bringing plants back?
18:09Was he drawing inspiration and ideas from his travels?
18:13As you well know,
18:14if you're passionate about something,
18:15you can't but be inspired by it.
18:17So, you know, the landscapes of India and Canada are huge.
18:20They're towering, they're mountainous,
18:21they're tree-covered, they're luxuriant in places.
18:24Very similar to what he did at Doreen.
18:26So there's definitely a correlation between his travels
18:29and what we've ended up seeing at Doreen.
18:31And he was really, I think, his own plantsman, his own designer.
18:35He was really the man who decided what would go where here?
18:37He was.
18:38And what's wonderful about a garden like Doreen,
18:40you can plant tree ferns and bamboos in the King's Uzi
18:43and then they become their own gardeners.
18:45He started it, but you can see the sea,
18:48the tide of tree ferns has just progressed through the valley.
18:51The rhododendrons cascade in from the left-hand side
18:54and it's up to me now, as the gardener here,
18:56to control that level of wandering plants.
18:59Lansdowne started it and he arranged them quite softly at Doreen
19:02and it's given the character to the garden that we have today.
19:05What's special about Doreen is it still remains
19:08in the ownership of descendants of Lord Lansdowne
19:12and they're very actively interested in ensuring the future of Doreen,
19:17working with people like yourselves.
19:19They are and it's really nice for me.
19:21You know, I've worked in historic gardens for a long time
19:23and I've studied the kind of past owners
19:25and now I can actually sit with the current owners
19:28and discuss what's going to happen for the future,
19:31you know, add their personal layer of influence into the garden
19:34and I think Doreen is at a very exciting moment.
19:37It's got people behind it who are really passionate
19:39and really care about it,
19:40people who've spent their childhood growing up here,
19:42having fun here and wanting the next generation to do the same.
19:46You're always grateful to the past,
19:48you're grateful to the gardeners who've gardened the place in the past
19:50because they've given you today
19:52and it's up to us to give it the future.
19:55For gardeners in this part of the world,
19:57the second half of the 19th century was a golden age of plant exploration.
20:03Botanists travelled through Asia, Australia and the Americas,
20:07returning with enormous numbers of species,
20:10hitherto unknown in this country,
20:12but perfectly suited to our temperate, moist climate,
20:16as can be seen not just in Doreen,
20:18but also right on the other side of the country
20:21at Kilmakara, County Wicklow.
20:24This garden, the original garden,
20:26is all about alleys and straight lines and very, very formal.
20:31So what we're walking down at the moment is called the Pond Vista
20:35and we're walking towards the Dutch Pond.
20:37So these are sort of, again, relics of that original garden that existed here.
20:42And you can see that it's flanked on both sides
20:44by these sort of alleys of great trees.
20:46And historically, and we're going to restore it,
20:49those alleys were projected out into the Deer Park
20:53and into the distant landscape
20:55and framed by enormous late 17th, early 18th century lime trees.
20:59Okay. And I mean, I always think the use of the term Dutch
21:02was very deliberate because it showed your political allegiance.
21:05In other words, you were a supporter of King William.
21:07Yes, absolutely.
21:08I mean, actually, if you look at the house,
21:10it's the Queen Anne style.
21:11But in fact, actually, it was actually built
21:13during the reign of William and Mary.
21:15So if you were from a Catholic side, you had a French park.
21:18And if you were from the Protestant side, you had a Dutch park.
21:20And this was very much a Dutch park here at Kilmakara.
21:24We're now down at what you called the Dutch park.
21:28But it's actually much older than that
21:30because I know there was a monastery here in the Middle Ages.
21:33And when the monks left and the Actons came on site,
21:38they retained what would have been called in those days a stew pond
21:41because it was used for fish, for breeding fish.
21:44The Actons retained that pond to incorporate it into the Baroque garden.
21:49Yes. So this pond dates back to the seventh century.
21:52Right.
21:53So as you said, it was a stew or a fish pond that supplied fish to the abbey
21:56that was on the side for several centuries.
21:58So when the house was constructed in 1697,
22:01the family incorporated pre-existing features.
22:04The other thing that always is important to stress
22:07when we're looking at gardening is the role of women in gardens.
22:10There's three women that are heavily influenced the development
22:14and the evolution of the garden.
22:16The foremost sort of character amongst them is Janet Acton.
22:20She was born here in 1826.
22:22And we know, for example, this redwood behind me,
22:25it's a Californian redwood, Cypriodendron giganteum.
22:28Janet, in her diary for the 22nd of October, 1868,
22:32states had gardeners plant Wellingtonia on pond lawn.
22:37And not just that, Janet and Thomas, her brother,
22:40who created the present garden,
22:42when they set off on their grand tour in 1860,
22:45it parted from the norm.
22:47Rather than looking at art and architecture,
22:48they looked at plants and they travelled the world looking at plants.
22:51And we know that in October, 1868,
22:54they were in what's now Yosemite National Park in California.
22:57So they would have actually seen that very tree in its native habitat.
23:01In full fig as well.
23:03So they knew what size and scale it was going to be.
23:05Yes, yes.
23:06And this tree was the most exciting introduction of the 19th century.
23:11So what's interesting is that relatively early,
23:13foreign species were being introduced to the garden here.
23:16Probably earlier than a lot of other gardens in Ireland.
23:18Absolutely.
23:19If you just take one single plant, Rhododendron Arborium,
23:22for which we're famous,
23:23we're the very first garden in Ireland
23:26and one of the very first gardens in Europe to have it.
23:29It's here already before 1820.
23:31It's very, very early for exotic planting on these islands,
23:35particularly coming from India.
23:36You know, it's a very early introduction.
23:38Absolutely.
23:39This is one of the most significant plants in the garden.
23:48And really, actually, this marks for us the opening chapter
23:52of what's known as the golden era of plant introductions during the 19th century.
23:56What is amazing about this tree, which is Rhododendron Grande,
23:59is that when it was planted here in the 1860s,
24:03sister seedlings were being grown by Joseph Hooker's friends
24:06that included Charles Darwin and Florence Nightingale.
24:08And yet here it is, you know, it's a European champion.
24:11It's the largest known Rhododendron Grande outside the Himalayan region.
24:15By the 1850s, the old Dutch park was seen as sort of very boring,
24:20very plain and old fashioned.
24:22So they swept away a lot of those features.
24:24And then it was actually Joseph Hooker's consignment of seed
24:28that absolutely transformed the garden.
24:30Suddenly Rhododendrons became absolutely fashionable.
24:34And by the turn of the 20th century,
24:36the largest collection of Himalayan Rhododendron species in Europe
24:39grew in this garden.
24:40We've gone here from a very formal stiff Dutch park
24:44into a very wild Robinsonian garden.
24:47And that's because these sort of plants,
24:49they were better suited to woodland gardening
24:52and gardening became much more natural,
24:54much more as what William Robinson would have advocated
24:58as a result of the sort of plants that were coming in
25:01at a time that's now recognised today as the golden era of plant introduction.
25:06You know, starting with Joseph Hooker's collections in the 1850s,
25:09right up until, you know, about the time between the two Great Wars.
25:13We think of Rhododendron as being, so to speak, bog standard.
25:17They are very ubiquitous.
25:18They love the Irish soil and climate quite clearly.
25:21But, as you say, in the 1860s when they first started to appear,
25:24they were very new and very different to anything that had been grown hitherto.
25:28It created a new era in what was called Rhododendron mania.
25:33A bit like tulip mania in the 17th century.
25:36Yes, yes, exactly the same.
25:38So, if your garden was worth its salt, you know,
25:41you needed to have Rhododendrons in it.
25:43So, this baby is a European champion.
25:46So, just how big is it?
25:48It's a European champion, as you say.
25:49It's a staggering 15 metres tall.
25:51It's just over 50 feet tall.
25:53Planted, as I said, in the 1860s.
25:56Yeah.
25:57But that's its saltstone ceiling, Robert, just so close away.
26:00Right.
26:01They're probably about five years old.
26:02Okay.
26:03And that's how big this tree would have been 160 years ago when it was planted here.
26:08So, at that time, it was seen as miraculous that these plants that had come from the subcontinent
26:12were surviving outside in a Wicklow garden.
26:14And here they are, still thriving, you know, into the 21st century.
26:17Still thriving all that.
26:18Is this as big as it gets?
26:19No, in the wild I've seen trees probably twice this height.
26:23But certainly...
26:24Could this one still grow higher?
26:25Long after we're gone, this tree will still be here.
26:28And it probably could easily double its height yet.
26:30Really?
26:31Yeah.
26:32So, if you want to lead the way, we'll go through here.
26:37In the late 19th century, the most influential figure in gardening
26:41was a man from County Leash called William Robinson.
26:44Opposed to the formality of the Victorian garden,
26:48Robinson espoused the natural.
26:51He argued that plants should look as though they had simply occurred where they were,
26:56rather than being deliberately planted there.
26:58His most famous book was called The Wild Garden.
27:02And here in Ireland, nowhere better encapsulates Robinson's ideals
27:07than Mount Usher, County Wicklow.
27:11William Robinson himself visited Mount Usher and lavished praise
27:15on what was being done there towards the end of the 19th century,
27:18declaring it was quite unlike any other garden he had ever seen.
27:23The place exemplifies his idea of what might be described as managed wildness,
27:29as I discussed with its present owner, Catherine Jay.
27:32Mount Usher, looking around me, appears to have been here forever.
27:38It has a kind of eternal quality about it.
27:41But it's actually, in gardening terms, quite a recent development.
27:45It really only started around 1870 or so?
27:48Correct, yes.
27:49It started with Mr. Edward Walpole, who was a very successful Dublin businessman,
27:54who had shops in Belfast, London, Dublin.
27:58And his great love and life was hiking, walking the Wicklow Mountains and nature.
28:03And he used to stay up at Hunter's Hotel, which is a mile up the road.
28:07Right.
28:08And because of that, he got to know the miller who owned, rent, leased this place,
28:12because there used to be a mill just back here.
28:15And when the miller retired, the first Edward Walpole leased the little gorgeous cottage
28:25and one acre of land, just where it was standing here, the front and the back.
28:29OK.
28:30And, I mean, Walpole was a businessman.
28:32He wasn't a gardener.
28:33No, not at all.
28:34No, no.
28:35He was linen, but he had a great feeling for nature.
28:38And he loved, he loved trees and plants and shrubs.
28:41When Walpole took on the lease with the little house here,
28:44there were potatoes and he replaced those with flowers.
28:46And he immediately noticed how well they responded.
28:49And that's what started the whole garden.
28:51He came here with his three sons, the eldest, Thomas, William and Edward.
28:55Thomas had no interest in gardening.
28:57His love and life were building weirs and bridges.
29:01But the other two, William and Edward, were passionate through their father about gardening.
29:06One did all the cataloguing, the other did all the growing.
29:09And so it carried on.
29:10One of the features of this garden is it's long and narrow.
29:13Correct.
29:14It's in an oval shape, really.
29:16Yeah, because it's following the course of the River Varche.
29:19Correct.
29:20Followed the river all the way up to the village and back again.
29:22Well, look, why don't we follow the course of the river.
29:24All right.
29:25And have a look at some of the plants that we meet along the way.
29:27Mount Usher has been cared for by the Jay family since 1980, when it was bought by Catherine's mother-in-law, Madeline.
29:38Although she knew relatively little about gardens at the time, she was concerned that this special place might be lost.
29:45Catherine, I am standing with you now in front of a very impressive eucalyptus tree, which came originally from Australia.
29:56Yes.
29:57And we're very proud because we have the greatest collection in Ireland.
30:00We've got 50 different eucalyptuses here.
30:02All the same or different varieties?
30:04Different varieties.
30:05That really is remarkable.
30:06And the other great collection we have are the Notrophaguses, which is beech.
30:11Which is beech.
30:12From New Zealand and South America.
30:15One is deciduous, what is evergreen.
30:17And then we have magnolias from Japan and China.
30:21And we have the handkerchief tree from China and...
30:24The cornice from Japan.
30:25Cornice from Japan.
30:26And the rhododendrons from the Himalayas.
30:29And this remarkable tree.
30:31Oh, yeah.
30:32The Montezuma.
30:33Wonderful name.
30:34From South America, yeah.
30:36Fantastic pine.
30:37You are able to blend plants from all over the world and yet they seem completely at home together.
30:43And that's thanks to the head gardeners choosing exactly where they're going to plant each plant and trying to give it as much space.
30:50And we're listening to birdsong as we're talking absolutely all around us.
30:54And that reminds me that another special quality here is that it's been pesticide free for a long time.
30:59Yes, my mother-in-law was obsessed with pesticides and she stopped at the moment.
31:03She arrived in 1980.
31:05She was very influenced by a book called The Silent Spring which was written in 1962.
31:10All of which has come to fruition.
31:12She was an environmentalist.
31:13She was.
31:14She was really ahead of the posses.
31:15Very, very, very, very much so.
31:18Madeleine Jay's environmental concerns were anticipated by William Robinson through his advocacy of the wild garden.
31:27One of the places that best reflects his legacy can be found at Hayward, County Leash, the county where Robinson was born.
31:36It's hard to imagine today but at the top of the bank behind me there once stood a fine country house with panoramic views across the surrounding countryside.
31:48The original house here was a neoclassical villa dating from the late 18th century.
31:53But a hundred or so years later it was greatly enlarged to make a very substantial mansion.
32:00Alas, it was all burnt down in 1950.
32:03The man responsible for commissioning that very big house was Colonel Hutch St Poey and he wanted a garden to match its scale.
32:11So he called upon the services of the most famous architect garden designer of the time.
32:18Over the course of a long career, Edwin Lutyens worked on a number of projects in Ireland.
32:23Not least the outstanding National War Memorial Gardens at Ireland Bridge in Dublin.
32:29To learn a little bit more about him and his legacy, I spoke to Matthew Jebb, director of the National Botanic Gardens.
32:36Matthew, before we get into the details of this extraordinary garden, perhaps you could give me a little bit of information about the man responsible for its design.
32:47Sir Edwin Lutyens was the designer of Hayward and he was one of the most innovative architects of the early 20th century.
32:55He designed a huge number of grand country houses.
32:58He was able to work in a huge range of different styles of construction.
33:04But one of his great strengths was the craftsmanship.
33:08The craftsmanship not only of the architect, but all of the workmen associated with the stone masonry, the carpentry.
33:15His buildings celebrate the arts and crafts.
33:18A big influence on him in relation to garden design was a man who came from this part of the country.
33:24Well, William Robinson was born and brought up in Ireland and County Leash is probably the last place he was employed in Ireland at Ballykill Cavern, no more than 20 miles from us here.
33:37William Robinson really introduced the idea of gardens full of flowers, which to us sounds very peculiar.
33:45But at the time, you know, bedding schemes were very formal and stayed.
33:50And William Robinson brought in a free flowing beauty to the garden based upon planting herbaceous borders, for example.
33:58Alpine plants in rockeries.
34:00These were totally innovative ideas and we often lose sight of that.
34:04His influence was enormous.
34:06And some of those ideas are quite clearly visible here at Hayward.
34:10It dates from the beginning of the 20th century.
34:13It's really one of the last great flourishes of Irish country house gardens before the First World War and all the changes that happened thereafter.
34:20So it's a very important garden in that regard.
34:22Who was Lutyens commissioned by to work here?
34:26Colonel Hutchinson Poet was the descendant of a long line of trenches originally who had built the house and the landscape in the original 18th century version.
34:40And Hutchinson Poet obviously needed to bring Edwin Lutyens.
34:45It was his bragging rights, if you like.
34:47Lutyens had this vision, this skill of bringing architecture into the garden, building outdoor rooms, if you like,
34:55decorated with plants.
34:56And it was not at the expense of plants.
34:58He worked in a close partnership with Gertrude Jekyll.
35:01And the two of them would design a sympathetic grouping of plants and architecture, which is essentially what a garden is all about.
35:11What's interesting is this is a wonderfully peaceful setting, this sunken garden.
35:16But Lutyens and his client had quite a fractious relationship.
35:20Colonel Hutchinson Poet, he had a wooden leg and he had a bad temper.
35:25And I think poor Lutyens every time he visited here had to soothe the workmen and get them back on track.
35:31It was not a happy relationship.
35:33And one of Lutyens' famous aphorisms is great architecture calls for great clients.
35:39And that in Lutyens' day meant a good checkbook because he insisted upon the best craftsmanship.
35:45So it did indeed often bankrupt his clients, the scale of the works, the cost of the works.
35:51But that was all important to Lutyens.
35:53It was not just for show, it was to be permanent.
35:57And when we look at this garden 110 years later, it is still in remarkably good condition, emphasizing the quality of the workmanship.
36:05The sunken garden is very much the high point and it's all centered on this great basin of water with these wonderful tortoises spilling water into it.
36:14It's a very charming feature.
36:16Lutyens loved geometry, but he also loved the challenge of blending that geometry into a landscape and making it sympathetic to the building.
36:25And many examples of his where he has skillfully blended the features of the landscape to the house based upon the garden.
36:34Because one of the other features about it are these openings, these circular openings in the walls that allow you as you walk around the space to have different views of the surrounding greater landscape.
36:44The great tradition of a romantic landscape is the surprise, the different vistas, that everything you come upon is new and fresh.
36:54So it's a delight to walk around such a garden.
36:59Hayward was one of the last great country house gardens to be designed in Ireland before the onset of the First World War.
37:06But it's worth paying a visit to one other site, not least because of the sheer effort involved in its creation.
37:15Located off the coast of West Cork and accessible only by boat, Garnish Island, otherwise known as Ilna Cullen, was, until the start of the last century, just a barren rock with a Martello Tower at its highest point.
37:30In 1910, it was bought by retired businessman, John Annan Bryce, who, with the help of landscape architect and designer Harold Pitot, set about transforming Garnish into the lush paradise we see today.
37:44Originally, the intention was that the gardens would be set around an impressive country house.
37:50But changing circumstances, and Bryce's death in 1923, meant this was never built.
37:56And the family instead lived in what had been constructed as the gardener's house.
38:01He came to this part of the world every summer, I think, with his family.
38:05That's right, yeah, with his wife, Violet.
38:07And they actually went to other areas in Cork and Kerry as well.
38:10They went to Fota and some of the other gardens.
38:13And at least one of those was accompanied with Harold Pitot.
38:16They were eventually commissioned, so they obviously kept an eye out for...
38:21For where it was coming up for sale, so to speak.
38:24That's it, exactly.
38:26Yeah, okay.
38:27So 1910, he buys here.
38:30And looking at this exquisite walled garden that exists today, that's so cleverly planted, it's very hard to imagine this was all once barren rock.
38:39It was an incredible achievement by the Bryce's and Harold Pitot.
38:44And it's very evident in the walled garden because of the amount of rock.
38:47Mm-hm.
38:48It's not a true rectangle.
38:49It's more of a kind of rectilinear type shape.
38:51Okay.
38:52Because the amount of blasting that was required.
38:54And it's also quite a large slope from one side to the other.
38:59You don't really notice it coming in because the design has been very cleverly handled.
39:03It's about an almost two metre difference.
39:06They had to take the shape that was available because of knocking the rock out.
39:10Exactly, yeah.
39:11Okay.
39:12Well, I'd like us to go on now to the next section of the garden because we get a better sense then of the clearance that was necessary of rock in order to create this extraordinary space.
39:21That's right.
39:22Let's go this way.
39:23The grounds at Garnish have been cleverly broken into a series of what we would now call garden rooms, each with its own distinctive character.
39:32This great swathe of grass beside us here really gives an idea of how much rock had to be blasted away.
39:38And this originally was a croquet lawn.
39:41Yeah, it was a croquet lawn.
39:43So the Bryce has played croquet on the lawn.
39:45There's a lot more shelter now than there would have been at the time even.
39:49So one of the earliest things they had to do was plant these belts of trees, presumably, to provide that initial shelter.
39:55I tried to create the shelter belts because it's quite a benign climate.
39:59In some ways it's very mild, very mild winters, but it's very windy.
40:04We're exposed to the Atlantic.
40:06But we're also on the Gulf Stream.
40:08The winters are very mild and humid.
40:10Any frosts are of quite short duration and that tends to be the limiting factor with plants is how cold it gets rather than how warm it gets.
40:18So it's very suitable for a lot of kind of quite subtropical type plants.
40:23You've got wonderful magnolia, azalea, rhododendron, all of these at the moment that are coming in to flower because they really enjoy that benign climate that they can enjoy here.
40:33That's right.
40:34And they don't get the frost and a lot of them flower quite early as well, particularly the magnolias.
40:39This garden was decades in the making.
40:42It didn't happen very suddenly.
40:44It began around 1910, but it continued how long?
40:47I suppose for decades.
40:49Anne and Bryce would have worked on it till the 1920s.
40:51A lot of the architectural elements were in place probably by the kind of 1920s anyway.
40:57And then the planting went on for kind of decades.
41:00And I suppose the planting continues right up to the present day.
41:04But eventually it passed into the hands of the state and the Office of Public Works?
41:08Yeah, so that would have been the early 1950s, 92.
41:11It kind of transferred into state care and the OPW have cared for it since then.
41:17And have you continued planting onwards?
41:19Yeah, I mean, obviously there's quite a limited amount of space.
41:23The whole island is just over 30 acres.
41:25Yeah, that's right.
41:26And again, it was quite difficult.
41:27Certain pockets were hollowed out to enable planting.
41:30But it's usually if a storm comes and a tree goes down and it leaves a gap,
41:34then, you know, that's when the kind of research starts in terms of what do we replace it with and what's available.
41:40Because you don't just want to plant anything here.
41:43It's a special garden with a special plant collection.
41:45You have to remain true to the spirit of the place.
41:48That's right, exactly.
41:49If we go through to the next section,
41:51also it brings over more clearly Pitot's influence in the overall design
41:56because it's more architectural than anything else.
41:59So why don't we go and have a look at that?
42:01Yeah, there he goes.
42:03Beyond the former croquet lawn with its sense of spaciousness
42:06is an altogether more confined area which leads to a spectacular vista.
42:13I seem to recall there was a John Hind postcard
42:16of exactly where we're standing.
42:18And certainly anybody who visits Garenish always takes a photograph.
42:22This must be one of the most celebrated views in Ireland.
42:26And, of course, it was created for Garenish by Harold Pitot.
42:29That's right, yeah.
42:30And it is one of the most iconic spots on the island.
42:33And I suppose if anyone thinks of an Irish garden,
42:35the Italian garden probably isn't far from their mind.
42:38and the rectangular poo looking out across the sugarloaf there.
42:42It's extraordinary.
42:43It's just such a magical spot.
42:44I've mentioned Harold Pitot who was, in the late 19th, early 20th century,
42:48one of the great garden designers.
42:51But really it was to do with his architecture,
42:53how he sited buildings within gardens.
42:56And that's certainly the case here because you have two strong buildings.
43:00You have the casita on one side and then the pavilion here.
43:04So you have this very disciplined, controlled garden here.
43:08And then the natural landscape, as you say, through this archway
43:12into the greater garden of Ireland.
43:16The First World War, the War of Independence and the Civil War,
43:19all had a major impact on Irish country houses, their gardens
43:23and indeed a whole way of life.
43:26But despite the changing and often difficult circumstances,
43:30new gardens were created and old ones maintained,
43:33including the gardens at Glynn Castle in County Limerick.
43:38Overlooking the Shannon Estuary,
43:40this has been home for hundreds of years to the Fitzgeralds,
43:43hereditary Knights of Glynn.
43:46The last and 26th Knight, Desmond Fitzgerald, died in 2011.
43:52Today, Glynn is cared for by his eldest daughter, Catherine,
43:57a professional garden designer,
43:59whose work can be seen not just here,
44:01but in many other historic properties,
44:03including Glenarm Castle, County Antrim,
44:05and Hillsborough Castle, County Down.
44:08I was interested to know how she chose this career.
44:13Well, I suppose being brought up here was the beginning
44:16because I was very aware of, you know, the structure of a garden,
44:20the views. My parents were interested.
44:22They restored the wall garden,
44:24were always looking at views and vistas
44:26and how to create that effect, different effects.
44:29So it really started here.
44:31And then I studied history of art at Trinity.
44:33And of course, a lot of paintings and architecture
44:36have that element of landscape.
44:39Then I went on to the Architectural Association,
44:41which had a wonderful course at that time,
44:43which was conservation of historic landscape.
44:46But of course, horticulture and plants
44:49and how to create them physically is vital.
44:52And I went to study at Wisley then,
44:54the Royal Horticultural Society garden in Surrey,
44:58where you could do a two-year apprenticeship.
45:01And that was just the most revelationary, exciting thing
45:06that I'd ever done.
45:07From there, I was lucky enough to work for Arabella Lennox-Boyd,
45:11a fantastic designer who sort of won Chelsea lots of times.
45:14And she really trained me in design
45:16and taught me how to look at things
45:18and how to think about space.
45:20Catherine, you're the fourth generation of women
45:25to be responsible for the gardens here at Glien,
45:28at least the fourth that we know of.
45:30Yes, the fourth that I feel are alive in my mind.
45:33I know the most about them.
45:35It starts with my great-grandmother, Rachel Wyndham Quinn,
45:38who was a painter, very artistic,
45:41and she was the daughter of the fourth Earl of Dunraven at Adair,
45:44who was, of course, an avid plant collector
45:47and created two Robinsonian gardens in Kerry
45:51using plants that were coming in from all over the world,
45:55exotic species.
45:56She was really pushing the boundaries of what could grow
45:58in these Gulf Stream gardens, of which Glien is really one.
46:02And so I can see what she's done.
46:06I can still see her and their plantings today.
46:09My grandmother, Veronica, was also a painter and very artistic,
46:13and she was a very good horticulturalist and early ecologist.
46:16She carried on and put in the formal paths, the sundial,
46:22all that vista with the Persian iron tree at the end.
46:25She had a very good eye for views.
46:28And then, of course, my mother, who, when she came in the 70s,
46:32she despaired at this.
46:34She knew nothing about gardens,
46:35and this had completely, after the war, gone to seed
46:38and was covered in brambles and overgrown.
46:40And she, despite knowing nothing,
46:42set to the project of researching and restoring it.
46:46She found the old paths with the help of Tom Wall,
46:49our fantastic gardener.
46:51She had the whole garden back up in production.
46:53And now it's my turn to experiment.
46:55I can have a go.
46:56And I'm planting in the border all sorts of different shapes,
47:00these wonderful echiums that create spikes
47:02of a couple of meters high in the space of three weeks
47:04and are abuzz with bees in June.
47:06And the foxgloves, the hydrangeas, the alliums, bulbs, annuals,
47:11you know, all mixed in.
47:12I want to keep it vibrant and new
47:14and something different every year.
47:16I think that's very much part of a garden
47:19which feels alive and fresh.
47:22We're experimenting and it changes all the time.
47:25That's what's really fun about gardening.
47:28All good gardeners like Catherine recognise the need
47:31for constant change and renewal,
47:33because gardens, even historic ones,
47:35can't be treated as museums.
47:38They always benefit from a fresh eye and a new vision,
47:41as Catherine demonstrated in an area of the garden
47:44which had, until recently, been left undeveloped.
47:49This is a boggy patch which,
47:51they just had the gunnera coming in here,
47:53so I've taken the opportunity to use plants
47:57that like the wet conditions.
47:59I've really planted this very recently
48:01with lots of big-leaved architectural foliage
48:04which contrasts with each other,
48:06also using a bit of colour from the RM lilies
48:08and the crinodendrons, the red Chinese lanterns.
48:11I just love the way they set each other off,
48:13the big leaves, the palms, the bamboo,
48:16the banana trees coming on.
48:18And then, of course, my favourite,
48:20this fantastic rice paper plant from Taiwan.
48:24It's sort of bringing these little corners to life
48:27with new plantings.
48:28We're trying the bananas to see how they do in the winter
48:31and we protect them with fleece,
48:33but they seem to have made it.
48:34And it really, there was really nothing here,
48:36so it's real new interest for people,
48:38sort of an added little sort of theatre for people
48:41to come and enjoy as they're walking around the garden.
48:43You mentioned garden as theatre,
48:45but for me, when I see you here at Glynn,
48:48it seems a kind of laboratory
48:50in which you experiment with new ideas,
48:53new plants, come up with new formulas.
48:55Absolutely.
48:56It's a real place for experimenting
48:58and I can try different leaves of the different colours,
49:02different architectural qualities together
49:05and if it doesn't quite work,
49:06we're so lucky with the...
49:08I love the wet.
49:09You can move things around at any time
49:11and, you know, if it doesn't work,
49:13if the scene isn't right,
49:14you just dig it all up and move it round
49:16until you've got it right.
49:17And then, when you're working,
49:18you've got the sort of, you think,
49:20oh, I'm going to try that out in this garden
49:22and it's a wonderful sort of crucible for experiment here.
49:29After looking at 400 years of history,
49:31it's appropriate to end here at Glynn Castle
49:34where the future of its gardens is in safe hands.
49:38But as we all know,
49:40despite their superficially tough appearance,
49:43gardens are actually quite delicate things.
49:45They need to be constantly maintained and cared for,
49:48otherwise nature will quickly reclaim her territory.
49:52Our country house gardens are part of our collective heritage
49:56and we need to take good care of them
49:58so that future generations can enjoy them
50:01as much as we've done.
50:22We'll see you next time...
50:23...
50:32...
50:34...
50:35...
50:36...
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