Get going onthe garden trail

Green-fingered holidaymakers can rarely resist visiting a fine garden. SHIRLEY LANIGANroots out 10 of the best in Ireland

WHEN ON holiday, gardeners generally like to visit gardens. Some build holidays around seeking out gardens and hunting for plants, cramming the car with treasures to bring home to their gardens. The busman’s holiday could have been called the gardener’s break.

But most of us are content to take in one or two gardens within a more varied holiday. Occasionally, we desert the hordes at the beach, petting farm or museum for the pleasure of an hour of peace in a tranquil garden. Depending on the make-up of the holiday crew and the garden being visited, we can sometimes lure them along for the trip.

Here are some ideas for green-fingered holidaymakers who opt for an Irish holiday this year.

1 The Ewe Gallery and Sculpture Garden, Kenmare Road, Glengarriff, Co Cork. Tel: 027-63840 or theewe.com.While young children can sometimes be persuaded that garden visiting is fun, teenagers are harder to convince. Being force-marched past lines of shrubs is not generally their thing. But a garden that specialises in entertaining older kids is the Ewe Sculpture Garden.

Set on a hill and built around a gushing stream with waterfalls, rock pools and rustic bridges, this is essentially a woodland garden with a twist. There are witty and sometimes daft sculptures, lurking behind trees and around corners. It’s a place to clamber around, uphill through fern plantations, across log bridges and along ledges. Resting spots furnished with chess, draughts and solitaire games made from pebbles set out on logs can turn a short visit into something more leisurely.

This is a wild garden and possibly not for devotees of the manicured lawn.

• STAYRita Barry-Murphy's B&B, Cois Coille, overlooking the bay is good. Tel: 027-63202.
• EATPackie's, Henry Street, Kenmare. Tel: 064-6641508.
• PRICEAdults €5, children €3, family €15.

2 The Glebe Gardens, Baltimore, Co Cork. Tel: 028-20232 or glebe gardens.com.Jean Parry's garden at the edge of Baltimore is, for gardeners, a highlight of the holiday village. Parry has been tending her handsome organic productive garden for many years. The garden around the old house is informal, colourful and beautiful.

Arrive into a sunny courtyard where strings of onions might be lying on a low wall drying out. Moving on to another garden room where herbs, vegetables and fruits grow in inspiring arrangements. The garden is further broken into flower meadows, herbaceous borders, and divided by unusual features like the Wavy Hedge. Parry gives guided walks and talks in summer.

• EATThe restaurant at the gardens is recommended.
• STAYRolfs Country House, Baltimore Hill. Tel: 028-20289.
• PRICEAdults €5, children under 16 free.

3 The Bay Garden, Camolin, Co Wexford. Tel: 053-9383349 or thebay garden.com.Created over the past 21 years by garden designers Frances and Iain MacDonald, no garden-loving visitor to the Wexford seaside should go home without spending some time at this impressive varied garden.

Divided into several distinctive garden rooms, the planting is impeccable and the range of plants wide enough for the most discerning plantaholic. A Gothic teen might even be lured in by the promise of the “Funereal Border”, made up of black and dark purple flowers.

The MacDonalds are talented gardeners and Frances is a brilliant guide. A garden that warrants multiple visits.

• STAYKilbora B&B, near Ferns. Tel: 053-9367089 or kil borabandb.com.
• EATVia Veneto, Enniscorthy. Tel: 053-9236929 or viaveneto.ie.
• PRICEAdults €3. Children free.

4 Brigit's Garden, Roscahill, Galway. Tel: 091-550905 or brigits garden.ie.Well-placed for a stop-over to break the journey to Connemara. Much of it was designed by Chelsea gold medal winner Mary Reynolds. It is a green garden, largely planted with wild flowers and native species around Celtic themes. This is a favourite with school groups and families, who can hunt for newts in the ponds, wander along nature trails and study different habitats. The walk through the hazel wood is magical. The place is dotted with traditional wooden and stone buildings, and grass sculptures.

• EATGarden Café on site.
• STAYRoss Lake House Hotel, Rosscahill. Tel: 091-550109 or rosslakehotel.com.
• PRICEAdults €7.50, children €4.50, family (two adults, three children) €22.

5 Oakfield Park, Raphoe, Co Donegal. Tel: 074-9173068 or oakfield park.com.To call the gardens at Oakfield Park impressive is rather like stating that Messi is good at football. Part-restored old garden, part-new project, this is grand scale gardening, almost unique on the island.

The flower gardens, walled kitchen gardens and box gardens will win over the fussiest control-freak gardener. The woods and sweeping lawns leading down to newly-built boating ponds complete with stone temples are impressive.

Add more man-made lakes, willow tunnels, wild flower meadows, viewing towers, mounds and wetlands, and then throw in a narrow gauge model railway with diesel and steam trains on 5km of tracks. Phew. Set aside a full day.

• EAT & STAYCastle Grove Country House Hotel, Letterkenny. Tel: 074-915 1118 or castle grove.com.
• PRICEAdults €5, children €3.

6 Enniscoe Garden, Castlehill, Co Mayo. Tel: 096-31112 or enniscoe.com.The walled gardens at Enniscoe on the shore of Lough Conn, were restored to their Victorian glory just over a decade ago and since then they have been busy maturing.

The central feature is a natural looking rockery with an intriguing “dead” but re-sprouting trachycarpus. The rest of the garden is made up of scented box-enclosed flower beds, long shrub borders and an unusual, dripping fern wall. Outside the walls there are long, wooded lakeside walks.

• EATFoxford Woollen Mills, Foxford. Tel: 094-9256104.
• STAYHealy's Hotel, Pontoon. Tel: 094 925 6443 or healys pontoon.com.
• PRICEAdults €6, children and students €2, family €12.

7 Derreen Gardens, Lauragh, Co Kerry. Tel: 064-83588.Derreen is probably the best known sub-tropical garden in Ireland. This is a romantic place, moulded almost seamlessly into its wild rocky situation, aged and venerable. Mossy lawns seem to lap like water around huge protruding rocks and stands of rhododendron. The woods are filled with naturalised tree ferns and other tender exotics, but it all still feels peculiarly Irish and wild, tucked into a shelter beside the immense Atlantic.

Visit it early or late in the day to enjoy its solitary peace.

• EATHelen's/Teddy's pub,Kilmackillogue Lauragh, Kerry. Tel: 064-6683104.
• STAYTahilla Cove Country House, Sneem. Tel: 064-6645204 or tahillacove.com.
• PRICEAdults €7, children €3.

8 Bantry House and Garden, Bantry, Co Cork. Tel: 027-50047 or bantry house.com.There can be few houses and gardens with views to compare with the garden at Bantry. It takes a garden of some splendour to compete with the famous bay and these gardens have that splendour.

Built on a grand scale on a series of ledges both above and below the Georgian house, there are, nevertheless, intimate corners, such as the perfumed flower garden to the side of the house. The famous wisteria circles and the “Hundred Steps” to the top of the garden are majestic, and the serpentine beds in front of the house recall the garden as it was in Victorian times.

A Spanish Armada exhibition will entertain the historians in the group.

• EATO'Connor's Seafood Restaurant, The Square, Bantry. Tel: 027-50221 or oconnorseafood.com.
• STAYMaritime Hotel, The Quay, Bantry. Tel: 027-54700 or themaritime.ie.
• PRICEAdults €5. Children free.

9 Caher Bridge, Formoyle West, Fanore, Co Clare. Tel: 065-7076225.You will drive through some of the most stunning sections of limestone pavement in the Burren to get to Caher Bridge Garden, making a visit doubly rewarding. The garden covers just over an acre around an old roadside cottage. It was created on a scarce sprinkling of soil over the ever-dominant limestone. The roots of trees curve their way over boulders. Plants are insinuated into crevices and shallow gaps between the stones. And yet it is a lush garden, made up of impressive collections of plants.

Directions: turn off the R477 at Fanore Bridge. Pass church on right. Garden 1.5km uphill.

• EATAn Fear Gorta, Tea Rooms and Garden, The Quay, Ballyvaughan. Tel: 065-7077157.
• STAYGregans Castle Hotel, the Burren. Tel: 065-7077005 or gregans.ie.
• PRICE€5. Accompanied children free. By appointment.

10 The Vandeleur Garden, Killimer Road, Kilrush, Co Clare. Tel: 065-9051760 or vandeleur walledgarden.ie.If taking the Tarbert ferry between Kerry and Clare, take a detour and visit the Vandeleur garden just outside Kilrush.

This great big walled garden is an admirable example of what a community can achieve. The people of Kilrush took on the massive, dreadfully overgrown walled garden back in the late 1990s and turned it into a fine garden, full of exuberant borders, a fruit walk, vegetable plots, a maze, a greenhouse, rockeries and a little arboretum. For historians, the history of the place and the family who lived here and built the town is documented in a little museum. There are also 50 acres of wooded walks.

• EAT & STAYStrand Restaurant and Guesthouse. Kilkee. Tel: 065-9056177 or thestrandkilkee.com.
• PRICEAdults €5. Children €2. Seniors €3. Family (two adults, two children) €10.