Seamus O'Brien. head gardener, Kilmacurragh Botanic Gardens
A LOT OF people know us as an arboretum but we have national botanic garden status and are a sister to the Botanic Gardens in Glasnevin.
I’ve been here since 2006. I live on site and my working day starts at 8am when I meet with the team. We have a staff of seven here, four gardeners and three guide staff.
Kilmacurragh is particularly famous for its rare and unusual conifers, many from the Southern Hemisphere.
Half of my day is outdoors and half in. We get a lot of visiting societies, so much of my time is spent preparing for those. Last weekend we had the International Dendrology Society, 30 people from all over the world coming for a rare and unusual conifer identification workshop.
Kilmacurragh was home to the Acton family for generations and the gardens date back to 1697 when they were first laid out.
Originally they would have been quite formal in appearance, an 18th century landscaped park similar to Kilruddery in Bray. But in the 19th century it was overhauled by Thomas Acton and became a much wilder, Robinsonian-style garden. It’s very famous among visitors for its spring rhododendrons, but one of the things I’ve been working on in recent years is extending its season of colours.
We have planted 80,000 spring bulbs and have the longest herbaceous border in Co Wicklow, which is designed to come into its own in autumn. We’re working to bring in more colour in winter too. We planted 8,000 snowdrops last year.
Much of my day is taken up answering e-mails and queries from everyone from PhD students to visiting groups. At the moment, we’ve a student studying the toxicity of the nectar of rhododendrons. This morning I was talking to the people who run the Wicklow Gardens Festival.
There’s a lot of travel involved in the work, with expeditions all over the world, so I might be away anywhere from China to Chile, but if I’m here some part of my day will be spent labelling.
We always put the common name wherever possible, but the reason we use the Latin name is that it is the universal language of flowers. What we know as a bluebell is known as something else in the US, for example. We often find the original plant labels when we are digging, giving us the date a plant was first planted, which is terrific.
I'll finish up at 4.30pm and, when everybody is gone I have the place to myself, which is lovely. Of course, I have my own favourite plant, it's the Puya alpestris– when it's in bloom it has metre-long shoots of flowers the colour of peacock's feathers.
In conversation with SANDRA O'CONNELL