GARDENSLissadell House opens to the public this week, but its once-grand gardens have fallen into neglect. Some ambitious restoration work lies ahead, writes Jane Powers
"Here are brilliant herbaceous borders, there are terraces of rockwork clad with alpine plants and flowers, down in the centre a pool, rank with reeds and bright water plants and over the footpaths pergolas clad with climbing roses."
Thus wrote FH Purchas in 1908 in Estate magazine. He was describing the Lower Garden at Lissadell in Co Sligo, one of the great masterpieces of Edwardian horticulture. It was the showcase for Sir Josslyn Gore-Booth's alpine and herbaceous nursery, one of the foremost in these islands. The garden's bounty also impressed the renowned Swiss alpine expert, Henri Correvon. In the Gardener's Chronicle of 1911 he enthused: "I, for one, shall never forget so brilliant a picture. Here one may find the best of the rock plants, grouped together in colonies of 10, 20 or even in some cases 100 plants, looking as healthy and happy as in their natural homes."
I learned all of this in garden archaeologist Terence Reeves-Smyth's exhaustively-researched unpublished manuscript on Lissadell demesne. And I'm very glad I did, because the north Co Sligo estate today presents a completely different face.
The Lower Garden, scene of Correvon's "brilliant picture", is now shrouded in a green drapery of brambles, ivy and 50-year-old seedling ash trees. The terraces of rockwork - once home to Sir Josslyn's alpine gems - are still there, under the brambles and bracken. But the only dainty plants are scatterings of small kidney-leaved saxifrages, and a lonesome clump of the Turkish woodlander, Omphalodes cappadocica - making a tiny, deep-blue pause in the runaway vegetation. It's a common plant now, but was sufficiently special in 1915 to be illustrated in the nursery's catalogue.
A few coarser herbaceous plants have also survived: wiry Japanese anemone, red-toned rodgersia and a rampant lime-green-foliaged geranium - maybe G. nodosum - with pretty mauve-purple flowers. The central pool, now a marshy depression, is fringed with gargantuan tongues of skunk cabbage and long spears of iris. A eucalyptus and a couple of cordylines rise through the wilderness, while here and there, abandoned box shrubs, once sharply coiffed, are showing the shaggy results of a half-century of bad hair days.
Sir Josslyn's propagating and nursery operations were based in another walled garden on the estate, the Upper Garden. This too has succumbed to neglect, except for some old, espaliered apple trees. Fruit, vegetables, tomatoes and cut flowers were also grown for the market. Some of them, no doubt, were cultivated in the eight or 10 glasshouses, and numerous cold frames outside the red brick walls. These, sadly, have also been overcome by Mother Nature.
There's no sign of Lissadell's bulb farm, which flourished at the beginning of the last century, mass-producing daffodils and anemones, and breeding new varieties (Terence Reeves-Smyth lists 78 narcissus cultivars introduced by the nursery). And in the beautiful limestone stable yard, there is no sound of industry, no sound at all, except for the twitter of two swallows, darting in and out of the old buildings, looking perhaps for a quiet nesting place.
What happened to Lissadell? The short cut through a long, convoluted and tragic tale is that after Sir Josslyn's death in 1944, his mentally fragile heir was deemed incapable of managing the estate. Through no fault of the Gore-Booths - who lost control of the running of the property - the estate was mismanaged, its assets stripped, its woodlands plundered, and all but 400 of its 3,000 acres sold to the Land Commission.
The last of the Gore-Booths to live there, grandson of Sir Josslyn (also named Josslyn) made some improvements, but he was forced to sell up last autumn. The new owners, Eddie Walsh and Constance Cassidy, have a major job on their hands.
Yet they are full of enthusiasm: they have started restoration work on the fine house, an austere Grecian Revival building. It will be open to the public in a few days, furnished with many of the Gore-Booths' historic possessions, which they have managed to buy at auction. Among these, is, according to Eddie, "the most expensive bear in Ireland". The stuffed mammal, for which he paid €4,200, was shot by either Sir Henry Gore-Booth, or his butler, Kilgallon, on an expedition to the Arctic.
There are plans for the restoration of the gardens and grounds - where there are currently six men working, under the supervision of Constance's brother, John Joe, a civil engineer. The neglect of the decades is gradually being peeled back to reveal the expert workmanship that was the fabric of this once model estate. Walls and paving are being uncovered, and an elegantly built stone drain that runs along the front of the property is being cleared. City folk might laugh at my remarking on this feature, but its renovation will allow important fields in front of the house to shed excess water. There will be no more rushes or lady's smock, but in their place, a handful of pedigree cattle will cut picturesque figures against the backdrop of Sligo Bay, Knocknarea and the Ox Mountains.
The Upper Garden has two full-time rotavators - a pair of Tamworth pigs - rooting out the weeds and scrub. And outside its walls, the footings of the many glasshouses are being released from half a century of entangled vegetation. Eddie hopes that in time, a nursery or garden centre might once again set up operations here.
In the Lower Garden, nature still reigns supreme, but part of the "three- to five-year plan" is to bring this enclosure back to its Edwardian magnificence. It's a massive, expensive, and ambitious project. I hope that it succeeds, and that in a few years' time, the words that opened this article may once again be written about this precious piece of Sligo. jpowers@irish-times.ie
Lissadell House, Drumcliffe, Co Sligo is open daily from June 1st until September 12th, 10 a.m.-1 p.m. and 2-5 p.m. Admission to house: adult, €6; child, €3. There is no admission charge to the grounds at present.