The influence of the Gulf Stream has brought some interesting visitors to a west Cork garden, writes Jane Powers
Throngs of blazing orange montbretia line either side of the drive, making a jolly welcoming committee to those who visit Mary and Bob Walsh's garden in west Cork. The tangerine-topped Crocosmia x crocosmiiflora, originally from South Africa, is a real "Cork special", invading hedgerows and roadsides with such ease that it has become an honorary native plant in this part of the country.
In fact, it's gone so native that some gardeners look on it as a weed, and refuse to let it set foot on their soil. So it's particularly nice to see it given full legal status in the Walshes' seaside patch, Cois Cuain (which means beside the coast or harbour).
Another South African Cork special (one that's always given star treatment, and not left hanging around outside like a would-be gatecrasher) is to be found a little further on. Chondropetalum tectorum is one of the restios, or Cape reeds - plants which take the place of grasses in the unique fynbos vegetation of South Africa's Cape peninsula.
I must admit that in the past I harboured a somewhat cynical attitude toward restios as garden plants. I couldn't help feeling that in some gardens they were trophy plants, proud indicators that the gardener was not just fashionable, but also oh-so-blessed with the mild climate necessary to keep these near-tender, expensive (and not always handsome) plants.
But after seeing Mary Walsh's two-metre mound of Chondropetalum swinging freely in the sea breeze, its deep-green stems tipped with rusty inflorescences whooshing to and fro, I have revised my opinion. Yes, restios are pretty cool plants - as long you have the space to let them do their thing and the wind to help them do it. And when the Atlantic Ocean is available as a backdrop for their breeze-dance, they are very, very cool indeed. The Cape reeds, although not able to cope with prolonged winter frosts and wet, are tolerant of salt spray and high winds - making them ideal for a seaside garden.
The sea - with all its beauties and all its treacheries - is, of course, what gives Cois Cuain its special character. The three-acre garden is at Kilcrohane on the Sheep's Head peninsula, a bony finger scrabbling out into the Atlantic. The land formation is so narrow that salt may be blown from the water on either side and dumped onto the Walsh garden. And it is at the mercy of the southwesterlies that are channelled up through Dunmanus Bay.
But, it is also the sea, with its ameliorating Gulf Stream, that makes this a place to envy. The temperature does not fluctuate greatly, and frost is rare, so that plants of borderline hardiness are able to survive. The water, with its continually shifting patterns of blue, green, grey and white, and its immense capacity for freeing the spirit, is the most dramatic and beautiful background setting that any garden can have. And as a practical bonus, it yields up seaweed for fertiliser, and interesting bits of flotsam and jetsam - lengths of rope, driftwood and buoys - that can be artistically arranged about the acreage.
All the plants must be wind- and salt-proof, says Mary, who is the gardener (Bob is "rock-mover, hole-digger and wheelbarrow-maintenance man"). The first line of planting is just a few metres from the sea at high tide, and is made up of the prickly-leaved Olearia macrodonta and the yellow-daisy-flowered Brachyglottis 'Sunshine'. Sheltering behind these stalwart New Zealanders is a mixed border of shrubs and herbaceous plants. Looking splendid for my late summer visit is a sky-blue hydrangea, a perfect match for the azure sea, and named (appropriately enough) 'Blue Wave'.
Next to it is a clump of the near-blue-leaved Melianthus major, an architectural plant that Mary has placed throughout the garden. It is one of many South African natives that have proved able for the Cois Cuain challenge of salt and wind.
Among the others are agapanthus, dierama, watsonia, red-hot poker and gazania. In fact, many southern hemisphere plants are very happy on this narrow, rocky spit of west Cork. Mary, like any self-respecting Cork gardener, is a bit of a collector, and I would do her a disservice if I did not mention a few of her more unusual specimens (non-collectors should skip to the beginning of the next paragraph): Beaucarnea recurvata and Furcraea longaeva from Mexico; Senna corymbosa and Solanum rantonnetii from Argentina, Justicia carnea, the flamingo plant from south America (and many, many more, including five species of restio).
The point, of course, of the preceding list, is that the plants on it are usually grown in glasshouses, but they've found a congenial home here, thousands of miles north of their native lands. Many of them are growing on a steep rockery behind the house, where the warmth-retaining stone and the south-facing aspect act as a giant storage heater. A colony of massive, spiny agaves from Mexico and southern US signals to even the most casual of observers that this is a very, very special garden. And the greatest joy of it is, in Bob Walsh's incomparable words, that it is "as close to the sea as it is possible to get, without becoming a boat."
Cois Cuain, Kilcrohane, Bantry, Co Cork: Open by appointment, and during the West Cork Garden Trail in June. Admission: €5 (which is donated to a local charity). 027-67070, www.aseasidegarden.net
DIARY DATE: Today, 2.30-5 p.m., Howth & Sutton Horticultural Society Autumn Show, at St Nessan's Community School, Baldoyle