From the ecological landscape architect whose latest attraction is a swimming pond to an artistically scientific botanical painter, Michael Kellyand Gemma Tiptonprofile four influential figures in the world of Irish gardens.
Susan Sex - Botanical Painter:"Botanical painting," says Susan Sex, "is a bit like cooking. The very famous names are men, but the vast majority of people who do it are women."
"A bit like cooking" is a good description, too, for a science that often rises to an art. Both practical and pleasurable, intellectually important and aesthetically pleasing, botanical painting is at last becoming popular again.
Painting flowers for scientific study flourished in a time before photography, providing a vital visual record of categories of blooms from around the world. During a period when tulip bulbs were worth their weight in gold, pineapples were a status symbol and people would travel the country to look at remarkable trees, botanical drawing and painting caught the fleeting beauty of flowers, as well as providing important information for scientific study. Botanical art was also a way for pioneering women to travel (to places as exotic as Burma and Suriname) with a creative, useful role to play.
Colour photography changed all that, of course, and it is ironic that the tool we invented to help us preserve memories now means we spend far less time actually looking at the things we want to remember. The countless hours Sex will spend on capturing a single orchid are as much about a love of her subject as they are about the creation of an object.
Sex discovered her passion for botanical painting in Youghal. "I was untrained as an artist, although I had gone to classes while I was au-pairing in France for a year. I had also had a great art teacher in school, Palm Skerrit. She was brilliant." Moving from Dublin to Co Cork, where her husband had taken on a new job, meant moving to a place where roadsides were still undeveloped (this was 30 years ago, after all) and where all manner of beautiful plants grew, unnoticed in the verges. "The first to really catch my attention was an orchid growing out of a stone wall. It was purple, with these amazing leaves - it looked so exotic."
Perhaps there is another irony in the fact that, as orchids proliferate in fancy restaurants, hotels and hair salons, we are slowly and steadily losing the natural habitats of native Irish orchids. Some can still be found in neglected spots, however, to reward those who take the time to stop and look. Sex, who teaches at Burren College of Art for a week each August, and contributed to the 32 stamps that make up An Post's wild-flower series, takes a positive view of her work. "Botanical painting lost its importance. People considered it something Victorian and fussy and old, a ladies-painting-flowers kind of thing. Now it's come full circle, because people are so interested in the environment and in horticulture, and they are seeing it with fresh eyes."
Returning to Dublin, Sex was introduced to Brendan Sayers, an orchid specialist at the National Botanic Gardens. "It took off then. Brendan was fantastically helpful. Without him as a botanical adviser I would have been working in the dark." The botanic gardens are, according to Sex, one of Dublin's best-kept secrets. "They're a fantastic resource, and they're free to visit. There are the wonderful glasshouses and grounds, plus the archive, which has more than 3,000 pieces, some more than 200 years old." They include the 35 paintings that Sex created for the book Ireland's Wild Orchids, with text by Sayers. "Botanical drawing and painting is about accuracy and aesthetics," says Sex. "It's how you combine those that makes them art. Everyone's looking for accuracy, truth and beauty. We all come to them, but by our own route." GT
Paul Martin - Garden Designer: When Paul Martin did well in his Inter Cert exams his parents gave him a glasshouse as a reward. "Everyone else in my year was asking for cash," he says, laughing.
Even at that tender age, Martin was already something of a pro in the garden, having entered competitions in his native Dundalk, Co Louth, at four years of age. "My grandfather and granduncle were founder members of the local garden society, and because they were on the committee and couldn't enter competitions, they used to put my name down instead."
Martin did his first paid gardening job at 16. "A neighbour took a chance on me to design their garden, and I got a friend to take some photos when we were done." The following year Martin had an interview with the National Botanic Gardens and brought the photos along as his portfolio. Suitably impressed, the interview board offered him a three-year scholarship. He describes his alma mater as a wonderful institution. "The standards were very conservative. You learned how to prepare soil properly and know your plants. I think that ethos was lost for a while, but it's coming back now."
Martin set up a landscaping business within a week of finishing his studies. "I used to travel around Dundalk on a bike. Ireland was very different back then. There wasn't any work for people coming out of school, and there certainly wasn't much of a living in landscaping, either. There was no money around back then, but I was an industrious little bee, and I made enough to live on." Since then Martin has built a substantial portfolio of residential and commercial customers. He counts Jeremy Irons and Seán Quinn as clients and has done major garden designs at the Nuremore Hotel and Country Club and at Quinn's Slieve Russell Hotel.
Residential design still accounts for 70 per cent of his work. Does he have a signature style? "I think my gardens are practical. I like them to be outdoor livingrooms to the extent that they co-ordinate with inside. The design should flow seamlessly from inside to out. I use contemporary materials, but planting is still key."
In 2002 he took part in the Royal Horticultural Society's show at Tatton Park, near Manchester. Why the move into show gardens? "I suppose I wanted to raise my game, and entering shows helps to do that. A very shrewd businessman once told me that if you can be the best at what you do, you will always be busy. The English are best in the world when it comes to gardening. I had been going to Chelsea since I was a teenager, and I always thought the standards there were stratospheric. Irish gardening was 20 years behind the UK. We just didn't have the history or the money. But I think in the time since then we have probably narrowed that gap by maybe 15 years."
Martin won a bronze at Tatton Park; in 2003 he followed it up with a silver at Chelsea; last year, at Hampton Court Palace Flower Show, outside London, he won a silver gilt medal. He describes Chelsea as the "Oscars of garden design" and taking part as a "mad adrenalin rush".
His garden at Bloom, called Dragonflies and Flutterbies, is designed as a place of quiet relaxation. "The word flutterby is a Spoonerism but also is what butterflies used to be called. We have stainless-steel dragonflies with glass wings suspended over a pool, the idea being that you can sit and watch the dragonflies dance on the water."
Martin is enthusiastic about Bloom. "On one level it's just great for us to have our own show. To be invited to the big RHS events in the UK you need a track record from other shows, and that is why Bloom is so important for young Irish designers. Before now they had to go to the UK to get show experience. It's also great here that you can buy plants - you can't at Chelsea, for example. People can go along and view a garden and then head into the marquee and buy the plants that they saw there. Everyone wins in that situation: the designer, the nurseries and the public." MK
Contact Paul Martin at www.paulmartindesigns.com
Elma Fenton - Ecological Landscape Architect:
If you catch people doing lengths of a pond at Bloom this weekend, don't be tempted to call the Garda - they're doing nothing illegal. The pond in question, a natural swimming pool, is part of Elma Fenton's show garden for the event.
Fenton, who is from Monasterevin, in Co Kildare, studied horticulture at the now defunct College of Horticulture at An Grianán in Termonfeckin, Co Louth, then specialised in landscape architecture. "When I qualified I travelled quite a bit in Europe, Australia and America, and I was heavily influenced by the different design techniques I saw there. I always felt I wanted something more than horticulture, and I was very interested in architecture. There wasn't a lot of work for horticulturists at the time in Ireland, so I enrolled in the University of Greenwich and studied landscape architecture there."
Having graduated for a second time, Fenton worked as a freelance designer in the UK before returning to Kildare at the turn of the millennium. Since then she has built up a substantial design consultancy, dividing her time between private clients and high-profile one-off projects, such as the show garden at Bloom. "The beauty with the private clients is that there is such a quick turnaround, so the work comes to fruition much quicker. That's why I still enjoy the private work so much.
"The private clients who come to us fall into two broad categories: those that have a really clear picture of what they want and those that don't have a clue what they want and are coming to us for ideas."
What sort of budget does she normally work with? "It really is a case of how long is a piece of string and depends on the type of garden and the materials being used. It's not all super-wealthy people with enormous gardens, though. We have people from both ends of the spectrum: from redesigns of small city gardens right up to large estates."
Her high-profile projects include designs at Killashee House Hotel, in Co Kildare, Farnham Estate, in Co Cavan, and Waterford Castle. "The larger projects are fantastically fulfilling, but they can take a long time to deliver - anything up to three years."
At the Delta Centre in Carlow, which provides services for people with learning disabilities, Fenton designed a garden named Circle of Life. It incorporates many of her trademark ecological designs and is full of sensory delights, complementing the centre's innovative multisensory unit. Water jets and a bubble sculpture provide sounds and sights, while dancing rods with glass sculptures play with the light during day and night.
"First and foremost it is a meeting place for conversation, rest and play," she says. "I wanted to create a strong sense of arrival and place, a garden to evoke emotion."
In Yellow Furze in Co Meath, she designed the Garden of Peace and Tranquillity at the Church of the Assumption, a memorial to the five girls who died in the Navan school bus crash. Five standing stones preserve the memory of these young lives, while five oak seats provide a contemplative resting space for visitors.
Her highest-profile project was her 2005 debut at Chelsea Flower Show, where her Moat and Castle eco-garden won a silver medal and was voted one of the top three gardens to visit at the show. "It's a fantastic experience to be involved, but it is very pressurised. I couldn't believe how tight the space was in which we had to build the garden. I would love to do it all again, but it's an expensive ordeal, and you need lots of sponsorship."
The focus for her Chelsea garden was sustainability. Wild flowers and old apple trees gave it a meadowy feel, and even the hard design had a sustainable edge, in its recycled-glass path and much-discussed swimming pond, which Fenton is re-creating for Bloom. At a time of increasing concern about the wisdom of swimming in heated chlorinated water in an air-conditioned room, the earthy appeal of the swimming pond is obvious.
"There's a beautiful silky feel to the water when you are swimming in it. We use lots of reeds - mainly phragmites - as the border in the pond, and they organically filter the water. The pond is filled from run-off water from the rest of the site, so that it is self-contained. They are quite popular on the Continent, but it had never been done in Ireland or the UK, so I think it really caught the imagination." MKContact Elma Fenton at www.elmafenton.ie
Jimi Blake - Hunting Brook Gardens, Co Wicklow:
Jimi Blake's dog Fred must enjoy some of the finest views of any pet in Ireland. He lies in the morning sun on a battered old couch on the deck of Blake's Co Wicklow home and takes in his owner's remarkable garden and the majestic Wicklow Mountains hulking in the distance.
That chilled-out scene sums up the atmosphere at Hunting Brook, which the 34-year-old opened three years ago near Blessington. It's a booming business - tour buses climb the lanes to bring curious garden lovers from as far afield as the Continent and the US; courses are offered in gardening, cookery, lifestyle and crafts; and Blake runs a garden-design consultancy - but the mood is still one of calm.
Blake's love of gardening comes from his mother. "She was a great gardener and always made gardening fun. I was about seven when I had my first tunnel and I sold plants at the side of the road."
When he was at school Blake spent his free time working in garden centres and herb farms; then he trained at the National Botanic Gardens. "I loved it there. It was great to be in a place where everyone was into gardening." Next Blake landed a job as head gardener at Airfield Gardens, in Dundrum, and over 11 years undertook a mammoth restoration and redesign.
The move back to his native county was, above all, about getting back to basics. "I was tired of the politics and how commercial things were. There comes a point when you have done as much as you can do, and it's time to move on."
Hunting Brook was created in a frenetic period between September 2003 and June 2004. "I was a bit of a stresshead," he says with characteristic understatement.
The 20-acre site is breathtaking. "It's at 900ft [ 275m], so it's a little cold in winter, but the land is so good here and almost totally untouched. Some of the beds are in the same shape as they were during the Famine. If I was on a flat site I would be more reliant on hard design, but the slopes and the views here are built-in design features."
The garden is based around a winding driveway that climbs towards his house, and there is an exotic feel to the planting. "I'm not all that interested in native plants. I love pushing the boundaries and trying to grow things that might not have been grown here before. A lot of the travel I do is about plant hunting. Places such as China, Australia and South Africa are like college for me." He points out with obvious pride a row of Aralia echinocaulis trees sourced on his adventures in China. In the corner of his tunnel is a spectacular Vietnamese Schefflera macrophylla that looks as if it could come to life and make a Day of the Triffids-style grab for poor Fred. "It's great, isn't it? It will probably die when I put it outside."
In keeping with the relaxed approach, there are no manicured lawns in Hunting Brook. "Life's too short for cutting grass."
On a south-facing slope beneath his kitchen window are neat rows of herbs, vegetables and fruits, which are used to feed the weekend hordes.
At the back of the site we walk through a woodland garden, home to a seventh-century ring fort, and on to a spectacular wooded valley through which flows the titular Hunting Brook. It could have been used as a set for Rivendell, the Elvish utopia in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings.
From almost every part of the garden the eye is drawn to Blake's sun-drenched house, a log cabin imported from Poland. For the moment all courses are taught there, with the gardens used as an outdoor classroom for practical demonstrations. There are plans for a dedicated classroom.
An eclectic mix of courses is on offer - everything from garden design to French country cooking, transcendental meditation and watercolour painting.
What characterises a Jimi Blake garden? "Modern and contemporary planting. I don't like old, traditional design, and I really don't like the trend of using hard landscaping. Gardens are about plants, so I let them do the design. Every plant here tells a story - where it came from, who I bought it off."
He is committed to keeping the garden interesting for returning visitors. "I don't like the idea of a garden being static, so nothing is permanent. The garden was known for being about grasses, but now I am getting really into plants and trees. I rip things out in winter and start again. The plants here live in mortal fear."
Contact Jimi Blake at www.huntingbrook.com.