Garden of delight in Dalkey for €745,000

It’s all about the gardens at The Gables, which is really saying something, as the location is pretty fantastic too. Barnhill Road is five minutes’ walk from Glenageary Dart station, and winds down into Dalkey village. The Barnhill Stores are right next door, so you’ll never run out of milk, and it would make a lovely place to raise a family.

The current owners have lived happily here for the best part of 40 years. There’s a new kitchen, but apart from that they have done very little to the house, save import some style ideas from their years living in Africa. They point to the transformations neighbours have made in case you’re looking for inspiration. Some of these houses have been extended and remodelled to turn classic semi-detacheds into mini-palaces.

Instead, the owners of The Gables turned their hands to the garden. At the front there’s nice planting, and gravelled off-street parking for at least three cars (though really you can walk and get public transport to pretty much anywhere from here), but wait: go through the house to the sunroom, to discover another world.

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The sunroom itself is sweet, and sitting sipping coffee I have a strong sense of not wanting to leave. Outside is a profusion of plants, gravel paths, raised beds, patios and fruit trees. “We designed it so we don’t need a gardener,” the owner says. “There are no lawns to mow, and the plants are drought resistant, so there’s no watering either.”

Inside, there are four bedrooms, 154sq m (1,658sq ft) of accommodation, and room to improve. The house is for sale by private treaty with Sherry FitzGerald for €745,000; to be compared with the similar-sized Fernlea further along the road, which sold for €700,000 in January, and Termon, for €720,000, last July.

Now their children have grown, the owners are looking for something smaller. "A family needs to move into this house," they say. They're looking forward to finding their new place, so that their son, cabinet maker Robert Trench of Studio Trench, can get stuck into making it into a home. "Growing up here was wonderful," says Robert. "We walked to school. If it's sunny you can go down to Sandycove to swim, and when there's snow on Killiney Hill it's magical."