Name:Tanya Paine Address:Blarney, Co Cork Dwelling:Gate Lodge, Blarney Castle Here since:2000
I'm the head gardener at Blarney Castle and I live in the front gate lodge. I've been here for six or seven years - I got the job in 2000. I started off as a gardener and then became head gardener after a year. I live here with my fiance and our dog, Sammy.
I'm actually from Wicklow. I was a chef for years, but when I got tired of all the cooking, I used to enjoy gardening. Eventually, I left cooking altogether and decided to do a course in the National Botanic Gardens. One thing lead to another and I ended up here.
The gardens aren't at all as well known as the castle, but we've been renovating them for the past three or four years under the new owner, Sir Charles Colthurst. We've put in a new fern garden and we've done a bit more work on the walled garden. There hadn't been much done here for a long time, so we're getting the whole place up to speed.
Most people just come down for the Blarney Stone and aren't even aware of the gardens, which are worth seeing in themselves. A lot of people are amazed at the scale of the gardens and that they hadn't heard of them. I haven't actually kissed the stone; I'm saving it for a special occasion. It's one of the top tourist attractions in the country, and there is a surprising number of Irish visitors. A lot of the tour buses stop off here only briefly, en route to Kerry and Killarney, so many people miss out because they don't get a huge amount of time in the beautiful grounds, which have rivers running through them and a lake.
The castle has been there since 1450, built by the kings of Munster. The present mansion was built in 1880, and most of the gardens were laid out around then. The gate lodge I live in went up in the 1880s at the same time as the house, in the same style and with the same stone. It's got stone griffins on the roof, which are pretty distinctive.
I like living here. It's a job where you have to be on site. It's not exactly nine-to-five work. A couple of other people who work on the estate also live in houses here, which is becoming increasingly rare. That's dying out - staff living on the estate. It's good for the the grounds when staff live there. When it's your home you naturally care about it a lot more than if it was just your place of work. When I started I never thought I'd be here so long, but you get very settled, and it's great to see the garden develop over time - you make changes and see them grow. There's a sense that this is my garden too.
In conversation with Davin O'Dwyer