A natural pool amid ivy-clad columns lends a modern air to traditional Fairbrook
In 1837 about 140 people worked in the busy paper mill at Fairbrook in Kilmeaden,
Co Waterford. A few years later, during the Famine, the huge wheels were put to grinding corn. Later again, the property was converted to a woollen mill, and the red-brick-and-stone buildings were suffused with steam and fumes as fleeces were washed and dyed and processed. The factory fell silent in 1926, the buildings began to crumble, and brambles and birds made them their own. When Clary Mastenbroek and her late husband, Wout Muller, bought Fairbrook House, in 1992, "we thought we had just a bit of a garden. It was so overgrown we didn't even look". So the three and a half acres around the house came as a complete surprise.
The pair began to work their way out from the house, cutting back and clearing. It soon became apparent that the land was very, very rich in two elements: stone and brick. There were negligible amounts of soil. Many of the mill's old structures had returned to the ground from which they had been raised, leaving mounds of masonry embedded in the earth - and making gardening a nightmare.
Yet the garden is now full of vegetation, including bold arrangements of bamboo, phormium, Paulownia tomentosa, ferns and grasses; and multiple plantings of hawthorn, Sorbus 'Pink Pagoda', golden robinia, shiny-barked Prunus serrula and other trees. All are in the pink of health. Mastenbroek laughs as she declares: "People say: 'You must have very good soil.' But I don't have any soil. There were buildings everywhere, so it is all stone and lime. I make my own compost, and every year I fill in the borders, because they're sinking all the time. When I put in shrubs and trees I give them blood, fish and bone, and a bag of good compost."
First, however, at least some of the debris had to be taken from the ground and somehow disposed of. Being artists, and imaginative thinkers, Muller and Mastenbroek's solution was to build anew with the unearthed stone. Inventive structures began to rise: curious totem-like obelisks, intimate enclosures, meandering paths and brick pillars. The latter grew into a pergola - now clothed in 'Kiftsgate' and 'Rambling Rector' roses, Clematis 'The President', C. montana and blue wisteria. "My husband built the walls, and I did the pavement," says Mastenbroek. "As soon as we conquered a few square yards, we planted it, so that things could start growing."
And grow they did. The difficult, stony soil, although a misery to cultivate, provided excellent drainage in winter, and warmed up early in spring. Frost is rare in this sheltered spot, shielded by belts of woodland and bounded by the little River Dawn. Near-tender plants - which were impossible to grow in the couple's last home, in northern Holland - thrive here: the deeply-serrated South African Melianthus major, and, from Australia, the acid-yellow-flowered Acacia dealbata and the climbing Billardiera longiflora, with its outrageous purple berries.
Italian cypress, dwarf fan palm (Chamaerops humilis) and a dainty olive turn a quiet niche into a Mediterranean vignette - framed in rosemary. Other Mediterranean species, such as cistus and lavender, flourish in the limey, mortar-rich soil. The latter plant is especially effective next to a former warehouse that now houses a gallery and Mastenbroek's studio. Two cultivars of the hazy purple herb, 'Munstead' and 'Hidcote', and the species L. angustifolia have been planted en masse and edged with the pure white David Austin rose 'Winchester Cathedral'.
This is a garden of rooms and corridors: rectangular plots are nestled into remnants of old buildings, or are edged with Muller and Mastenbroek's quirky, hand-built walls. Each space has its own theme. In the Fire Garden the plants have a rubicund glow, including Lychnis chalcedonica and L. coronaria, Geum 'Redwings', and the fleshy stonecrops, Sedum 'Herbstfreude' and S. spectabile. Another area is devoted solely to green-flowering plants, among them Helleborus foetidus, Heuchera cylindrica 'Greenfinch' and Kniphofia 'Little Maid'.
The garden seems expertly designed, but, claims Mastenbroek, "we had no plan really.
As we were finishing one part, we'd have a
plan for the next. It grew more or less organically. Sometimes you'd want to plant a tree, but there would be foundations in the way, so you'd have to change your idea."
Mastenbroek is fond of her hedge clippers - shaping box, privet and evergreen oak into domes, spirals, clouds and pyramids. A Lonicera nitida maze is a softly moulded labyrinth that must be shorn weekly in the growing season.
To Irish eyes it all looks very Dutch and ordered, but not to Mastenbroek's visitors from home. "Dutch people say this is really an Irish garden, because of all the stone."
One feature, however, that has definitely been borrowed from continental Europe is the natural swimming pool, where the water is cleaned by marginal and aquatic plants. Here, the pool's content is pumped through two shallow reservoirs of irises, arum lilies, Korean rice and other pretty moisture-lovers. "It is wonderful to swim in," exclaims Mastenbroek. "You are looking into the bed with dragonflies and birds and bees."
Fairbrook's swimming pool is spectacularly encased in the ruins of the mill's dye house - four jagged, ivy-clad brick columns soaring romantically above a liquid mirror. Reflected in this Co Waterford garden's most futuristic feature, they are a dramatic reminder of the property's industrial past.
Fairbrook House, Kilmeaden, Co Waterford, 051-384657, www.fairbrook-house.com. Open May 1st to September 30th by appointment only; €5.50