BELOW Skibereen towards Baltimore, the sea sends long watery fingers inland on an unspoiled coast green pastures and woodlands sweep down gently to quiet inlet where sea-birds circle and swoop. Here, secluded behind old mossy walls and plantations of beech and lime, is the romantic garden of Creagh.
The mild south west has long attracted garden-makers and plants people, lured by the range of exotics which can be grown in the moist climate. Two such adventurers, Peter and Gwendoline Harold-Barry, set out in search of a suitable site for such an undertaking in 1945. Happily, they found an ideal location a charming Regency house within its own, small demense presented enormous possibilities. The encircling woodlands provided essential shelter from gales and salt-laden winds. The land was rich - perfect for garden making. Near the house some old pines, thuja and false cypress provided evergreen variation and away to one side a serpentine pond offered particular possibilities. Traditionally referred to as a mill pond, its main function and contribution must always have been ornamental, providing a still, mirror-like calm, sheltered by greenery from the contrasting shore. Close by, a walled garden offered a different scope.
Altogether, Creagh was a perfect challenge for romantic gardeners and the proud new owners were equal to it. It became a life's work and they have left us a richly atmospheric and highly charged treasure.
THEIR earliest plantings have matured nicely, enormous pittosporums, myrtles and clethra clamour for notice. A fine shrub of the Co Cork Azara microphylla `Variegata' wafts vanilla scent on the April air from a height approaching 30 feet - the best specimen I have seen. Magnolia Campbelli, with enormous cupped flowers in purplish pink held flamboyantly on naked branches, vies with camelias and rhododendrons for attention.
No, it is not at all like the proverbial wallpaper catalogue to which the late Russel Page so aptly compared the majority of rhododendron gardens. Here the plants are used with discretion and style, varied elements selected and combined to make a series of particular scenes.
The heart of the place is the old pond and here the Harold-Barrys drew inspiration from the paintings of Douanier Rousseau. Even in spring it recalls an exotic jungle. Tree ferns, cordylines and trachycarpus combine with fatsia in a tall, boldy architectural show near the end of the pond. At ground level, the giant spears of phormium stand erect above swathes of evergreen, leathery fern and emerging yellow spathes of skunk cabbage.
Arums, water-lily pads and gunnera are already beginning to make a presence and soon with agapanthus and crocosmia's grassy spears will mesmerise onlookers. Flower colour will be there aplenty but it is the skilful and exuberant use of structural foliage and stems by the water's edge that intoxicates and overwhelms.
By the end of the pond and surveying a vista of the shoreline, a ruined Gothic tower lurks mysteriously; surely more charming now in its delapidation. Paths through lawn and woodland encourage exploration in different, directions. A contrasting surprise awaits in the walled garden where order and neatness give precision to lines of vegetables and fruit bushes, immaculately presented in their box-edged beds. Here the regime is strictly bio-dynamic and a perfect model of what a kitchen garden should be. One section is devoted to farm fowl - turkeys, ducks, geese and assorted hens - who provide a cacophony very, different to the bird song outside or to the calling and chattering on the shore.
Soon there will be azaleas and abutilons to keep the rhodos and magnolias company. Then later, embothriums hollowed by fuchsia and hydrangeas in every shade of pink, mauve, purple and blue.
Creagh is a place for all seasons, speaks of great love and generosity on the part of its makers and of a continuing abiding love and generosity on the parts of Martin Sherry and Ken Lambert who care for it and carry forward the vision of the Harold-Barrys.
Creagh covers over 20 acres, three miles south of Skibereen and is open all year round between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. Go and see it and be calmed, soothed and captivated.