Sometime around 1728, just after he'd built his fine new house in Castlelyons, Co Cork, Jasper Pyne looked around him and said, "This place could do with a few trees. I think I'll get that cousin of mine to plant some." So the tree-planting cousin came to stay. And stay. And stay. He didn't leave for 40 years. But he planted beautiful trees - oak, beech, sweet chestnut, ash, Scots pine - many of which are still standing now, venerable arboreal personalities dominating the croquet lawn, orchard and parkland around Ballyvolane House. After the cousin's time, there were further spells of planting. Rhododendron ponticum, with its luminous mauve trumpets, was all the rage at the end of the 18th century, and rashes of it were enthusiastically planted throughout country estates. And later on, the Victorians went batty over the sombre, dark laurel, Prunus laurocerasus, either clipped into thick leathery-leaved hedges or planted in coverts to offer shelter for game. But left untended at Ballyvolane - for who could afford the kind of labour the Victorians were accustomed to? - the laurel hedges became gawky trees, and the coverts spread into a dense, lightless jungle, smothering all life beneath. And meanwhile, the beguiling Rhododendron ponticum had turned into a gross land-devouring monster, seeding and suckering, and advancing three feet a year. "You can't ever kill it," says Jeremy Green, who now lives at Ballyvolane with his wife Merrie. "Even if you burn it, it pops up again." But undaunted, they do battle with the rhododendron and the laurel, hacking them back from where they knock at the walled garden, and freeing the woodland from their grasp.
Recently the Greens' energies have been concentrated on something they've been dreaming about for years. At the base of a sloping field, furnished with a few, well-placed, noble oaks and ashes, are three ponds. They were part of the grand plan when the house was built. "They had been dug with bucket and shovel, just two feet deep," says Merrie. "They were really an illusion of water for people to look at." One of the ponds had never been finished, and all three needed restoring. A grant from the North Cork Enterprise Board allowed them to proceed with the unspeakably messy, muddy task of clearing and redigging them - much deeper this time, to allow fish to be kept, and summer swims to be swum.
You can visit Ballyvolane this weekend to examine the final stages of the pond restoration (stout shoes advised), or you can just admire the majestic trees and interesting shrubs. The hydrangeas, their heavy mops suffused with blue on this acid soil, are particularly good. And in the walled garden you can count the dozens of tortoiseshells and red admirals sipping nectar from the flat, puce heads of the Sedum `Autumn Joy'. Proceeds from the gate go to aid both the Hospice Movement and another restoration down the road in Fermoy, where the walls of the early 19thcentury Christ Church are in dire need of refurbishment. Four other gardens are open, including Louise Hallinan's at Brideweir, not far from Ballyvolane. The actual horticultural end of things here is only 16 years old, but swathes of ancient, rook-inhabited beech trees around the house - an old rectory built in 1822 - make it all seem much, much older. Louise's genius lies not just in being able to create a precociously mature garden - and one where the clever design ensures that things are revealed only bit by bit - but also in her artistry with plants, many of which are grown from seed or cuttings. Late clematis - like `Gravetye Beauty', `Perle d'Azur' and `Etoile Rose' - and long-blooming roses ensure that there is still plenty of romance, even in September. Carefully-harmonising tapestries of colour are woven throughout the garden, and late performers like the white-eyed, blue Geranium `Buxton's Variety' scramble over the mounded foliage of plants that did their bit earlier in the season.
Gardens open this weekend for the Fermoy Flower Festival
Ballyvolane House, Castlelyons, Co. Cork. Tel: 025-36349. Open today and Sunday, 10 a.m. 6 p.m. Admission: £2.50. Ballyvolane is a member of the Hidden Ireland organisation.
Brideweir, Aghern, Conna, Co Cork. Tel: 025-36386. Open today and Sunday 11 a.m. 6.p.m. Admission: £2.00. Plants for sale.
Annesgrove Gardens, Castletownroche, Co Cork. Tel: 022-26145. Open today 10 a.m. 5 p.m., Sunday 1 p.m. 6 p.m. Admission: £2.80
Glebe House, Farrahy, Kildorrery, Co Cork. Tel: 02225182. Open today 11 a.m. 5 p.m., Sunday 2 p.m. 5 p.m. Admission: £2.
Rockmills, Kildorrery, Co Cork. Tel: 022-251287. Open today 11 a.m. 5 p.m., Sunday 2 p.m. 5 p.m. Admission: £2.
More details of the Fermoy Flower Festival can be found on the new Blackwater Valley website: http://www.blackwater.ie