In an Irish country garden

A host of distinguished designers and plantspeople have left their mark on the landscapes of Laois, writes FIONNUALA FALLON

IT’S WELL KNOWN for its sleepy riverine landscapes and the wild beauty of its magnificent Slieve Bloom mountain range, as well as for a string of handsome, 18th-century estate villages that includes Abbeyleix, Durrow and Castletown. But many of the country’s gardeners will also know Co Laois for its rich horticultural heritage and for the stories of the many distinguished landscape gardeners, designers and plantspeople of the past who have left their mark here.

It was from the Victorian gardens of Ballykilcavan House near Stradbally, for example, that Ireland’s most celebrated landscape gardener, William Robinson, supposedly made his famously defiant and vandalous exit back in 1861, extinguishing the stoves and flinging open all the doors and windows of the heated glasshouses during a bitterly frosty winter’s night, shortly after a furious row with his employer.

Meanwhile, another great 19th-century Irish landscape gardener, John Sutherland, was responsible for creating the famous pleasure gardens of the 614-acre Ballyfin demesne (now a very exclusive hotel) near Mountrath, which were recently restored under the expertly watchful eye of gardener Jim Reynolds. Elsewhere in Laois, the handsome market town of Abbeyleix was the one-time home of the garden writer and plantsman, Murray Hornibrook, while the world-renowned garden design duo that was Sir Edwin Lutyens and Gertrude Jekyll also left their mark on the county almost a century ago, in the shape of the formal gardens of Heywood, near Ballinakill.

But while Laois is so often celebrated for its historic gardens, this midland county's more modern-day gardens are somehow less well-known – an omission that Laois Co Council hopes to put to rights with the launch this week of the Laois Garden Trail ( laoistourism.ie).

“We were getting lots of phone calls from gardening groups and tour operators planning on visiting Laois, who wanted to know what gardens they could take in during a one- or two-day tour of the county,” explains the council’s recently appointed tourism officer, Dominic Redden. “So we decided to develop the idea of a garden trail that would take in historic, OPW-managed gardens such as Emo Court and Heywood, as well as the county’s privately owned gardens.”

Many of the latter are in the hands of some of Ireland’s most distinguished horticulturists and landscape designers, and most have been created within the last couple of decades, proving the fact that the long-established Laois tradition of creating exceptionally fine gardens survives to this day.

Thus the newly-minted Laois Garden Trail includes the lovely four-acre Gash Gardens in Castletown ( gashgardens.ie), originally the creation of the late Noel Keenan but now in the capable hands of his daughter Mary Keenan, the horticulturist, broadcaster, garden writer and executive director of the Tree Council of Ireland, and her husband Ross Doyle, also a qualified horticulturist. Once a farm paddock grazed by cattle, this densely planted and expertly maintained country garden is home to colourful herbaceous borders, fine specimen trees and a river walk along the banks of the Nore.

Another wonderful Laois garden featured on the trail is the organically managed potager-style kitchen garden of Dunmore Country School, just outside Durrow in the south of the county ( dunmorecountryschool.ie), which Frenchman Tanguy de Toulgoët and his wife Isabelle have created over the past 10 years. Exuberantly colourful, astonishingly productive and filled with a mouthwatering array of flowers, herbs, vegetables and fruit, Dunmore is living testimony to de Toulgoët's exceptional talents as a horticulturist. If his name seems oddly familiar, it's because some readers will know him from his TV appearances as the head gardener of the recently restored Clondeglass walled garden, yet another exciting Laois garden owned by another exceptional gardener, Dermot O'Neill – but one that's sadly not yet open to the public.

De Toulgoët is also the former head-gardener of Castle Durrow, the 18th-century house (now luxury hotel) whose magnificent formal gardens also feature on the Laois garden trail, and which include a series of formal flower-filled terraces and a large restored walled garden containing separate fruit, herb and vegetable plots, as well as river walks along the banks of the Erkina.

Meanwhile, just a few miles outside Abbeyleix, the well-known garden designer Arthur Shackleton – who himself comes from a very long line of distinguished Irish gardeners – has created Fruitlawn, yet another exquisite Laois garden ( arthurshackleton.com), which has come into being over the last decade. Roughly an acre in size and formal in layout, it's filled with expertly planted perennial borders, a formal pool, a fruit and vegetable garden and an orchard set in a wildflower meadow.

Further underscoring the fact that a truly remarkable horticultural renaissance has been taking place in this county are the Arts and Crafts gardens of Ballintubbert House, in Stradbally ( ballintubbert.com). Once the childhood home of the poet Cecil Day-Lewis as well as the actor John Hurt, the Georgian house and its 14-acre gardens have been in the ownership of Fergus and Orna Hoban since 1999. Covering 14 acres and with 42 garden rooms (20 of which have been completed so far), its gardens have been designed with many of the country's finest gardeners, including Oliver Schurmann, Daphne Levinge Shackleton, Sandro Cafolla, Arthur Shackleton, Denise Dunne and Jim Reynolds.

Other participating Laois gardens include Clonohill in Coolrain, the Sensory Gardens at Dove House in Abbeyleix, and Clonaslee. So the next time you put your garden visitor hat on, do keep this lovely midlands county in mind. Small it may be, but Laois is fast becoming a horticultural heavyweight.

This week in the garden

Plant seed potatoes

Pot on/water young seedlings

Sow seeds of sweet pea