Barryscourt Castle is a splendid 16th-century tower house at Carrigtwohill in east Cork.
In 1987, the Barryscourt Trust was established to conserve and restore the castle and develop its heritage potential.
Three years ago, the trust instituted a biannual lecture series on medieval Ireland, dealing with aspects of history, archaeology, art and architecture. The lectures have been attractively reproduced by Gandon Editions - specialist publisher mainly of books on Irish art and architecture.
Now, the fourth in the series* has been published.
The next production, now in proof form at Gandon, will bring to the bookshelves in weeks archaeologist Dave Pollock's lecture on recent Barryfort excavations - the first exhaustive excavation of an Irish tower house.
The lectures, in Barryscourt's great hall, attracted a sizeable audience. When the eighth lecture is given, Gandon will publish a compilation volume, according to Barryscourt's curator, Mr Noel Jameson.
In mid-May, Mr Victor Chinnery, an expert on medieval furnishings, will deliver the fifth lecture. There are plans to restore the castle.
And what do we know about gardening before Cromwell?
Mr Terence Reeves-Smyth, a garden archaeologist, of the Northern Ireland environment department, said: "In the long term, much of our knowledge of pre-17th-century gardens will inevitably derive from programmes of fieldwork and excavation, but to date, the potential of garden archaeology in Ireland has yet to be fully realised."
He added that throughout their development from early times to the mid-17th century, Irish gardens were within enclosures. He went on:
"Like a picture in a frame, physical boundaries were considered an integral part of a garden's layout. Walls, banks, hedges and fences were all employed and these served to keep livestock and people out and to provide much-needed shelter for the plants within.
"Garden enclosures were not unique to Ireland but the frequently unsettled conditions of the country no doubt contributed to their prevalence; indeed, at times they also functioned as part of the defensive network relating to a manor or castle."
North Cork is garden-minded too, and will demonstrate this spectacularly when the first Mallow International Garden Festival takes place from June 23rd to June 27th next.
The director of the inaugural festival, Mr Dominick Cullinane, the award-winning garden designer, will make his own special contribution to the event.
He is building a "gallarus garden" for the festival, based on the theme of the Gallarus Oratory in the Dingle Peninsula.
A greenfield site adjoining Mallow Racecourse will be used for the event, which could attract 100,000 visitors over the five-day period. It is an imaginative local initiative, and one that could have a big tourism spin-off for the go-ahead north Cork town.
By the time visitors arrive next June, 15 permanent sculptured gardens will have been created on the site. These will be maintained locally as a future visual attraction for all. Dominick Cullinane, while engaged on his own project, is also busy bringing on board some of the best garden designers in the world, from Greece and the United States, to mention just two of the participating countries.
There will be up to 50 other garden exhibits, from garden centres and flower clubs, as well as garden designers who wish to show their skills. There will be fun and games for the kids in an action-packed programme while the adults are perusing plants and gardens.
Ms Jackie Dawson, public relations officer for the event, says 87 per cent of Irish homes have gardens - this is the highest rate in Europe.
The first lecture is "Barryscourt Castle and the Irish Tower House", by Dr Tadhg O'Keeffe of the department of archaeology at UCD; followed by the "Impact of the Anglo-Normans on Munster", by A.F. O'Brien of UCC's history department; the third lecture is "Technological Change in Anglo-Norman Munster", by Dr Colin Rynne, curator of the Cork Butter Museum; and the latest to be produced in paper- back form by Gandon is "Irish Gardens and Gardens before Cromwell", by the garden archaeologist Mr Terence Reeves-Smyth, of Northern Ireland's environment department.