A groundsman once told me in Muckross House, one of the great Irish estates now in public ownership, that in the fruit-picking season, in those beautiful parklands near Killarney, youngsters called in to help gather the rich, plump berries were ordered to whistle as they picked.
It has a merry ring to it. But the idea was, in fact, a simple remedy for a common problem with fruit pickers: if they were whistling they were thought to be less likely to eat what should have been going into the baskets.
It was a time when great houses and great estates were still holding on, though all and sundry knew the era was passing. Before it did, the people of Killarney would come in their droves to avail of the bountiful fruit from Muckross at cheap prices. Now, another era is passing. Many people other than the landlords have left their imprint on the estate - none more so than the ones who down the generations tended the grounds, shrubs and trees.
One of this special breed is Bill Carson. Visit it in summer and the place is like a picture postcard. In the bleaker months, without the attention of staff such as Bill Carson, Muckross would not look as pretty. It is a testament to those tending the grounds that it never fails to impress on a year-round basis. But the erstwhile head gardener has bid adieu to a place he has loved and tended with affection for many years.
In his retirement, now aged 66, Bill Carson has no intention of removing himself from such a wonderful setting. For a start, he lives just across the road from Muckross and intends to be a regular visitor and stroller there. He thinks he may even keep an eye on things, wondering aloud why that bush has not been pruned or why the bedding plants are going in so late.
He trained in the Botanic Gardens, Dublin, and spent two years at the Malling Fruit Research Centre in Kent during which painstaking work was done on how best to grow the apples, pears, peaches, etc which we now take for granted on our supermarket shelves. On his return to Ireland, he sat for an interview at Muckross House. That was in the early 1960s.
"I had wonderful colleagues at Muckross and it was a fabulous place in which to work. There could hardly be a better setting - more than 50 acres of parkland with lakes and mountains, too. The scenery here is special," he said.
If anything, that is an understatement because Muckross is one of our national treasures and, thankfully, it is immune from the greedy eyes of the developers. It is a national park and will remain so in perpetuity. The great house was one thing, but Bill Carson and his fellow gardeners would never admit to working at Muckross House - "we called it Muckross gardens. That was where we worked, we made that distinction."
A brief history of the estate shows that it was completed in 1843 for Henry Arthur Herbert and his wife Mary, having been designed by the Edinburgh architect William Burns.
Later, it passed through Lord Ardilaun of the Guinness family and came into the ownership of the Bourn Vincent family in 1911. American wealth had taken over. William Bowers Bourn bought it as a wedding gift for his daughter, Maud, and her husband-to-be, Arthur Rose Vincent, of Summerhill, Co Clare. Maud died in 1929. Her husband and the Bourns gave it as a gift to the Irish nation. It was Ireland's first national park.
Bill Carson had a happy life on the estate - it's a safe bet that there are few more glorious settings than Muckross. He oversaw the development of the gardens that we know today, the inclusion of an arboretum and the choice specimens that flourish there. It was a labour of love. He will not stop loving it, and neither will he be far away.