As everyone knows by now, Strokestown Park in Co Roscommon is the home of the Famine Museum, which opened in the stables of the big house in 1994. But how many know that - alongside the development of the museum and the refurbishment of the house - an enormous, ambitious garden-restoration programme has been churning away in the four-acre walled garden next to the house?
Luke Dodd, curator at Strokestown Park for several years, and Jim Reynolds, garden designer and maker, and oft-times Irish Times columnist, dreamed up the concept for the rebirth of the garden. It is a bold and gloriously audacious plan that stylishly unites the garden's older features with new, thoroughly contemporary elements. The design calls for strong geometry, strict formality and absolutely no frippery. There is nothing half-baked or timid in this arrangement.
And as befits such a project, some of Ireland's most high-profile garden people were called in to provide advice, expertise and plants for the project: Helen Dillon, Marcella Campbell, Jonathan and Daphne Shackleton (who featured in this column last week) and Rachel Lamb, who oversaw the project and devised much of the splendid planting. And the person on the ground - up to her oxters in muck and mushroom compost for the past seven years - is Catriona White, the head gardener at Strokestown.
But none of this would ever have happened if it had not been for Jim Callery of Westward Group, who in 1979 was looking for a bit of extra land on which to expand his garage business. When he approached the owner of Strokestown Park, Olive Hales Pakenham Mahon, with a "sell us a few acres, will you?", she replied, "I will, of course, but only if you take the whole lot".
"The whole lot" was the 18th-century Palladian house and 300 acres. Westward duly bought it, and also bought the house contents.
The garden, which was officially opened on Thursday, is still very much a work in progress. Some of the more interesting elements have yet to be completed: an alphabet walk, a mirror-enhanced maze, a garden where the visitor triggers off electronically-controlled sounds emanating from clipped yew shapes, and a folly made from part of an early facade of Strokestown House.
From a distance, the unfinished folly looks pretty good. When you walk in the entrance, your eye is drawn to it, along two neat lines of newly-planted Irish yews running the length of the garden and interrupted only by a still pool mirroring the three empty windows of the folly. It's a bold statement, and you either admire its minimal austerity, or you take fright, as somebody did here, and plonk an incongruous fountain in the middle of the pool - in the shape of a busty maiden.
To one side of the pool, a massive pergola of local stone and oak rises - it will be clothed with roses, clematis and honeysuckle. Nearby, an intricate box-edged rose garden is filled with scented hybrid teas.
And across the garden, backed by a warm south-facing wall, a huge, fat, tall herbaceous border stretches into eternity. It's a 500-footlong and 18-foot-wide firecracker of bobbing, nodding, billowing blossom. It's the longest in the British Isles, and it has driven White nearly out of her mind.
Last autumn, she says, the entire "damn border" - thousands of plants - had to be dug up and replanted, as the colours weren't quite right. But now, White (and Rachel Lamb, who designed it) can look proudly on it, as it moves gracefully into its showy, late summer plumage. And it will go on strutting its stuff until October, and a second flush of delphiniums and a rash of asters. It's definitely Strokestown's most awesome sight, and the hottest part - flaming with Crocosmia `Lucifer', Potentilla `Gibson's Scarlet', Helenium `Moerheim Beauty' and many other orange and red blazers - falls nicely opposite a cool, green croquet lawn. It's a pleasing contrast, and one of many that delights the brain and soothes the soul in this beautifully balanced, strong garden.
Strokestown Park house, museum and gardens are open daily from 11 a.m. to 5.30 p.m. Admission to house £3, museum £3, gardens £2.50. Admission to all three £6.50. Special rates for groups, OAPs and children. Telephone: 078-33013
Diary Date:
South County Dublin Horticultural Society Flower Show, Loreto Abbey, Dalkey, Co Dublin, today, 2.30-5.30 p.m., Admission £1.
Garden Work 9th-15th August
For many of us, August is holiday time, but it certainly isn't for plants. If you are going away this month, take the time to prepare your plants for the shock. Plunge potted house plants into a bucket of water and plant food, remove when the bubbles stop rising and place in a light, but not sunny, position. Very thirsty specimens can be put in the bath - after the bucket treatment - with a couple of inches of water. Heavy, hard-to-move plants should be thoroughly fed and watered before encasing their containers in plastic bags.
Outside, group potted plants together in a shady corner after giving them the "plunge". Containers of bedding plants need lots of water, so these can be left in a child's paddling pool or suchlike with a little water in it. Recently-planted shrubs and other vulnerable things should be thoroughly watered and mulched. Home-made, automatic watering devices can be made from plastic screw-top containers: pierce a hole in the bottom, fill with water and then loosen the top to regulate a slow drip of water. You'll need a day or two of experimentation to get the flow right.