The idea of departing Dublin for greener pastures, more space, land on which to grow vegetables and maybe let the children keep a pony all sounds rather bucolic, but with big business calling many of its employees back into the office the idea of heading west, south or north may simply not be practical.
An ecologist living outside Garristown, north Co Dublin, in a four-bedroom detached dormer house of about 225sq m (2,421sq ft) and on almost four acres (3.8a) is following the gold rush west, but she and her husband may have the perfect compromise.
Buy their property and they will gift the next owner an additional 1.6 acres of land for free on condition that they continue the rewilding programme that they started and that is part of the Fingal County Council Biodiversity Action Plan.
If it all sounds too good to be true the first thing you need to know is that the property is asking €650,000 through agents SherryFitzGerald Geraghty, so dreamers with budgets below that are immediately excluded.
But in a hot market is it just a very romantically-presented sales tactic?
Pricing structures change to meet demand. In the current market properties are deliberately priced competitively to generate bidding demand that will drive the price up. It’s the “think of a number, subtract €50,000 and put it on at that asking price” school of economics.
This might be perceived as a supermarket psychology tactic: buy one, get one free. But for anyone looking for country life with easy access to the city it offers a lot. As well as a fine detached house with a C1 Ber where there is an open living/kitchen/diner that runs the depth of the house, separate sitting and playroom and an en suite bedroom downstairs, you get enough land to keep a pony as well as a well-stocked young orchard of apple, plum, and cherry trees, with a selection of soft fruit bushes and four truffle-inoculated hazels.
The rewilded lands run down to the Delvin river and have been planted with native trees and wild meadow. If you’re lucky you might spot some otters, the tiny pygmy shrew, hedgehogs, badgers and about five species of bat.
You will be contributing to the Garristown Biodiversity Action Plan, part of which is the idea of “connectivity” in the landscape for wildlife, the joining together of hedgerows that may have been fragmented by farming, and are essential for fauna to commute up and down, explains the owner, ecologist Niamh Burke.
“By simply connecting one piece of hedgerow with another you can bring about a much larger habitat range for mobile species, and fresh genetics that prevent the inbreeding of isolated populations.”
Dreamers with relatively deep pockets get the chance to get closer to nature and yet still be able to commute to the city or farther afield. Both Dublin airport and the M50 are a 20-minute drive.
