GARDENS: Meet a gifted garden designer who lives in an innovative low-energy house
‘One of the joys of gardening,” says Anthea Howbert, “is that you can take bits of plants indoors, and look at them in detail.”
I agree, especially at this time of the year. On the morning I visit Howbert in the new home built for her and husband Tig Mays in Co Wicklow, the weather is doing one of its four-seasons-in-one-day specials. But the house, a contemporary version of the Irish farmhouse designed by architects Fitzpatrick Mays (Tig’s sister-in-law and brother), is cosy and bright, although no logs are burning in the stove, and no heating is running.
This is a low-energy house, where the south-facing aspect, super-efficient insulation, a heat exchange system, and solar roof panels for water heating ensure that all is warm and comfortable with minimal fuel use. Outside the huge glass doors, at the mercy of the mercurial climate, a quintet of hens goes about its chickenly business. One minute, the brisk wind lifts tail feathers and rumples downy underthings, and the next, the sun appears, offering the kind of warmth that encourages a tai-chi-like session of wing stretching and leg pointing.
Inside, safe from the vagaries of the climate, we are able to inspect the seasonal decorations that Howbert has created from material collected on walks, in her garden and in the garden of her parents-in-law nearby. Having grown up in Michigan, and with plenty of Scandinavian blood in her veins, she has been making wreaths and seasonal displays since she was a young girl. “It’s one way of appreciating the life and death cycle of nature: ripe fruit, decaying leaves, emerging buds . . .”
Her mother, she says, “always used to do mantelpiece arrangements at Christmas”. And while there is no mantel in this house (the stove is contained in an elegant limestone cylinder), Howbert has improvised by using the top of an old seed merchant’s chest of drawers. Hers is a traditional Advent arrangement with four candles, each fitted into a red apple. During the first week of Advent, one candle is lit; during the second, two; three are lit in the third; and all four are illuminated to celebrate the fourth week.
Besides the rosy fruits, which look awfully tempting (they wouldn’t last the four-candle period in many households), Howbert has used sprays of conifer, pine cones, berried holly and the blowsy pink blooms of the early and appropriately named rhododendron, “Christmas Cheer”.
“I only use flowers from the garden,” she says. “Your own flowers come with no air miles or questionable labour conditions. And they’re not being sprayed with loads of pesticides.”
For her wreath, Howbert has splashed out and bought some lacy, silver leaves from Avoca, and some reed stars from Lidl. Everything else is homegrown: Douglas fir, Scots pine, eucalyptus, cypress, red-twig dogwood, fern, and for the garnishes, chilli peppers, the red hips of dog rose, and the seedheads of the annual love-in-a-mist ( Nigella damascena).
The wreath is built on a circular wire form, and the foliage is fastened to it using green pipe cleaners – although one could also use florist’s or gardener’s wire. Howbert first attaches bunches of Douglas fir to the back of the form in order to give the wreath depth and bulk. Then she makes little bunches using three or so sprigs of different species, fanned out evenly, and she binds each bunch to the face of the wreath form. When she has filled in the whole circle with greenery, she adds bright accents with berries and decorations, and ties on a big bow to act as a hanger. The whole thing takes her about an hour and a half to complete.
“I like that you can take things from opposite ends of the garden and bring them together.” She has also gathered a big galvanised container of broom, red and green dogwood, lichen-encrusted apple, and spindle bush with its surreal orange and crimson fruits. It’s the kind of naturally jolly arrangement that could help set the Yule mood in an entrance hall.
Howbert has done the flowers for a couple of friends’ weddings, but her “real” job (magically managed while being mother of two little girls) is as half of the garden design practice, Howbert and Mays (howbertandmays.ie).
Among the projects that she and husband Tig have worked on are Jim Sheridan’s garden in Dalkey, the grounds of the Sean O’Casey Community Centre in Dublin Docklands, and the landscape design for the North Tipperary County Council offices.
This year, the duo also launched an online garden centre, DYG (dyg.ie), a clever acronym for “delivering your garden”. The website offers Irish-grown plants for all kinds of garden conditions: woodland, Mediterranean, containers, damp areas and so on. Plants can be bought as ready-made planting schemes, or individually. DYG also sells tools, books and other gardening necessities. The blog, in case you are interested, has photos of those wedding flowers mentioned above, as well as a picture of the low-energy house.
