April is a magic month in Irish gardens - a great time to visit some of them
IT IS SPRINGTIME in Ireland: the best part of the year, in the best country in the world. Yes, I know that our economic life is in flitters, our savings have gone down the tubes, and our pensions are up the Swanee. But, despite this mess, there is no place as fine as this island for growing green things, and no better time of the year for communing with them. So let’s forget about the precarious future for an hour or two, because the present is in danger of whooshing by – and with it the luminous, burgeoning, optimistic Irish spring.
After our cold, cold winter, spring came all in a rush this year, with tulips crowding out the daffs, and the grass demanding its first cut weeks ago. Right now, the clamour from seeds needing sowing and from seedlings wanting potting is overwhelming – not to mention the holler from the ever-lengthening list of other urgent jobs, which is growing as fast as the grass.
If you’re the gardener, you’re wedded to the garden on weekends and days off. Leaving it behind is not easy, but now is the best possible time to visit other people’s patches.
April is the magic month in Irish gardens, especially in the big, wild and woodlandy places such as Annes Grove in Co Cork, Fernhill in Sandyford, and Kilmacurragh and Mount Usher in Co Wicklow. This is the month for the improbably red and pink flowers of the rhododendrons and the porcelain petals of the magnolias. I’m sorry that I’ll never have the space or the right kind of soil in my town garden for any of these noble woody specimens. But even if I could miraculously grow one perfect rhododendron, I don’t think I would, because the lone rhodo in an urban garden can be an incongruous and garish sight. Rhododendrons need to be seen in a woodland, where the more sober presences of other trees balance the dazzling flashes of colour from their flamboyant blossoms.
April is also the month when the shade-loving plants that seek sanctuary beneath the trees are in full flower: white and blue wood anemones, lilac-coloured dog's tooth violet ( Erythronium), purple fritillaries with faint chessboard patterns on their petals. Epimediums proffer wiry stems with tiny, intricately-wrought, four-part flowers in curious shades of yellow, rust and red. The early part of the month sees Scilla bifolia, like miniature bluebells, covering the ground with azure snow.
The real bluebells, English bluebells ( Hyacinthoides non-scripta), come a few weeks later, floating inches above the earth in a shimmering blue mist. Ferns unroll their bristly, green croziers, while above, the first fresh leaves – the colours of lettuce and shrimp – are pushing out from the twigs.
In gardens with water the banks are brightened by primulas, and the waxy yellow spathes and shiny green paddles of skunk cabbage ( Lysichiton americanus). The prehistoric-looking giant leaves of Gunnera manicata start to unfold, like prickly, elaborately-boned pterodactyl wings.
All these plants need a broad canvas: gunnera and skunk cabbage because they are vegetable monsters, and the other dainty woodlanders because they are best seen in large quantities. They make up the swooshing brush strokes and washes of colour on the picture that is a large garden. That’s not to say that those of us with smaller gardens can’t or shouldn’t grow them, but they’ll never have the same impact in a confined space. When I look at my few anemones, or ferns, or dog’s tooth violets, they act mostly as memory-joggers reminding me of greater places. I’m happy to have them, but I’m much happier to have seen them in their element. Seeing plants well-grown somewhere else helps me work out what they need in my own garden, but it mainly gives me a thrill that lasts for days.
So, because we can all do with some inexpensive thrills (or even free ones) these days, I’m going to urge you again to get out of your own garden this month, and into someone else’s. And make it a big one.
jpowers@irishtimes.com
For details on Irish gardens open to the public, go to www.garden.ie and click on “gardens to see”
Saturday, April 18th, 1.30-4pm: Royal Horticultural Society of Ireland annual plant sale, at St Brigid’s Parish Church, Glenalbyn Road, Stillorgan, Co Dublin (new venue). Admission: €3. Parking in school car park on Merville Road. Further details, tel: 01-2353912; www.rhsi.ie.