Helen Dillon's acre-sized patch is more than just a gardener's garden, writes Jane Powers
I'm not a fan of ostentation in domestic gardens. It's okay for chaps such as Louis XIV and the Earl of Meath to put canals and statues into their back gardens, but such grandiose displays have no place in plots smaller than a couple of hundred acres.
Oh, but there are always exceptions, aren't there? And my favourite of these is the wonderfully swanky Dillon garden in Ranelagh. From its overwrought, wrought-iron, gold-tipped gates to its pair of po-faced sphinxes contemplating the lowest pool of its dark mirror of a canal, the acre-sized patch is a complete delight.
There is ostentation here in spades: in the ivy-clad arches and precise topiary box shapes, in the expanses of palest limestone surrounding the water, and in the two long borders that face each other, one uncompromisingly red and fiery, the other resolutely chilly and blue. There are showy, look-at-me plants: spiny agaves in whopping great pots; cartoony, oversized dahlias; a special angelica with umbels as big as your head; and a Tetrapanax papyrifer 'Rex' with felt-backed, splayed leaves.
The above list of features and plants could add up to nothing more than a flashily-designed space filled with trophies, but not in this case. Here the ingredients are rigorously chosen and ingeniously combined by Helen Dillon, so that the end product is a demonstration of flamboyant and impressive artistry. And yes, I know that may sound like exaggerated praise, but it is true. This Ranelagh garden, as I've said before, is one of the finest town gardens in the world, and for sheer va-va-voom, it is the best in Ireland.
Part of its success lies in Dillon's peerless plantsmanship: no-one (and yes, I do mean no-one) understands plants as she does. Although we in Ireland know her mainly from her spirited and engagingly bossy appearances on gardening (and other) television, she is, in fact, a very big fish in our tiny horticultural pond. This whale of a gardener is in demand throughout the English-speaking world, has lectured widely (most recently at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington), and has a heap of international honours - a Royal Horticultural Society Veitch Memorial medal, and membership of the board of the New York Botanical Garden, to mention just two.
Like many good gardeners, Dillon started growing and collecting plants when she was a child. In over half a century of serious gardening, there are few plants that she has not grown and studied. So when it comes to choosing the best dahlias to liven up her red border, she knows that 'Murdoch' (lipstick-red with dark-green leaves) and 'Hillcrest Royal' (neon pink on strong stems) are the ones with the most zing.
And while there are prettier red roses than 'Florence Mary Morse' ("a horrid rose, I don't like the shape of the flower, or the colour") she knows that this is the one with a long-flowering season that is most disease resistant.
She knows the way to propagate the trickiest of plants (there are always cuttings on the go just inside the greenhouse door, at eye level where they can be monitored easily), and she knows the exact requirements, pedigree and native habitat of most any plant you could think of - and then several hundred more you've never heard of. And she knows, to her regret, that after 33 years of intensive gardening on the same soil, its repository of pests and diseases is prodigious: the blue border, situated on ground that has been a flower bed since the house was built in 1830, is particularly bad.
Yet her skill is so great that you would never know that she is gardening in adversity (although she volunteers this information readily). Her blue border is faultless - it's only when you hear that honey fungus lurks within, that you notice there are no roses and few woody plants. Instead, its cool, azure, ultramarine and mauve canvas is painted by annual cornflowers in several shades of blue, hardy geraniums, catmint, campanulas, delphiniums, monkshood, eryngium, glaucous-leaved seakale, and other icy-hued perennials.
Across the shining canal - whose glassy water slips gently from one level to the next - is the red border. It's as noisy, hot and clamorous as its opposite number is quiet and cool. Yin and yang face each other across the mollifying sheet of water, and meet only in an ephemeral reflection, readily chased away by the riffle of a breeze, or the scoot of a landing mallard.
The effect of all this on the visitor is as if one is walking into a dream garden - or rather, several dream gardens. Both behind and beyond the centre stage are other spaces, each with its own character: among them a raised alpine bed filled with choice specimens, including a couple of Mexican agaves with fierce black spines, A parryi, the only one of this desert genus that is reliably hardy here ("I've grown it outdoors for 25 years").
Nearby is a reposeful spot where water fills and overflows an octagonal font, while a small congregation of the South African wand flower (Dierama) arches prayerfully towards it. Across the way is one of the newest plantings, a meet of monsters: boldly structured plants, mostly of the stalwart Araliceae family (impervious to pests and diseases). Here are prickly-stemmed Aralia elata, sword-leaved Pseudopanax ferox and P. laetus, and the handsome Schefflera taiwaniana. A banana flaps languidly in a corner, near the jumbo package of foliage that is Inula magnifica ("that's a bloody big daisy"). A curious grass with furry brown flower heads, Carex trifida, was given to Helen Dillon by another great gardener, the late Graham Stuart Thomas.
The garden is constantly metamorphosing: the front, for instance, has been drastically simplified, and a mass planting of 51 birches, mostly 'Fascination', will soon make this a peaceful grove on the edge of the busy Sandford Road. Change is important to Dillon: "I don't think the way I did 10 years ago. And I think that when we get to a certain age you either move forward or backwards."
It is her top-gear forward journey (with husband Val and gardener Mary Rowe co-driving) that makes this garden an inspiration to other plant-lovers, one to be experienced, preferably, in every season. Yet you don't have to be a plantsperson or gardener to appreciate its charms, as its impeccable and clever use of structure, form and colour transcends horticulture. But if you are a gardener, then go early and leave late so that you may inspect every square metre of cunningly-planted, hallowed ground.
The Dillon Garden, 45 Sandford Road, Ranelagh, Dublin 6. Open daily (2pm-6pm) in March, July and August, and on Sundays only (2pm-6pm) in April, May, June and September. Admission: €5. Plants for sale. The water makes the garden unsuitable for children under 10, except for babes in arms. www.dillongarden.com.
Helen Dillon on Gardening, a compendium of columns from the Sunday Tribune (1992-1995) has been reissued by TownHouse (€14.99).