Billy Alexander of Co Kerry-based Kells Bay House and Gardens knows what it’s like to go from boom to bust to bloom.
The former assistant bank manager at AIB was awarded a gold medal for his fern collection at the Chelsea Flower Show, for decades of work with ferns.
It his not his first Chelsea rodeo. This is his fourth medal at “the pinnacle of horticulture”, as he puts it. In 2018 he won silver gilt, followed in 2021 by gold for his display of ferns. In 2023, he won gold again, along with Best in Show.
“Every rodeo gets better,” he says as he’s interviewed over the phone while selling a €30 specimen to a customer from his Chelsea stand. He’s got a cool head on his shoulders.
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But rewind more than 20 years ago and the Blackrock, Co Dublin native and former banker used to cycle home from his day job as a banking clerk at AIB bank centre to his house in Leopardstown, where he spent his evenings on his knees becoming a “compulsive gardener”.
Tree ferns are his thing. He was first introduced to the plant type by Aunt Cora, a friend of his mother’s who, before she died in her early 50s, became like “a surrogate mother” to the then 20-something. “She bought me a tree fern, a Dicksonia antarctica”.
The passion prompted him to start a hobby business selling plants, while not yet giving up on the day job.
Alexander encountered Kells Bay for the first time when he drove southwest to deliver some plants to its former owners. The 19th-century hunting lodge overlooks the Iveragh Peninsula and is set on 60 acres of historic subtropical garden. “It was a nirvana of plants,” he recalls. The tree fern forest that sealed the deal.
Home to an extraordinary collection of naturalised tree ferns, its oldest specimen of Dicksonia antarctica – known as the garden’s “mother tree fern”, is believed to have single-handedly spored the hundreds of others that now flourish in the protected microclimate of Kells Bay’s primeval forest.
Leveraging his three-bed semi in Leopardstown and three apartments he owned, he made an offer of €2 million on the property, first directly to the owners and then through their agent. About a year later they came back to say that they’d accept it, but by then he didn’t have the money. “I don’t have €2 million, but I can give you €1.5 million, he recalls saying. It was accepted. This was 2006. “It wasn’t easy, but it was possible – but impossible now,” he says.
After the boom came the bust. He had to deal with vulture funds, but “little by little the dream got better”, he says.
[ Best in show: Irish dahlia growers compete in the UKOpens in new window ]
He and his wife Penn now work the property together. She’s from Thailand and the resident chef, and B&B costs about €140 to €150 per person. They’re travelling to her native country in October and will visit the area that borders China to see scheffleras, tropical evergreen shrubs, in the wild. Also in his travel plans is a research trip to Uganda to see Lobelia that is native to the Mountains of the Moon Massif.
Alexander has also visited Highgrove House, family residence of King Charles III and Queen Camilla, several times. He had his daughter Aisling with him on the stand when the king presented him with his medal.
Even the logistics of the Chelsea show are an enormous undertaking. His stand, in the Grand Pavilion, is 120sq m in size and features more than 100 different species of ferns. Every plant in it was lovingly transported to the London showgrounds by Hutton Transport last week, in a 40-foot temperature controlled-truck. Alexander set the temperature to eight degrees Celsius, to “put the plants to sleep” for the 48-hour journey. He selected 26 of the 50 specimens he grew to be able to make those choices, having nurtured them for two years in advance of this May event. “You need to be able to do quality control, so you need twice the amount,” he explains.
He will sell some of his stock, but much of it will make the return journey to west Kerry.
And how much does it cost to stage such a show? “It’s sort-of like the Olympics,” he says. “They give you a small stipend for your expenses.” The stipend amounts to about £300 (€356). But the actual cost of exhibiting comes close to about €50,000. Alexander’s stand has been sponsored by Wilde Aparthotels.
