If you’re a lover of plants, and in particular a lover of hardy ornamental perennials, then you’ll almost certainly know of Mount Venus Nursery.
Established in the foothills of the Dublin mountains by the garden designers and plants people Liat and Olver Schürmann, next week it celebrates its 25th anniversary, along with the launch of Liat’s first book. If this wasn’t already an excellent reason to bring out the bunting and birthday cake, the couple will also be celebrating the relocation of their nursery to the most extraordinary new site, just a few hundred metres away from its present spot in the Victorian walled garden of Tibradden House.
I say “extraordinary” because it is exactly that; a long-abandoned gravel pit edged by a river, whose human-made deep hollows, tall embankments and precipitously steep slopes were decades ago reclaimed by nature to create a variety of complex habitats - woodland edge, alpine-like slopes, open meadow - that are as awe-inspiring as they are delightful.
For the Schürmanns, who first discovered the 12-acre site almost entirely by chance when it came up for sale several years ago, the nursery’s new location also offers them the irresistible opportunity to combine - on a grand scale - their vast plant knowledge and understanding of the complex nature of creating sustainable plant communities with their singular skill and artistry as designers. The result, without a shadow of a doubt, is going to be spectacular.
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But let’s back up for a moment. Because to understand how and why Mount Venus has become known as one of Europe’s most exciting, innovative plant nurseries, you also need to know something of how and why it first came into existence.
That story starts not in Ireland, but in northern Bavaria, in the German nursery of the brilliant plants person and plant breeder Dr Hans Simon, where the couple first met in 1987 as apprentice gardeners.
It was here that they properly learned how much the heart of successful planting combinations lies in creating sustainable, resilient, ecologically attuned, sociable plant communities that share a love for a particular set of growing conditions, a core tenet of their design process to this day.
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It was also here that they cultivated their great knowledge of the many different kinds of long-lasting, hardy ornamental grasses - varieties of calamogrostis, chionochloa, luzula, hakonechloa, molinia, melica, miscanthus, panicum, deschampsia and stipa - that remain such a defining aspect of their work as well as a quintessential part of what’s come to be known as the New Perennial Movement.
Emerging in the late 1980s, the latter was the culmination of decades of innovative work by brilliant European plant breeders, botanists and plant hunters, many of them German, including George Arends, Karl Foerster, Ernst Pagels, Klaus Jelitto, Karl Partsch and Dr Simon.
Grasses aside, the latter also shared with the Schürmanns his deep knowledge of other kinds of resilient, decorative perennial species suitable for European gardens, from anemones, astilbes and aruncus to hardy geraniums and gillenia, that continue to feature strongly in the Mount Venus stock list.
Crucially, the plant propagation skills the Schürmanns acquired as part of Dr Simon’s mentorship have also served them well, helping to lay the foundations for the success of their own nursery where more than 2,000 different varieties of plants are propagated on site. For those who might say, “so what”, it’s worth adding that this is no longer the norm in the world of Irish horticulture.
As for the Schürmanns’ decision to move to Ireland with their young children in 1999 to establish their own garden design and nursery business, that too has its deep roots in the past. As the son of the sculptors Gerda Frömel and Werner Schürmann, Oliver’s early childhood was spent in his family home, New House, near Rathfarnham, an area of Dublin where both the most recent iteration of Mount Venus nursery and its two previous incarnations are/ were located.
When Liat and he originally established Mount Venus in 2000, it was in the grounds of that very same family home, before the Bauhaus-style property on Stocking Lane was subsequently sold in 2005. Offered a lease by the owner of Tibradden House, the couple then moved the nursery to its walled garden, where it continued to be a horticultural mecca for gardeners in search of choice, resilient contemporary perennials chosen for their suitability for a range of growing conditions.
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During this time, the Schürmanns also built a flourishing garden design business that showcases their design approach as well as their favoured plant palette. This year, Oliver was invited to design the planting for the Irish Pavilion at Expo 2025 in Osaka, working alongside the Japanese landscape architect, Hiroyuki Tsujii. The resulting design incorporates a partially suspended, mysterious moss garden that is as exquisite as it is site-appropriate.
As the next chapter of the story of Mount Venus unfolds, he also plans to spend some time training under the great Dutch-born nurseryman Jan Ravensberg, whose own wholesale-only Irish nursery Ravensberg Nursery in Clara, Count Offaly is famed for its remarkable collection of hardy trees and shrubs. As for Liat, her innately artistic nature and deep love of the world of plants is evident in her new book, Slow | Creation | Quiet| Roots | Listening, which is both a powerfully beautiful photographic essay and a deeply thoughtful contemplation of what it is to be a gardener.
Gardening, she writes, “is firstly an act of listening. Being present in a space and letting it tell you what it wants … to cede dominion is to reconnect with the earth, and to listen is to collaborate rather than impose upon it, and to perhaps avoid another great flood”. Amen to that.
Oliver Schürmann’s Recommendations for 5 Great Perennials for an Irish Garden
Gillenia trifoliata Bowman’s Root: “A very valuable garden plant with no matching comparison, a haze of white starry flowers attached with bright red stems over palmate foliage, hardy and disease free, grows very well in heavy loamy soil, best in sun.”
Epimedium Amber Queen/ barrenwort; “A very floriferous and long-flowering, semi-evergreen variety that’s tolerant of dry shade as well as full sun.”
Ranunculus aconitifolius/ maids of France: “A plant I look forward to seeing bloom in spring, with lots of pretty, saucer-shaped white flowers. It’s long lived and happy in both shade or full sun.”
Actaea cordifolia ‘Blickfang’/ bugbane: “A stately, architectural herbaceous perennial for the autumn garden, with tall spires of pale flower, this eye-catching variety is a great choice for a deep, moisture-retentive but free draining soil in full sun or dappled shade.”
Geranium maculatum/ wood geranium: “Most gardeners know Geranium ‘Rozanne’ but there are so many other under-appreciated great hardy geraniums and this is one of them. Perfect for the dappled shade of a damp woodland garden in spring.”
This Week
Save the ripe seed of sweet pea, which can be harvested as pods from the parent plants at this time of year. Only pick when the pods are pale brown and the seeds inside are hard and dark.
Harvest gluts of French beans, peas, mangetout, sugarsnap and tomatoes, and then freeze them to enjoy later in the year.
Dates for Your Diary: Thursday, September 11th (8pm), The Marine Hotel, Sutton, Dublin 13, “What Makes a Great Garden”, a talk by well-known British garden designer, lecturer and writer Annie Guilfoyle on behalf of Howth & Sutton Horticultural Society, all welcome, see hshs.ie for details; Sunday, September 14th, Fota House & Gardens, Fota, County Cork (11am-4pm), the Irish Specialist Nursery Association’s Autumn Plant Fair and the last of this year, see irishspecialistnurseriesassociation.com and fotahouse.com
