The renowned garden designer Gertrude Jekyll once said: “a garden is a grand teacher. It teaches patience and careful watchfulness; it teaches industry and thrift; above all, it teaches entire trust.” Jekyll’s Irish gardens include Lambay and, reputedly, Heywood in Co Laois, but there are ways to enjoy the glories of a great garden without all that industry, thrift and patience. Sure, you can hire someone to do all the hard work, but that presupposes you have your own vast acreages, and acres of cash. Failing that, your best bet is to book a stay in a spot with truly great garden.
Even if you don’t know your biennials from your beneficial insects, your fleecing from your forcing, there is a special joy to be found in exploring marvellous gardens, and it’s better yet if it comes with the feeling of owning the place. Waterford’s Mount Congreve is one of Ireland’s finest gardens, and since last year you can stay in the heart of it, for a night or two at least, calling the 70 acres your own.
Ambrose Congreve was a lover of the finer things. He drove a Rolls-Royce – or rather, he had one driven for him – and the great Albert Roux was once his chef. Of all his fine things, Mount Congreve’s Gardens must surely be the finest. When he died in 2011, Congreve had amassed a whopping 13 gold medals at the Chelsea Flower Show, and had enabled the creation of the world famous gardens. Featuring wisterias, magnolias, azaleas, rhododendrons (more than 2,000 of them) and a riot of pretty much everything else you could think of, the gardens change with the seasons and conspire to shift the soul into a gentler, more soothingly benign kind of rhythm.
The gardens opened to the public in March 2023 with accommodation options added over time. This writer recently stayed in the two-bedroom self-catering gate lodge, which is absolutely charming and beautifully done up. Bear in mind, however, that one of the roles of a gate lodge is to be beside the gates and therefore near to the road. This spot is so beguiling, however, that it didn’t matter and certainly didn’t stop us lying in bed in the morning – so long that we almost missed breakfast in the main house restaurant – listening to the birds calling. With the window open, a gentle rain occasionally splashing, and all that avian chat, I felt as if I was inside my very own real-life meditation tape.
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The Merlin Bird App (download it now if you haven’t done so already) let us know we were listening to the conversations of robins, blackbirds, greenfinches, redshanks, chiffchaffs, goldcrests, wrens, goldfinches, wood pigeons and redwings. There was even a treecreeper. I wouldn’t have recognised one if I saw one but was enchanted to know it was there. Further accommodation options include bell tents and cabins with their own hot tubs, which are all sited on the estate at a discrete distance from the core of the gardens. The cabins come in couples and family variations, and there is also a Courtyard Suite, which is in a wing of the house.
Impressionist painter Claude Monet once said “my garden is my most beautiful masterpiece”, and gardening is a real art. The gardens at Mount Congreve took more than 100 years to create, and are still evolving. Our visit coincided with the full pink and white power, and delicate aromas of the magnolia walk, which as dusk settled was an experience I hope to hold forever.
The bluebells are coming, and the rhododendrons, and then there will be roses. After that, the leaves will turn everything golden, following that, snowdrops will arrive. Should you manage to tear yourself away from all that natural wonder, you’re also right on the Waterford Greenway. Glamping at Mount Congreve costs from €145 per night low season, rising to €429 in the Gate Lodge at weekends in high season. Guests have full access to the gardens, with bicycles available for the Greenway. Three further gate lodges are being renovated and will open this summer. mountcongreve.com
Hotels with gorgeous gardens in Ireland
Walled gardens tend to go with great house territory so, unsurprisingly, Mount Juliet, Dromoland Castle, Lyrath and Ballynahinch all have lovely examples to enjoy – as well as woodlands gardens. Walled gardens, however, tend to be walled off from the main house, so where else can you stay and feel you are in the thick of all that cultivated nature?
Hunter’s Hotel, Wicklow
In the early 1700s, Hunter’s Hotel was a coaching inn, and still has all its lovely old-world charm. Family owned for generations, expect open fires, antiques and cosy welcomes. But if you’re really here for the gardens, tea on the lawn transports you to rosier times. Hunter’s is also a great jumping off point for The Garden of Ireland’s gardens, including Mount Usher, Powerscourt, Russborough, Killruddery, Kilmacurragh and Avondale. Dinner and B&B from €95 pps, irelands-blue-book.ie
Liss Ard, west Cork
This west Cork spot has acres of wooded gardens and its own lakeside yoga and sauna pavilions. Its greatest garden attraction, for art lovers at least, must be James Turrell’s Irish Sky Garden, where a huge hollowed out mound of earth lets you wallow in green as you gaze at scudding clouds, or if you’re lucky, nothing but blue. Garden House rooms have their own back gardens, while the Lake House is right where you’d imagine it. From €150 per room, lissardestate.ie
Cashel House, Galway
A fishing lodge back in the day, Galway’s Cashel House was designed for the Hazell family, who had made their money buying seaweed. They laid out the gardens in the 1800s, a labour of love taken on by TD Jim O’Mara, when he lived there from 1919. O’Mara planted rare specimens, as well as azaleas, heathers and rhododendrons. Subsequent owners added more plants until the house was transformed and the gardens restored in the 1960s by the McEvilly family who still own and run the hotel. The award-winning gardens span 50 acres, with coastal views on the Wild Atlantic Way. B&B from €110 pps low season, to €155 pps in summer. irelands-blue-book.ie
Ballyvolane, east Cork
At east Cork’s Ballyvolane, the gardens are a family tradition. Owners Justin and Jenny Green are getting to the root of things with the support of Justin’s dad, Jer Green, who has made restoring the formal, semi-formal, walled and woodland gardens his life’s work. Stay for dinner and sample the fruits (and flowers and vegetables) of their labours on your plate, as well as mixed into the tipples they create. B&B in the main house from €310, or glamp in bell tents and arks from €205 B&B, and you really are immersed in the green of it all. ballyvolanehouse.ie
Burtown House, Kildare
With an old orchard, a rock garden, yew walk, borders and water-surrounded woodlands, Burtown is a lovely spot, bursting with roses, peonies and clematis. The walled vegetable garden serves The Green Barn restaurant and sleepovers for up to six are accommodated at The Stable Yard House, with a smaller studio apartment sleeping two also available. The Stable Yard House has its own kitchen, although it would be hard to beat what’s cooking at The Green Barn. You get your own garden, and full 24-hour access to all of Burton’s lovely acres. From €225 per night in the apartment, and €380 depending on the season in the Stable Yard House. Two night minimum at weekends. burtownhouse.ie
Gardens in the UK
The UK’s National Trust has a range of garden stays that would make the most hardened horticulturalist drool. As a rule of thumb, the grander the house the more herbaceous border and box hedge action you’re likely to get. At Cliveden House, for example, not only can you dip in the pool made famous by Christine Keeler and John Profumo back in the swinging and salacious 1960s, you also see formal gardens, wild gardens and topiary in the shape of brilliant birds and other exotic creatures. The breakfasts aren’t bad either. From £445. The gardens at Cliveden are looked after by the National Trust but book accommodation at clivedenhouse.co.uk. For all other properties, book directly at nationaltrust.org.uk.
Sissinghurst Castle and The Priest’s House, Kent
From being a prison in the 1700s, to the family home of poet and writer Vita Sackville-West and her husband, diplomat and author Harold Nicolson, Sissinghurst Castle is a vast and gorgeous estate. The planting is abundant and colourful, with some laid out in “garden rooms”. Stay in the Priest’s House, which was part of the Elizabethan mansion that made up the castle back in the day. Sited on the edge of the White Garden, it is incredibly peaceful and costs from £1,111 for three nights, sleeping six.
Stourhead and 89 Church Lawn, Wiltshire
When Stourhead opened in the 1740s, a magazine described it as “a living work of art”, which may have given Monet an idea or two. There is a fine Palladian house and a world-famous landscape garden with a lake, classical temples, grottoes and specimen trees. The chalk downs add to the landscape. The gardens were originally inspired by painters Claude Lorrain and Nicolas Poussin, so expect Italianate perfection. Be prepared: following a path around the lake is meant to evoke a journey similar to Aeneas’s into the underworld, when he went to ask his father about the destiny of Rome. At the entrance to Stourhead is 89 Church Lawn with its own gardens and secluded aspect. Guests at Church Lawn get free entry to Stourhead. Sleeps seven, two nights from £824.
Powis Castle and Garden and the Bothy, north Wales
Wander among the peacocks and gaze in wonder at the magnificent castle from its terraced gardens. This is one of the few examples of a British Baroque garden. It was owned by successive generations of the Herbert family until it passed into the care of the National Trust, and they were an ambitious lot, with Violet Herbert declaring she was going to turn it into “one of the most beautiful, if not the most beautiful in England and Wales”. Find out if she succeeded and stay at The Bothy, created in 1908 when garden cottages were all the rage. Sleeping six, you get a free pass to the castle and gardens, but The Bothy itself is so gorgeous, you may find it hard to leave. Two nights from £604.
