One of the advantages of being a knight is you have the prerogative - in fact, almost a duty - to indulge the most absurd fantasies. For instance, you can take a fine, plain Georgian house, stick gothicky battlements on it and call it a castle. Nobody bats an eyelid. Then, your desire for whimsical architecture still unsated, you plonk castellations onto the stable-yard buildings and erect a couple of quaintly picturesque gate lodges. It all looks rather singular, but definitely charming: if knights can't dabble in make-believe, then who can? The above-mentioned renovations were carried out around 1820 by the 25th Knight of Glin (also known as the Knight of the Women - he had a way with them) on the family home in Co Limerick. Today Glin Castle still sits proudly on the edge of the river Shannon, nobly impervious to the Atlantic winds that tear up the estuary. A white bathing lodge in the guise of a miniature gothic fort monitors passing traffic on the river. Its crisp laundry-white exterior is as neatly starched as the sheets on the antique beds that cradle the guests who stay at the castle, now a stately bed-and-breakfast.
The present Knight of Glin is Desmond FitzGerald. Like his ancestor, he also has a penchant for follies: his most recent is a stone circle of honey-coloured boulders, leftovers from nearby roadworks. Posed mystically on top of a hill and surrounded by dappled grass and woodland, the eerie grouping makes a nice counterpoint to the black, arched openings of a stone grotto, another of the earlier knight's constructions. But Desmond FitzGerald isn't just a follybuilder. "The Knight" (as he is concisely dubbed) is a zealous conservationist and historian and, as president of the Georgian Society, is in the vanguard of numerous, urgent campaigns to save our fragile heritage.
At his side is his wife, Olda FitzGerald, herself a keen scholar of all things Irish. And it is in Olda's elegant new book, Irish Gardens, that the demesne at Glin Castle and 19 other romantic, peculiarly Irish gardens are lovingly described and brought to life. With sympathy and humour, she chronicles their colourful histories and details their present beauties, giving a meaty and very welcome depth to her subject. Light-filled photographs by Stephen Robson and enchanting pictorial maps by William Pounds splendidly complement the text.
Writing the book, she remembers, "was quite the nicest year of my life, although quite terrifying. I never thought I could finish it in time. When the publishers asked me to do it, I was, of course, over the moon. It gave me the opportunity to travel around Ireland and see all the gardens, which I'd never really been able to do before."
Olda, who has lived at Glin since 1975, grew up in London. "I met Desmond at a party. He worked at the Victoria and Albert in the department of woodwork - the department of woodworm - and I worked in the London Magazine, which is a little sort of poetry magazine." They were married in 1970. At that time Glin Castle was empty, "except for the holidays. We realised that you couldn't look after a huge place by not being here. So we just had to say `cheerio!' to London and come back. It was a wonderful decision." As soon as they took up residence, "Desmond started encouraging groups of "culture vultures" to come here, and we started taking groups for lunch, and then people would rent parts of the house. . ." The guesthouse business grew from there, with visitors entranced by the idea of staying in a real castle with a real knight, surrounded by fine Irish antiques and a breathtaking view, and being fed on the best victuals, including homegrown vegetables from the walled kitchen garden. A fairytale holiday - particularly for heritage-hungry Americans.
The gardens around the castle are an exercise in simplicity: expertly-striped lawns embossed with yew and bay lozenges, jelly moulds and ribbons. Venerable trees lift the eye across the sloping fields to the strong Shannon rolling relentlessly by. No frivolous flowers disrupt the muscular blue-green-grey picture. The walled garden is a different story: here irreverent annuals - cornflower, sunflower, sweet pea, pot marigold, mallow, tobacco, cosmos - wave brightly at the regimental vegetables in their parade-ground ranks.
A "rustic temple", built recently by the multi-talented gardener, Tom Wall, shelters a headless marble Andromeda from the elements. Further changes to the garden - "Our plans are so many! Multitudinous plans!" - must be approached with respect for the past and consideration for the "feeling of enclosed antiquity". But, as Olda writes in Irish Gar- dens: "We have been infected by the most virulent attack of the `improvements' virus."
It's a condition which - as she demonstrates in the book - is always accompanied by outbreaks of vivid imagination and eccentric creativity in garden owners. Mount Stewart in Co Down, for instance, was the work of Edith, Lady Londonderry, "a capricious lady of dauntless energy and enthusiasm", who pronounced the Georgian house "the darkest, dampest, saddest place I ever stayed in." Valiantly, she set about making it a place of hospitality and light, and filled the gardens with exotic plants and with quirky, personal touches: sculptures of dodos and other fabulous animals representing members of the exclusive Ark Club, topiary figures, an Irish harp emblem of clipped yew, a Brobdingnagian Red Hand of Ulster bedded out in crimson begonias. Parterre beds, instead of being lined with traditional box (Lady Londonderry disapproved of the plant) were edged in light-catching white heather, blue rue, red berberis, golden thuja and silver hebe.
While Lady Londonderry abhorred box, it was something far more fundamental that upset Henry McIllhenny, the American millionaire who bought the Victorian Glenveagh Castle in Donegal in 1936. "I just can't stand earth!" he is reported to have said, before directing his head gardener to cover it all up with greenery. With a mild climate and 70 inches of rain per year, it was not long before the greenery grew, making Glenveagh the oasis that it is today in the middle of the windswept mountains.
Glenveagh, Mount Stewart and Glin are just three of 20 gardens celebrated in this covetable book. Others include historic demesnes like Birr Castle, Killruddery and Ballinlough Castle; contemporary creations like Jim Reynolds's Butterstream, Lorna MacMahon's Ardcarraig and the Dillon garden in Ranelagh. All these, and a gathering of other uniquely Irish gardens were made by gardeners combining "an iron determination with a wild but discriminating enthusiasm". Which is exactly how you could describe the author of this book.
Irish Gardens by Olda FitzGerald is published by Conran Octopus at IR£30. The gardens at Glin Castle are open during May and June. Other times by appointment. Phone Bob Duff at: 068-34173.