Kells Bay House & Gardens.

                Had we come to the Ring of Kerry to gaze upon the Skellig Isles and nothing else, it would have been a worthy trip. However, Michelle had arranged for us to stay at Kells Bay House & Gardens, known as the 'Jewel of the Ring'. Considering the Ring in question, an unending circle of wonder, one could fairly presume such a bold claim might open the walled garden's gates to disappointment. As grey rainclouds gathered, doubts loomed higher.

                In the end, the clouds could have blackened and the evening drawn in swifter, and still these thoughts would have been dispelled by the enchantment of a garden the like of which I have never seen before nor shall likely see again. What an extraordinary place!
                It began by stepping into the Ladies Walled Garden - perhaps so-named because it is the only part of the gardens with such hallmarks of civilisation as stone paving or roofed benches. Its centre point is a broken tree trunk, thick and ancient-looking, adorned with nature's palette of lichen. Surrounded by trees and shrubs, as we were approaching it in autumn it loomed before us out of a rough circle of red, purple and green foliage - a circle met by further pathways leading higher or lower, past walls or toward mossy stairways and out of sight.

                One path lead out to something signposted the 'Primaeval Forest'. This lay outside of the stone walls, and yet if one were observing from a bird's eye view they could see that, in actuality, this meant stepping into a larger, more ancient and organic "walled" garden. Hills completely surround Kells Bay, each with fabulous names like Cooduff or Teermoyle, and combined with a thick forest canopy overhead they ensure the gardens never fall below five degrees centigrade in temperature. It is because of this natural alignment (and perhaps a little Victorian forestation), in such a remote pocket of Ireland, that something astounding has been borne.
As we discovered on our walk, the sign for a 'Primaeval Forest' did not lead to any old mossy corner but to the largest collection of tree ferns on this northern half of the planet. Brought from thousands of miles away and planted in the nineteenth-century by Mr Rowland Ponsonby Blennerhassett (I've used the words "fabulous names" in this paragraph already - perhaps from now on it worth accepting as an unspoken rule that all Irish names are indeed fabulous), the height, vigour, and sheer numbers of these tender tree ferns left me desperately grasping for a way of communicating to Michelle how horticulturally impressive they were, and of course as I write now it escapes me again. To still exist today, they must have been kept safe from frost for a century. Hundreds of these giants, for a century.

                As I hinted at earlier, part of Kerry's landscape is a result of Victorian forestation - the mass planting of beech, ash, and larch saplings among the preexisting holly and yew. In the present day, these trees are now huge and have produced an understorey of native ferns beneath the canopy, inviting their Antipodean cousins to dwell among them. The greens, golds, and browns of the northern hemisphere blend happily with those of the south, as the tree ferns spread from their initial density into a forest shared with the European trees.

                This forest carries on right down to the sea in one direction, and back up towards the mountains in the other, and the ease with which we were able to quite genuinely lose ourselves in it was remarkable and enjoyable. Perhaps this was due to the endless carpet of beech leaves covering paths - but my suspicion that evening was that beneath the leaves there were no paths to find. Occasionally some roughly hewn steps would come into view, or a short post with an arrow on it, but when they did appear they often seemed to contradict each other. Moreover, the further we walked the narrower the paths became, taking us above and alongside rivers and bogs. One such path had so much water running along its stones, I'm quite sure it had made the transition into a small stream! The sound of running water seen and unseen about our ears made it all the more atmospheric.

A thick old bough falling across a path.

Huge boughs crossed the paths at points, requiring a little athleticism to climb over or under them. Needless to say, this was as far away from the tarmacked wheelchair-friendly layout of the modern public garden as one could imagine. However, were there a visitor unable to scramble or weave along these paths, I wonder if they would even see it changed - for, in its unkempt present state, this is a garden that truly allows you to believe any wild thing might be waiting around the next tree.
It seems that later generations of gardeners have had the same feeling themselves, and now offer a little joke to visitors who feel it too.

                It is an extraordinarily exciting, intimate place, and though I feel deeply inspired by its horticulture and its style, Kells Bay Garden has also immersed me in magic.

Valentia Island and the Ring of Kerry.

                In the last post I expressed my joy in coming home. Well, after three months away researching in Virginia my fiancée Michelle has come home herself. The reunion was sweet, and after some time spent in Chester I followed her over the sea to Northern Ireland where her folks live.
                 Understandably things have been rather blissful; it's been lovely seeing all of her family and the horses, enjoying coffees out and happy evenings under the same roof. When Michelle let slip that she'd secretly booked us a trip away to Kells Bay House & Garden in County Kerry, it came as an unexpected cherry on top of a cake already tasty enough! Not that I could turn it down, of course - so off we set, to the sparkling south-western facet of the Emerald Isle.

                County Kerry is considered so beautiful the road circumnavigating most of it has been given the magical title the 'Ring of Kerry'. It certainly lived up to its name! We couldn't visit every treasure there and for the ones we did I couldn't capture their entirety with my camera - though Michelle knows I certainly tried! Before I write about the wonders of Kells Bay Garden, I thought I'd upload photographs from our exploration of Valentia Island and Killarney National Park, as these were created by the hands of God rather than horticulturists!

                The west of Valentia Island looks out into the Atlantic Ocean. Two tiny isles loom out of the misty horizon separating sky from ocean: Little Skellig and Skellig Michael (Sceilig Mhichíl).

Skellig Michael is famous for two separate habitations: a monastery of stone huts built by St Finnian, populated by unimaginably courageous men from the sixth to twelfth century, and jedi knight Luke Skywalker.

The view from Valentia Island: from left to right, Puffin Island, Little Skellig, and Skellig Michael.

The height of the cliffs, the white of the waves, and the strength of the winds are epic, and you truly are witnessing majesty. To attempt sailing out into it all, let alone to live on Skellig Michael, is hard to comprehend and rightly inspires the awe of the modern visitor.

               

                The next day, we ventured further inland along the Ring of Kerry, passing into Killarney National Park to see Torc Waterfall. It meant leaving behind the bleak coastal terrain and entering deep, deep woods of golden beech.

These trees tower above the road, their high boughs covered with thick green moss and ferns.
The continuous drop of their leaves fills one's vision, but one's hearing is met by the sound of human chatter - the falls and the continuing river attract a steady stream of visitors. Although the voices are an array of different dialects, the language barrier does not prevent offers to take photographs of other parties and consequent expressions of thanks.

With the falls (and our senses) so busy and completely enclosed by forest, it couldn't have been a more different experience to Valentia Island - touching an entirely separate part of the soul. Indeed, having returned to the north we've been asked if we had seen the 'Ladies View', another part of Kerry which is completely different to the islands or the wooded waterfall. I truly believe that one could journey along the Ring every year, and still find fresh landscapes waiting to be discovered and explored.

Ness Botanic Gardens.

                With my apprenticeship in Essex at an end, the chance to spend time with the family up in Chester is a welcome one. It's also an opportunity to see some of the gardens to be found here in the north west.

                One of the best known is Ness Botanic Gardens, which lies on the Wirral peninsular between the estuaries of the Mersey and Dee rivers. Other than that - its location - I wasn't sure what to expect. I had visited a couple of years ago, very briefly and at a rather solemn time of year, and as my Grampy would say, "there wasn't much to write home about!" However, the sun was out and three of us (Mum & her friend Sue, both possessing far more horticultural knowledge than I do) set out to see what there was to be seen.

               It didn't take long for me to start questioning whether my last visit had been to a different garden, as the place we entered into this time was filled with colour, interest, and - if I can use a term rarely used in horticultural discussion - genuine coolness.

                Although the longevity of the summer plants at Powis Castle impressed by absolutely denying autumn's arrival, at Ness it was possible to see an intelligent and balanced response to the oncoming season.
                  On the one hand, some of the gardens (much like the RHS gardens, Ness contains an array of themes) remain untempered by seasons due to their style and plant choice. In the rock garden, creeping tufts of shrubs, herbs and grasses sit between crags of (mainly) local sandstone to create a pleasingly naturalistic form.

In the water gardens, the impact of bamboo is immediate - the visitor wants to look at them and through them to the water's surface. Apart from their obvious structural benefit en masse, their stripes add such pizzazz without breaking the green theme. I must jot the species name down next time.

                On the other hand, large parts of the garden have been set to utterly embrace autumn. Of course it is no secret to any gardener that deciduous foliage can transform into attractive colours, but the combinations and concoctions at Ness produce deep, rich tapestries. It truly left me wondering whether those who had chosen the plants could have cared about the other seasons as much, or if such perfect choices for autumn meant horrible clashes in springtime! However, the very fact that the area photographed below is named 'The Azalea Walk' suggests no such sacrifice has been made.

This dawn redwood (Metasequoia glyptostroboides), stood in a less bamboo-ey corner of the water gardens, may still be bright green but will look extraordinary once its foliage turns to a fiery orange.

Moreover, as with any garden that contains the katsura tree (Cercidiphyllum japonicum), attention has clearly been given to autumnal scents as well as to sights.

It may not relate to my enjoyment of the garden's autumnal treats, but I must mention one other aspect of Ness: labelling. One only has to look at the titles of the katsura and dawn redwood trees mentioned above in italics to suspect that I did not venture into horticulture out of love for botanical latin names. They are hard to spell, and harder still to pronounce. However, it is far more of a headache to walk away from a beautiful plant without knowing its name whatsoever, rendering the chances of finding another for one's own garden an impossibility. With this in mind, I must offer the gardeners at Ness my highest praise, for the most thorough labelling effort in any garden I have come upon. Not only is it something tremendously helpful in practical terms (and I do strive to do the same in whichever garden I come to work in), but it also generates a friendliness about the place. It is very much appreciated, and one of many reasons why I am glad to be home.