The story of Irish Gardening

Swan Park house

Farming has been the predominant form of working with the land in Irish culture. With the present economic climate, growing our own food will probably be again a bigger part of our lives. Gardening as we know it, with our neat beds, borders and lawns is a relatively new venture into land use. Over the next couple of weeks I’m going to take you back to the beginning of the phenomenon that is gardening to see how it all started and how certain periods in history changed the way we see and use the land.

In the beginning

Gardening was thought to have originated in Jericho, Palestine in 8000 BC and was introduced to Cyprus, Egypt and China in 5000BC. By 2500BC the Indus valley and South America had picked up on the idea and introduced basic gardening as they were more settled that in their nomadic pasts. The ancient Greeks designed open urban spaces, planned paths, parapets, steps, walls and ornamental buildings for simply looking at and enjoying. None have survived but our imaginations can wander when we look at Olympia and Hadrians Villa in Tripoli. Herb uses and references date back to 3000BC in Chinese documents and ancient Egyptian papyrus from the middle of the second millennium BC. Both cultures stated that herbs were used for flavouring and medicine. Herbs were probably the first cultivated edible and medicinal plants grown by the masses. The Anglo Saxons were responsible for naming many of our native herbal plants and in 812 AD Charlemagne (742-814), a holy Roman Emperor, recognised the herbs importance during his military campaigns and ordered 74 different types of herbs to be grown in the Imperial gardens.

Leaving their mark

Around Ireland and the UK there is no direct evidence of deliberate ornamental planting to pre Roman times. The Iron Age was predominantly engaged in farming. From 43 AD the Romans did bring over many horticultural ideas and plants. Vineyards were established in the warmer southern counties and plenty of plants that we now class as weeds appeared such as Lily (Madonna). Cabbages and leeks were introduced by the Romans in much the same way that the Persians introduced roses when they invaded other countries. They were a sign of their presence and influence on the conquered country. By 1066 Western Europe crusaders brought new ideas, monasteries were established with large walled gardens, orchards and herb gardens, all cutting edge stuff at the time. The large walls helped to shelter the plants, but in later years when walled gardens were built for private individuals they were mainly built to keep out the peasants who might take an opportunity to steal a bunch of purple carrots.

First cook book

The late middle ages brought us our first plant and cookbook. In 1393 a French book called ‘Le Menagier de Paris’ had recipes and instructions on how to grow hyssop, fennel, savoury, marjoram and other kitchen herbs. Medieval tapestries show gardens and orchards outside town walls and with the decline of castles, the country house stately gardens emerged as settings for building the relationship of inside and outside of the house, which is a very popular garden design idea, especially in town houses where the garden merges with the living space.

Formal and intricate

In the 16th century the Renaissance design for gardens was formal and intricate. The style had classical detail and features such as temples and statues. Native flowers, especially herbs were cultivated as well as evergreen hedging which provided a formal setting around the beds. Topiary, the shaping of shrubs, was popular too as were grass topped seats for the passerby to stop and sit for a while taking in the scents of the herbs. The ‘Knot’ garden was made popular in Elizabethan times which probably originated from Italy via Holland. These designs again generally contained herbs. There intricate patterned squares that made up the ‘Knot’ usually had box or rosemary to make the pattern and then had coloured gravel or flowering plants inlaid. These designs were superseded by ‘Parterres’ around 1644 which also incorporated swirling patterns and didn’t need any flowers as they were dramatic enough without. During the late 17th century plants were introduced, the first bedding plants if you like, to represent embroidery patterns in the garden. Some designs also used turf.

The grand manner of post Renaissance garden design was developed by Andre le Notre (1613-1700) at Versailles which again extended the concept of a palace leading into the countryside, bringing the two features together as one unit. In 1644 (a few years after the horse chestnut tree was introduced into Ireland from the Balkans) George London and Henry Wise spread the French styles of Le Notre around the UK then a succession of popular designers such as John Vanbrugh, Switzer spread the delights of urban gardens to a wider audience of mainly landed families. William Kent (1685-1748) was working on Holkam Hall in Norfolk and under him was Lancelot Brown (1716-1783) Lancelot acquired the hick name of ‘Capability’ for his habit of tactfully telling people that their gardens were ‘capable of great improvement’ . He developed a style of grass, water and trees at many of the great homes, one of the first in Ireland was that of Delaney at Deville and this in turn influenced followers such as Henry King to design Florence court in Enniskillen.
Next week: New plants and herbaceous borders taking us onto the next stage of gardening for the masses.
Photo: The walled gardens at Buncrana house were probably used more for cattle than flowers

New plants

New plant genera was being introduced from all over the world by botanists and by 1790 the Royal Dublin Society acquired the site for the National Botanic Gardens in Dublin Humphrey Repton (1752-1818) was able to use a greater range of plants that previous designers and introduced features like fountains, terraces and balustrades. The gardens were still for the elite though and this didn’t change until John Claudius Loudon (1783-1843) a great writer of his day brought gardening to the rising middle classes and it marked the start of specialised designs such as rock and bog gardens. He was lucky enough to be alive when the first of many public parks opened in Derby in the UK.

Hot house

In the early 18th and 19th century most Irish country houses were set in newly planted areas with beech trees arranged around perimeter belts and fields were sprinkled with elms, oaks and chestnut trees. There were hundreds of these square formal houses spring up all around the country. As history panned out, most of these now lie in ruins and the Anglo Irish that built them are long gone. These areas were originally called ‘Elysiums’ or ‘Places of complete happiness’ Not gardens as we are familiar with, even then it was still the walled gardens that housed the flower beds and borders.

By the mid 19th century, great formal gardens in the French Baroque tradition had revived borders, carpet beds, paths and clipped hedges that surrounded the houses. William Robinson (1839-1935) was an undergraduate in the estate of a clerical baronet in County Leix (Laois) who, after a row with the owner opener up all of the hot houses on a cold December morning before fleeing to Dublin to work . Helped by Dr Moore of the Glasnevin Botanical Gardens Robinson went to the Botanic Gardens in Regents Park. He rose to be a very influential gardener, especially with wild flowers and in the late 19th century wrote ‘The Wild Garden’ (1870) and the ‘English Flower Garden (1883). These books contributed to the end of formal gardening as we knew it. His naturalism was and still is ideally suited to the Irish climate. The herbaceous borders were created.

Herbaceous borders

Then along came Dr Gertrude Jekyll (1843-1932) who further developed the herbaceous borders, shrub borders, wild gardens and woodland gardens. She condemned bedding plants, topiary and conservatories. In 1891 she joined with Edwin Lytyens and went on to design over 300 gardens which included the War Memorial Gardens at Islandbridge in Dublin and the gardens at Heywood, County Laois. William Robinson and Gertrude Jekyll laid the foundations for modern garden design in the Victorian era with their natural vernacular styles affording ideas to the wealthy and also to the masses. The garden as we know it had evolved.

Bauhaus

In 1919, Walter Gropius, a member of the modern German Bauhaus Movement incorporated the total design of inside and outside of the house and understood the connections between the two. The movement was closed down by the growing power of the Hitler movement but the influence moved to a more free thinking America and flourished. A new style emerged again rejecting the old formal designs. Thomas Church, Garrett Eckbo and Laurence Halpin broke new ground. Gardens reflected the house, landscape and personality of the owner. This movement was slow to venture over the Atlantic but it was helped along by the book ‘Gardens in the Modern Landscape’ written by a Canadian called William Tunnard and illustrated by artist Gordon Cullen.

Present day

After 1945, modern garden designers assimilated ideas from all over the world as suburban towns were developed after the war. Sylvia Crowe, Jeffrey Jellicoe, Brenda Colvern, Peto, James Russell and Brookes moved forward the art of gardening. They specialised in small gardens that had to be functional, provide some outdoor living space, an area for clothes to dry, children to play and even a place for the dustbin to go. The idea was that the familiarity of the garden should increase to give a feeling of unity and contentment for the family. This idea is still very prevalent today with the addition of the vegetable garden.

The four main designs that are widely used today are:

The cottage garden.
These make the maximum use of a small space and rely on flowering plants, small lawns and some vegetables.
The Italian garden.
Probably of classical origin, relies on architectural features, pools, sculptures, hedges, gazebos and secluded areas for contemplation.
The post Renaissance garden:
This is where the property is in harmony with the countryside.
The Irish/English romantic garden.
These are informal, picturesque, and intimate and give the opportunity for exploiting the beauty of many plant species in clumps or single specimens.

Of course most gardens of note can incorporate all of these features and often do. The use of gardens by new garden designers is now seeing these outdoor spaces becoming far more practical and productive. Vegetables can be incorporated in beds and borders just as effectively as a veggie patch and gardens can also be a place not only to relax but to house energy saving geothermal heat pumps, underground water storage, wind turbines and solar panels. Gardening designs and ideas have and always, and will always hopefully move with the times and need to be embraced and recognised as a great benefit to the quality of everyday life.