There are lots of garden events in Ireland each year, but most of them are aimed at people who are knowledgeable about growing plants. It was with this in mind that Catherine FitzGerald, the eldest daughter of Desmond FitzGerald, 29th Knight of Glin, and her colleague Minnie Preston organised an alternative garden festival — one for those who want to learn about gardening.
Described as Electric Picnic meets Gardeners’ World, the Festival of Gardens and Nature is taking place next weekend in the gardens of Ballintubbert House, Co Laois, and FitzGerald is excited.
“It’s going to be fantastic,” she says. “We hope the diverse group of speakers we have organised will appeal to a broad demographic. You don’t need to be into gardening to attend — we want to reach people who don’t know that much about it. We want to get people together having food and coffee, and there will be things to buy, but of course the focus is gardening.”
Subjects to be discussed include how to develop a meadow, the creation of swimming ponds, sustainable floral design, biodynamic vegetable growing, the healing effect of horticulture, the power of scent, our spiritual connection with the landscape, and the joy of colour in a garden.
Seamus O’Brien, head gardener at the National Botanic Gardens of Ireland in Kilmacurragh, Co Wicklow, will be talking about meadows. Colm O’Driscoll, the head gardener at Airfield Estate in Dundrum, Dublin, will be talking about healing the soil. The artist TJ Maher will give a talk on horticulture, and the designer Cath Kidston will speak on the power of scent. The chef Rory O’Connell and the TV presenter and writer Manchán Magan will be there too.
FitzGerald is a landscape gardener and a landscape architect, so she will be speaking about how to keep a historic garden vibrant and relevant. She grew up at Glin Castle, in 400 acres of wooded land in Co Limerick, and as a child had the run of the grounds and watched her grandparents tend to it. “I had this background that was extremely nurturing,” she recalls. “Later I visited other gardens, like the Derreen Garden in Co Kerry, which had a seminal influence on me.”
She studied history of art at Trinity College Dublin, and it was there that she met her husband, the actor Dominic West, but finding herself disillusioned after leaving university she turned to gardening and believes it had a healing effect. “I went through some challenges and wasn’t sure of my direction in life,” she says. “Things weren’t going to plan. It was then that I retrained in horticulture. Learning about plants and trees, and growing things from seed was a source of solace for me. What’s more, it gave me a new passion for life.”
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She has since worked in the UK, including in Northern Ireland at Hillsborough Castle. FitzGerald describes working on the garden at Hillsborough for seven years as an extraordinary experience. “It was ticking along and everyone was doing their best to maintain it, but it was a bit of sleeping beauty. Now it’s open to the public and it’s flourishing.”
Glin Castle is her other passion — one she inherited from her father. Since he died in 2011 she has been its chatelaine. She and her family have fought to save the historic pile, which has been in the family for more than 800 years. For financial reasons they were forced into selling the castle in 2015. It was put up for auction, but when a suitable buyer failed to materialise they withdrew it from the market. It was a hotel for 15 years. “We struggled to make that work because of the layout,” FitzGerald says.
These days the 15-bedroom castle is open to the public for private events such as weddings and parties. “You can book in at Glin for a special anniversary weekend, or whatever the occasion is, and we will look after you,” FitzGerald says. “Glin has a very special atmosphere, which makes it brilliant for entertaining. It doesn’t work when there are lots of different people staying there,” she adds. “But it works well when it’s just one group. Once I realised that I thought, this is the model. That’s what we’re going to do.”
She agrees that a castle can be a burden in terms of upkeep, but she tries not to focus on that. “There’s no point in moaning about how hard it is because we’re lucky to have it and we can make it work,” she says with determination. “But no house is the same, and there’s no blueprint for how to run it.
“One has to be creative, flexible, remain positive and keep thinking of new ideas. These country houses are very important historically and culturally. I think during Covid we all realised that we need to visit such places and be surrounded by nature. We’ve got to treasure them.”
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FitzGerald splits her time between the UK and the castle, but she and her family spend all their holidays at Glin Castle, and her mother, Olda,and one of her sisters and her family still live there. “It’s still very much our home,” she says.
While she has tried to pass on her love of gardening to her children, Dora, 17, Senan, 15, Francis, 14, and Christabel, 10, only Christabel is interested. “Dora, my eldest, is artistic, and the boys are just football mad,” she says. “But I suppose one out of four is not bad.” Her husband is not a keen gardener, but he does have a passion for ponds, which grew from his love of cold-water swimming in the Shannon estuary. “He developed a friendship with David Butler, who is an expert on digging ponds,” FitzGerald says.
West and Butler will be speaking on the subject of ponds at the festival. “They have researched how to make natural ponds in a sustainable way so the water is clear, cleaned by plants and you can swim in it. He likes trees too, but I don’t think I’m ever going to get him to know the Latin names of plants,” FitzGerald adds. “That may be a step too far.”
The Festival of Gardens and Nature is at Ballintubbert House, Co Laois, on April 21 and 22, festivalofgardensandnature.com
