Around St. Patrick\u2019s Day I like to dip into Thomas Cahill\u2019s wonderful book, How the Irish Saved Civilization.<\/i>\u00a0 The title is lofty, but the book is very accessible and focuses on how Irish monks helped preserve great works of Classical learning as civilization traveled the path of time from the Roman era to the medieval period.\u00a0 Those same monks were great gardeners; producing edible crops that fed the monasteries, as well as herbs for medicines and flavorings, not to mention flowers to ornament alters and bedeck the churches and chapels on feast days.<\/p>\n
But the Irish gardening tradition goes beyond the monks.\u00a0 England has been called \u201ca green and pleasant land,\u201d but the same can easily be said of Ireland.\u00a0 At this time of year, I think of Ireland\u2019s strong connection to that most welcome of spring flowers, daffodils.\u00a0 Guy Wilson\u20141885-1962\u2014was a wonderful Irish daffodil breeder, especially famed for his white-flowered cultivars.\u00a0 Hailing from Broughshane in County Antrim, Northern Ireland, Wilson stood front and center on the world daffodil stage, but also led a pack of other notable Irish daffodil breeders in the twentieth century.\u00a0 One of Wilson\u2019s best daffodils, the ruffled white \u2018Broughshane,\u2019 named for his hometown, grows in my garden.\u00a0 Sometimes its pointed blue-green leaves have emerged from the earth by St. Patrick\u2019s Day.\u00a0 This year it is anyone\u2019s guess.<\/p>\n
Modern gardens just about everywhere owe a debt to Irishman William Robinson\u20141838-1935–who was born in County Waterford and received his early training on Irish estates.\u00a0 A consummate writer, designer and student of gardening, Robinson ended up in England, creating a celebrated garden at Gravetye Manor in Sussex.\u00a0 He was a pioneer of the naturalistic style of planting, which moved the horticultural world away from the rigid bedding schemes beloved of high Victorian gardeners.\u00a0 He created abundant mixed borders of annuals, perennials, shrubs and trees and planted them in a style similar to that used by his contemporary and friend, Gertrude Jekyll.\u00a0 Robinson founded an influential magazine, The Garden, and produced many books, the best of which, The Wild Garden, is still a great reference source.<\/p>\n
In our own time, the Irish have given us Helen Dillon, a celebrated gardener and entertaining writer who lives and works in Dublin.\u00a0 Her garden is open to the public as are her opinions, frequently expressed in books, newspaper and magazine articles.\u00a0 Some of the best of them have gone into Down to Earth With Helen Dillon, which covers many aspects of the gardening process.\u00a0 Dillon\u2019s garden is dynamic, with changes happening all the time.\u00a0 A small pool is installed, later filled in, and still later undergoes a renaissance as a focal point at the end of a constructed rill.\u00a0 For those who tire of garden authors who have clean fingernails and perfect borders, Dillon is refreshing.\u00a0 She admits her mistakes, laughs at them and moves on.\u00a0 It is no wonder that she is popular on both sides of the Atlantic.<\/p>\n
Any number of good garden plants have come from Ireland.\u00a0 There is, of course, the shamrock, which may be one of several different species belonging to the genus Trifolium.\u00a0 Some merchants also offer forms of oxalis, which have trefoil-shaped leaves, as shamrocks.\u00a0 The trifolium species are native to or long naturalized in Ireland, while oxalis came from elsewhere.\u00a0 If you are going to grow anything shamrock-related in your garden, try white clover, a true trifolium.<\/p>\n
You might also plant the \u2018Butterfly Blue\u2019 variety of perennial scabiosa or pincushion flower, which was discovered growing in an Irish garden.\u00a0 It was honored as the Perennial Plant Association\u2019s Plant of the Year in 2000, in recognition of its beauty, hardiness and ease of culture.\u00a0 The powder-blue pincushion flowers sit atop twelve to fifteen inch stems, which are also adorned with feathery leaves.\u00a0 Blooming in summer, \u2018Butterfly Blue\u2019 prefers full sun and good drainage.<\/p>\n
If you are in the mood for a trip to Ireland, there are many gardens, great and small, to be seen.\u00a0 A good place to start is the Houses, Castles and Gardens of Ireland website at http:\/\/www.gardensireland.com\/about-us<\/a>.\u00a0 HCGI is a group of seventy-three properties in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland that are open to the public.\u00a0 The National Botanic Gardens in Glasnevin, near Dublin, was a training ground for William Robinson and remains a good place to get a feel for Irish gardens, horticulture and research.<\/p>\n I won\u2019t get to Ireland this year, so I will have to content myself with a few Guy Wilson daffodils and the patches of white clover \u201cshamrocks\u201d that come up unbidden in my garden.\u00a0 I doubt that any of my clovers have four leaves, but in this year of eternal snow, I will feel lucky just to see the three-leafed variety.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Around St. Patrick\u2019s Day I like to dip into Thomas Cahill\u2019s wonderful book, How the Irish Saved Civilization.\u00a0 The title is lofty, but the book is very accessible and focuses on how Irish monks helped preserve great works of Classical learning as civilization traveled the path of time from the Roman era to the medieval … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,2,3,5],"tags":[784,276,787,778,786,780,777,776,785,782,781,783,779],"class_list":["post-1023","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall","category-general-interest","category-spring","category-summer","category-winter","tag-clover","tag-daffodils","tag-dublin","tag-guy-wilson","tag-helen-dillon","tag-how-the-irish-saved-civilization","tag-ireland","tag-irish-plants","tag-oxalis","tag-pincushion-flower","tag-scabiosa","tag-shamrocks","tag-thomas-cahill"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1023","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1023"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1023\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1024,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1023\/revisions\/1024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}