Ireland’s most celebrated gardener and garden writer Helen Dillon is once again welcoming the public into her garden after relocating to a walled garden in Monkstown, Dublin.
Helen’s previous garden, in Ranelagh, became a site of pilgrimage for keen gardeners as she developed it over 45 years into an internationally-renowned plant lover’s paradise.
However in 2016, she decided to sell the house and close the garden to move to a smaller property near the sea. She was drawn to the Monkstown bungalow for its early 19th century 1/5 acre garden, sheltered from the Irish Sea by high granite walls.
She has now finished planting a new, flower-filled garden, studded with unusual plants like Chinese yellow banana (Musa lasiocarpo), slipper orchids, angel’s fishing rods (Dierama) and tree ferns. Many of the plants came with her from her Ranelagh garden as rooted cuttings or divisions.
Helen has been a guru to Irish gardeners for years, with many aspiring to her style of gardening. So here are some tips to get your garden looking – almost – as perfect as hers:
- Pay attention to detail: dead-head often, and keep your plants neat, stripping brown leaves from dying poppies, for example, to show off their seed heads.
- Drop colour into the border using in-flower plants from our garden centre here in Athlone to replace those coming to the end of their display.
- Repeat the same plant to link different areas of the garden together.
- Cover difficult spots where flowers struggle to thrive with pebbles, attractive sculptures, or slabs of stone.
- Don’t be afraid to use colour: plant great drifts of brilliant scarlet or riots of blue to create an eye-catchingly vivid display.
Helen is running gardening classes regularly throughout the summer, and her garden is also open to groups of 10 or more by arrangement (www.dillongarden.com).
