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Bellefield

Garden

A 1.8 acre walled garden at Bellefield

Address:

Shinrone
Co Offaly

About Birr

Tel: +353 505 47766

Please mention ireland-guide.com when enquiring.

Bellefield

Opening Months: January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December
Opening Days: Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday
Opening Hours:
Admission Charge: €5

Appointment Only
Admission Charge

Georgina Campbell

The love of plants is an all consuming passion for garden architect Angela Jupe and the rationale behind the creation of her new garden. It’s a passion that prompted her to plant 1,000 scarlet tulips for pointillist effect in the meadow in front of her home and drive through France in search of the most appealing peonies ever.

In late spring it’s hard to know where first to feast your eyes first in the 1.8 acre walled garden at Bellefield. You could drink in the sight of a double iris walk inspired by Monet’s garden at Giverney, gaze spellbound into the golden hearts of unknown French peonies which came home with Angela or be fascinated by an extradorinary gazebo, with an exotic Indian dome, gothic windows and a fernery at its feet.

The garden is still evolving. But looking at lengthy summer borders, one with a hot colour scheme of scarlet punctuated with unusual varieties of medlar and in another with dark crimson dahlias interspersed with the aristocrats among French roses like ‘Mme Isaac Perreire,’ Comte de Chambord’, it is hard to believe that three years ago the only way into the garden was to crawl in on hands a knees. After undergrowth and saplings were cleared the grid of paths emerged and Angela retained the old fruit trees and a few samplings to give height and shelter.

The next step was to remove an awkward slope and to create instead a lower garden scheduled to become a potager with a rill running down the centre. Roofless outbuildings have been converted into charming guest accommodation and the Victorian house, built around an old hunting lodge, restored.

In the warmest corner of the garden is an eye catching green house, ingeniously created – like the gazebo- from salvage. (This where collecting bits and pieces in the hope that they may come useful one day – like the old shelves now displaying a collection of pelargoniums in the greenhouse- comes into its own.)

Many gorgeous herbaceous plants now filling the borders, like campanulas, delphiniums and dieramas came from Angela’s previous garden at Fancroft. And all around the garden plants are being grown experimentally to see how they will perform: heritage tomatoes from America, strawberry plants found in a market in France, different types of figs and cuttings taken from the garden’s lone surviving vine.

In its own way the garden seems to be showing gratitude for being rescued from decades of neglect for the ground is very fertile and plants grow exceptionally well.

Best time of year to visit: