Mount Usher Gardens

We took one of our regular visits to Mount Usher Gardens in Ashford, Co. Wicklow, yesterday, feeling the need to get out after days of rain here. The weather was good with rain arriving just as we were ready to leave, so well timed and no inconvenience.

Wild garlic – ramsons and three-cornered garlic – along with bluebells provided the background to the garden yesterday and it is amazing how the same ground can accommodate so many dense layers of groundcover. Earlier in the year there were stretches of wood anemones, some still in flower, along with vast stretches of a small light blue scilla, erythroniums, winter aconites and daffodils everywhere. Yesterday, the garden had what looked like a snow covering of garlic and the fragrance – is that too polite a word for the smell of garlic? – pervaded the garden. A eucalyptus had come down in one of the winter storms; the trunk had been cut into logs and the smaller branches chipped and used as a mulch on footpaths giving another area to entertain the nose.

Enough waffle! I’ll allow the photographs to tell the tale: I’m going to post the photographs as a gallery as this allows me to add captions while the slideshow doesn’t – unless I am missing the obvious and could do it that way. Click on the first photograph to view them as a slideshow:

The first area of the garden that the visitor meets – double herbaceous borders.

Lunaria annua, Honesty with striking variegation

Rheum palmatum

Cornus

Cardamine bulbjiferum – generally not welcome in most gardens as it spreads so well but suitale here.

Paeonia mlokosewitschii – regularly simplified for pronunciation to ‘Molly the Witch’

Garlic to the left; garlic to the right!

Rhododendrons and azaleas

Darmera peltata – plentiful on the bank of the river.

Embothrium coccineum

Staphlyea

Darmera peltata on its own private island.

Gunnera manicata

Acer griseum over a meadow of garlic

Lysichiton camtschatcensis

Pinus montezumae

Davidia involucrata

Lysichiton camtschatcensis

Lysichiton camtschatcensis

Primula japonica with Leucojum eativuum

Primula florinde

Lysichiton ammericanus

Allium triquetrum, Three-corneed garlic – under a grand eucalyptus

Akebia quinata which was growing on one of the bridges.

Pinus montezumae

Halesia carolina

Cornus over bridge

Cornus

As ever, the visit to Mount Usher was very enjoyable and we were at home early enough for me to cut the grass and feed his majesty who came running to greet us!

A dramatic sky but it didn’t rain and I managed to get the grass cut.

Coming to greet us (= looking for food!)