Finding Ireland: A Poet's Explorations of Irish Literature and Culture

Mount Stewart: Its Gardens, House, and Family

Mount Stewart: Its Gardens, House, and Family Midsummer’s Day I was up early, walking in the Italian Garden at Mount Stewart, County Down. I was staying for a week or so at a B&B just outside the demesne wall, in an eighteenth-century farmhouse that had once been part of the estate, and was spending my days in the gardens. The rolled and clipped turf felt reassuringly cushy under my feet— part of the sense of well-being that emanates from a perfectly tended lawn. Then a soft drizzle descended, and I sheltered in the tiled pavilion at the foot of the Spanish Garden, one terraced level lower, the long oval of its pool flanked by bamboo and lowgrowing bush wisteria from Japan. Leyland cypresses, severely clipped into two parallel arcades, wall this small garden in on the east and west with dark-green living arches. The pavilion faces north, up a flight of steps, across the central lawn of the Italian Garden, toward the south front of Mount Stewart House. From the vantage point of the Spanish Garden, that ordered symmetry which is the essence of classicism asserts itself. A hundred yards long, fifty yards deep, the Italian Garden, 221 Tillinghast pt 4-5 8/20/08 3:27 PM Page 221 paralleling the south elevation of the house, is formed around a central lawn flanked by two parterres, in the centers of which circular lily ponds have been sunk. Ringing the lily ponds, purple irises are encircled by beds of yellow roses, lupines in their several colors, dahlias and voluptuous peonies, tall purple delphiniums, and the blinding magenta of Abbotswood Rose. The garden’s formal polarity is emphasized by two massive Irish yews, part of the older garden that was here before the seventh Marchioness of Londonderry took the place in hand in 1921 and substantially created the garden as it exists today.The brooding green density of the yews is relieved by the more cheerful green of two large sweet-bay trees from Belgium, 120 years old, neatly clipped and growing in pots on the terrace, flanking the neoclassical south portico. The garden at Mount Stewart is a living assemblage of pure delight, an eighty-acre ecosystem, a consortium where all the senses are brought into play. The presiding genius here for years was Nigel Marshall, a blue-eyed, plainspoken Englishman with the gnarled fingers and weathered look that go with his occupation . Since 1970 Nigel, with a staff of about eight and temporary help varying by season, was head gardener at Mount Stewart, which many consider the greatest garden in Ireland. Mr. Marshall has since retired and is living in a gate lodge at Mt. Stewart. He has been replaced by Phil Rollinson. Five miles from the Irish Sea, where the Gulf Stream flows, the place enjoys a subtropical climate with annual rainfall of thirty-five inches, and lime-free soil. The house faces south over the Italian Garden and shelters from the north winds behind a wooded hill. There are heavy dews at night. All of this combines to produce remarkable growth rates and a hospitable environment for plants like the blue and claret-colored Himalayan poppies that grow in the Lily Wood, Kniphofia from Uganda, with its clumps of delicate salmon and pale yellow flowers, and the New Zealand Sophora tetraptera—a small tree with butteryellow , mimosa-like flowers. Mount Stewart Tillinghast pt 4-5 8/20/08 3:27 PM Page 222 The closer to the house, the more formal and domesticated the style of the gardens. On the outlying paths and hills, things start to look wilder and less planned. The Italian Garden is flanked on the east by the Mairi Garden, designed on the cozy scale of a cottage garden. On the west the ground slopes down into the Lily Wood, an informal, meandering glade planted with fifty-year-old New Zealand tree ferns, cedars, palm trees, beeches, and several delicate rhododendrons including the Victorianum , Edgeworthii, and formosum. These tender plants, along with many varieties of lilies including a Cardiocrinum giganteum from Asia, are sheltered to the north by the high walls of the Sunk Garden, by huge trees like one hundred-foot Caucasian fir, and four varieties of tall eucalyptus that intercept the wintry winds. The Sunk Garden adjoins the west wing, the oldest part of the house, which was built of grey local stone by George Dance...