There was a good turn out for our talk on Irish Snowdrops on Saturday, 20th January with Assumpta Broomfield. Our next talk ‘The Story of Blarney Castle Gardens’ with headgardener Adam Whitbourn is on Feb 15th at 8pm. Photos and report from Ali Rochford
Author: Paddy
Annual General Meeting 2018 – Booking Now Open!
Details of our Annual General Meeting weekend 2018 have been posted in the Events section with a link to Eventbrite to book your place. The event is listed here!
Two Talks on the 20th!
John Mitchell will present ‘The Stans – Plant exploring in Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan’ at St. Bride’s Hall, 38 Derryvolgie Avenue, Belfast, BT9 6FP at 2p.m. Assumpta Broomfield will present “The Magic of Snowdrops” at the National Botanic Gardens, Glasnevin, Dublin at 2.30p.m. See the listings in Events for full details.
“A View from the Palm House” – Matthew Jebb at Malone House
In his talk ‘A View from the Palm House’, Matthew Jebb, Director of the National Botanic Gardens, entranced a large audience in Belfast with a series of inter-connections between art, architecture, plants, people, invasive species, climate change and much more besides.
Head Gardeners
Ambra Edwards has given us a treasure of a book, a joy to read, insightful, informative and provocative. I have enjoyed it immensely and recommend it unreservedly. She has interviewed fourteen head gardeners, a diverse group with only a few fitting the stereotypical image, yet all might be described as people at the pinnacle of […]
Too Good to be True?
Have some entertainment gardens left the practices of normal gardening so far to the side that they have become artifices of what a garden should be? Has the desire to be a constantly perfect attraction lead to gardening in a manner and style which is far removed not alone from the practices of the common […]
Matthew Pottage, at IGPS Munster
Matthew Pottage, Curator of RHS Garden Wisley, delivered a very interesting talk to IGPS members and guests in Cork this evening. He gave a brief outline of the history of the Royal Horticultural Society with particular reference to the garden at Wisley, an overview of the gardens as they are at present and an outline […]
Matthew Pottage: “Wisley – The New Chapter of the Flagship Garden of the RHS!
IGPS Munster – Tuesday next, 7th November: Matthew Pottage at Northridge House, St Luke’s Home Mahon Cork See “Events” for full details
‘Portraying Ireland’s Garden Plants’
The Irish Society of Botanical Artists would like to invite all IGPS members to the talk by Charles Nelson on Saturday 18 November at 2.00pm in the Visitor Centre Auditorium at the National Botanic Gardens. The title of the talk is ‘Portraying Ireland’s Garden Plants’. I know that you have an event yourselves at the […]
Fota Island – an IGPS Visit
We were delighted to have a good number of members join us for our guided tour of Fota Island gardens with Head Gardener, David O’Regan, on Saturday, 14th of October last. David met us at the house and gave us a wonderfully informative introduction to our walk with a history of the estate, the house […]
The Orchid Hunter
This is book bursting at the binding with enthusiasm and an almost obsessive love of our native orchids. Leif Bersweden, a precocious botanist who fell in love with native wildflowers as a child, was unsuccessful in his initial application for a place at Oxford University and decided to use his gap year to track down […]
The Selection!
Dan Pearson’s book, Natural Selection, draws on ten years of his columns for the Observer newspaper and are arranged in a calendar format, a diary of gardening notes. As with all such compilations, the individual parts, while all excellent in themselves, do not add up to a unified book. The organisation of the selected articles […]
A Visit to Áras an Uachtaráin
IGPS Leinster organised an outing to Áras an Uachtaráin on the 9th of September. Though attendance was limited to 40 there were members from all regions present and we had a very pleasant day. The visit was made special by the head gardener who gave us a very informative guided tour and entertained us with […]
A “Blooming Marvellous” Book!
Zoë Devlin has never lost that childhood delight in the beauty of nature whether it be the excitement of seeing a flower new to her, being entranced once again by the daintiness of a daisy or the fluttering beauty of a butterfly – “wisps of aerial delight”. Her childhood love of wildflowers developed into a […]
Gardening for Wildlife
The countryside is no longer the haven for wildlife that it once was. Changes in how land is used and managed along with other factors have lead to an alarming fall in the population of all wildlife species. Accommodating the needs of wildlife into how we manage our gardens may smack of desperation and futility […]
Much More than Sketches!
There is so much more than botanical sketchbooks in this volume that the title does it an injustice. This is one of those treasure troves of a book where every page brings a new delight, new fascination and new interest – Botanical Sketchbooks by Helen and William Bynum Quite simply, the book is a collection of pages […]
Every Plant has a Story!
Every plant has a story and these add to the interest and enjoyment gardeners get from them. Noel Kingsbury, in his Flora, The Natural and Cultural History of the Plants in Your Garden, has taken a selection of 133 plants, not an encyclopaedic collection but enough to enthuse and encourage the readers to, perhaps, search […]
Dream Gardens
They dream of finding an abandoned house in a wild garden and then plan in great detail what they will do with it. They are Isabel and Julian Bannerman. I have visited one of their gardens, Hanham Court near Bath, which was their home for many years and can say that they made that reality […]
30th Anniversary at The Rectory Garden
The warm sunny afternoon of 9th August saw an impressive turnout of IGPS members and gues ts to celebrate the 30 year partnership between the rectory garden volunteers and the Ulster Folk and Transport museum. A virtual horticultural who’s who; the guests, many of whom had been involved in the early days of creating the […]