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 […]
IGPS Leinster Plant Sale Coming Soon!
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 […]
We Boiled a Frog!
Change, especially when incrementally small and over a long period, is often imperceptible and we occasionally need someone to ring the alarm bells and alert us to dangers. Charles Handy, the business/management guru of the 1980s, in his book The Age of Unreason told the parable of a frog being put in a pot of […]
Garden visit to Aughentaine Estate, July 2017
Sixty- two members and guests of the IGPS had a wonderful day out to Aughentaine Estate, on the outskirts of Fivemiletown, County Tyrone, home of James and Caro Hamilton Stubber. It was a beautiful sunny day, we enjoyed a lovely picnic lunch on the front terrace and afterwards Caro very kindly treated us to a […]
Come into the Garden!
Shirley Lanigan must be the greatest garden visitor in Ireland and she has written a book which would entice the reader to emulate her and visit the wonderful and beautiful gardens we have in this country. Her latest book “The Open Gardens of Ireland” gives us details of 427 gardens we may visit. Some are […]
July Events 2017
Read what’s coming up this month in IGPS activities: July News!
Doreen Wilson’s Garden, July 2017
Doreen and Ivan Wilson came to a new house on a hill above Dundonald between Belfast and Newtownards some 36 years ago. It was sitting in a “…barren, wind-swept field”. This is hard to believe today as the garden they have made is filled with unusual shrubs and trees, eye-catching colour combinations, a lushly planted […]
