Cut Flowers Paddy Tobin Book Review May 25, 2022 “Growing your own flowers for cutting is all about bringing the outside into your home, reconnecting with a sense of seasonality and nature. Flowers are food for the soul, and it’s time to rediscover the beauty of blooms grown in tune with the season.” Growing your own cut […]
Society Blog
What to sow, grow and do….Benjamin Pope
What to sow, grow and do. Paddy Tobin Book Review June 9, 2022 What to sow, grow and do – A seasonal garden guide from Benjamin Pope. Benjamin Pope has worked in horticulture for over twenty years and is presently head gardener in a private estate in West Sussex where he cares for a large walled kitchen garden with extensive herbaceous borders and […]
Charles Frederick Ball
Charles Frederick Ball Paddy Tobin Book Review May 20, 2022 A portrait of C.F. Ball from 1910 I have known of C.F. Ball for many years, through Wendy Walsh’s beautiful watercolour painting of the plant from the National Botanic Gardens, Glasnevin, named for him, Escallonia rubra ‘C.F. Ball’, from inclusion in Dr. E. Charles Nelson’s A Heritage of Beauty, a […]
Gardening for Gorillas – a book from IGPS member, Stephen Butler
Gardening for Gorillas Paddy Tobin Book Review, General Interest May 18, 2022 It is time for those of us who complain about our garden pests, slugs and snails, greenfly, blackfly and aphids in general, vine weevils, leatherjackets, rabbits, foxes and badgers, even pigeons and pheasants to put things into some perspective and a reading of Stephen Butler’s book, […]
Borde Hill
Borde Hill Paddy Tobin Book Review May 13, 2022 Four generations of the Stephenson Clarke family have created one of the great gardens of England. The plant-collecting enthusiasm of the garden’s founder continued in following generations with wonderful design and modern planting ensuring the best of gardens, one full of the exceptionally good plants organised and displayed […]
Alderborough Nursery – A Review
Alderborough Nursery Paddy Tobin Book Review May 6, 2022 This book is a wonderful testimony to the esteem in which we hold beautiful plants, gardening and horticulture here in Ireland. More especially, it recalls the central part one family nursery played in the life of an Irish community so that it became part of its social history, […]
The Crevice Garden – A Review
Gardening with a Curl! Paddy Tobin Book Review April 15, 2022 “I know a little girl who had a little curl right in the middle of her forehead And when she was good, she was very very good but when she was bad, she was horrid!” So went the old rhyme and so it is with rock gardens- […]
Coastal Wildflowers – A Review
Coastal Wildflowers Paddy Tobin Book Review April 4, 2022 This book delivers far more than its title promises as a great number of the plants included have never felt the salty spray of the sea on their flowers or foliage. It might have been more accurate to say the book describes plants of coastal counties for the […]
Treepedia – A Review
Treepedia Paddy Tobin Book Review December 1, 2021 This little volume is a collection of fact-filled snippets about trees and related topics – people and places, facts and figures, the odd and unusual, the fascinating and the amazing, nearly 100 entries covering all matters arboreal. Jane Maloof is founder and director of the Old-Growth Forest Network and […]
Gardens Under Big Skies – Noel Kingsbury
Gardens under Big Skies – Noel Kingsbury & Maayke de Ridder Paddy Tobin Book Review December 1, 2021 This has been my most enjoyable gardening read in ages and certainly one of my top books of the year. It is one I recommend without hesitation. A large format book crammed with excellent photography showing wonderful gardens. Noel Kingsbury […]
Ferns – Book Giveaway!
Ferns – Book Giveaway! Paddy Tobin Book Review November 2, 2021 Ferns for a Cool Temperate Climate –by Martin Rickard Martin Rickard’s new book on ferns will be the one-stop volume for those with an interest in these very attractive garden plants and if your gardening interests are only now leaning towards ferns, you will find no better […]
The View from Federal Twist – A Review
The View from Federal Twist Paddy Tobin Book Review September 29, 2021 This is the story of a gardener and a garden growing and developing together to create a modern American horticultural masterpiece. James Golden was approaching retirement when he purchased a property in western New Jersey, USA, because the house “suited its setting” and “had an intimate […]
The Jungle Garden – A Review
Paddy Tobin Book Review September 7, 2021 Philip Oostenbrink writes of the jungle style of garden which has become very popular over recent years especially so with those who have relatively small garden space attached to an urban house for it creates an area of sanctuary, enclosure, privacy, of withdrawal and of transport to a setting which […]
Visit to Fernhill Garden.
Members were treated to a smorgasbord of horticultural delights on their recent visit to Fernhill, a three and a half acre garden nestled in the countryside outside Ballynahinch, Co Down. Fernhill isn’t exactly new; the old bungalow and three fields were bought by the owners nine years ago but what an exciting development has taken […]
Visit to Kilgar Gardens, Co. Meath. 14th August 2021
The intrepid gardeners in IGPS Leinster were not deterred by the rainy, dull weather from going to visit a very special garden in Co. Meath. In fact, if anything, the dreary and disappointing weather increased their enjoyment, because the colours and beautiful contrasting shapes in the garden were all the more vibrant. The extraordinary copper […]
IGPS visit to Ballywalter Park, County Down, 24th July 2021.
A sunny day with temperatures in the mid to high twenties combined with a cooling fresh breeze was perfect for the IGPS visit to Ballywalter Park, hosted by Lord and Lady Dunleath. Andrew Mulholland, the first Lord Dunleath, planted the thirty acres of pleasure grounds with around 95,000 trees and shrubs in the mid-1840’s. The […]
Tom Stuart-Smith: Drawn from the Land – A Review.
Paddy Tobin Book Review June 4, 2021 Tom Stuart-Smith has deservedly earned recognition as one of the great British garden and landscape designers. His reimagining of the box parterre in the walled garden at Broughton Grange where the hedging was organised not in a traditional geometric layout but following the cell pattern of a leaf as viewed […]
Visit to Kilmacrew
Visit to Kilmacrew, Co Down – Report by Doreen Wilson Approaching Kilmacrew House along the narrow laneways threading through the drumlins of Co Down there are no clues as to what to expect – it is a truly secret garden. Hidden behind a thick, mature shelter belt of native trees lies a four acre ornamental garden […]
Secret Gardens of Somerset – A Review
Secret Gardens of Somerset Paddy Tobin Book Review May 3, 2021 The gardening tourist could have no better companion if visiting Somerset than this wonderful book from Abigail Willis with photographs by Clive Boursnell. It will be the perfect guidebook, providing a comprehensive listing of the most desirable locations, each temptingly described and illustrated and in these days […]