The moment of perfection in a garden can be very fleeting, here today and gone tomorrow, and how we wish our friends came on time and not leave us thinking or saying “You should have seen it last week.”
On the other hand it is marvellous to visit a garden and arrive just at that perfect moment, to see it exactly as the gardener had hoped it would be. It is a moment to be savoured. It ranks with the golfer’s hole-in-one, the 147 clearance in snooker or the nine dart 501.
We experienced such a moment when we recently visited Coolaught Gardens in Clonroche, Co. Wexford, the garden of Harry and Caroline Deacon. I have shared a photograph of this moment on Facebook and it would seem a great many people agree with me as it was shared by hundreds and viewed by thousands.
What do you think?
The original garden around the house is relatively small, certainly too small to accommodate Harry’s and Caroline’s enormous interest in plants. Some years back they started this new area of approximately two acres and introduced a delightful range of choice plants.
For the early years, as might be expected, it was young and sparse and, as a ploy to fill space and give an impression of a full garden, Verbena bonariensis was introduced and allowed to seed around at will to such an extent that on a previous visit I thought it had been allowed to go too far. It was a wonderful sight it its own way but simply too much. However, this spring this planting of verbena was heavily and cleverly edited and the effect has been simply marvellous.
Although the verbenas have stolen the show for this summer there are many interesting vistas and plants in the garden.
Paddy Tobin
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