Fionnuala Fallon at the Meadows

Monday 30^th July 2018

Fionnuala Fallon at the Meadows

Garden Tour

It is fitting that the exceptionally talented Fionnuala Fallon, Irish Times gardening correspondent, leads this tour around the garden of the great artist and painter Philippa Bayliss. The concept for this garden was based largely on 17th century Chinese landscape paintings so you can expect lots of jagged rocks, planting between rocks and into gravel, small trees and a recently installed stunning sculpture of a seed head. Visitors are promised lots of ideas that can be recreated in different contexts in a small space of a ¼ acre.

Biography

A horticulturist, garden writer and garden designer, Fionnuala Fallon has been the gardening correspondent for The Irish Times since 2011 and is also a long-time regular contributor to other publications including The Irish Garden magazine. Her first book, ‘From the Ground Up: How Ireland is Growing Its Own’ produced in collaboration with her photographer husband Richard Johnston, was published by Collins Press in 2012.

The Meadows

The Meadows is positioned in a small estate in Myshall village with views extending to the Wicklow Mountains, the Carlow Ridge and Mount Leinster. The plot at No. 7 is about a third of an acre and slopes steeply into the hillside with the back shaded by sycamores.

In front of the house there are plantings of pampas grass, miscanthus, dwarf and prostate conifers, orange fennel, watsonia, kniphofia, fox gloves, heathers and catmint.

The back garden is planted with an informal hedge of shrub roses and some interesting trees interspersed with mostly herbaceous plants, set into gravel.

This area has been designed with low maintenance in mind, needing no mechanical tools and only intermittent hard work to keep it in order.