Why I Oughta...

The gardens at Muckross House include a traditional walled garden (with espalier) and an arboretum, a lake, the formal lawns and some informal gardens.  One of those features a colony of giant Gunnera.  And...I mean...GIANT.   We were walking back to the bus from the Arboretum and spotted this patch of large, green foliage that almost looks like it is too-big-to-believe.  This is Gunnera. With foliage that is bigger than just about anything you'll ever come across in a garden (Hand for size): It grows tall, too.  KoTBTs for size: While super interesting, it appears that Giant Gunnera is invasive in Ireland - particuarly in the West side of the country .  

We popped in to a few gardens around Ireland earlier this month (including St. Stephens Green that I posted about yesterday ) and saw a climate that seemed to grow a lot like ours.  With a little bit more tropical foliage than we can grow here.  Cape Cod garden vibes with the hydrangeas (especially the blue ones), but the Cape has way more Rhododendrons than Ireland. One of the stops was at Muckross House.  On the property is a walled garden named (naturally) Muckross Gardens .   There's an arboretum, some pruned shrubs, perennials and annual displays.   But, if you walk around the perimiter of the walled garden, you'll find something else:  espalier.  Apple trees trained into fan-shaped espalier held against the warm, stone walls of the garden.  I took a few photos and one of the things that I like about how they've pruned these is that they've seemingly thinned out the foliage in spots to show more branching followed by clusters (or cl...

We came across a really nice installation (and a big one, too) of European Fan cobblestones right at one of the corner entrances to St. Stephen's Green in Dublin. This arch is named Fusiliers' Arch and is more than 100 years old. I've posted a few times about European Fan including Disney Springs  and how I was thinking about it for the pizza oven floor .   This installation of European fan is both wide and deep.  

At one of our stops on a recent trip to Ireland, we stayed near a mixed perennial garden that felt A LOT like our Zone 5b (or 6a) and included plant material that I've come across in some of the garden centers, big box stores and display gardens around the Chicago Suburbs.   In that garden, they used an upright, lime-green foliage shrub in a repetition across a long, linear bed that backs up to a hardscape patio.  The bed was more than one-hundred-feet-long and the gardener planted a series of upright Japanese-Maple-like bright green shrubs about ten-feet-apart.  Mixed in amongst the upright shrubs were hydrangeas and other perennials.  Below are a couple of photos showing these upright, lime-green shrubs in the garden bed: Here, below, is a closer-look at one of them: What are they?  Pretty sure, we're looking at Golden Tower Elderberry. From Wilson Brothers : A striking addition to the landscape, the Golden Tower Elderberry forms a tall, lush column of so...