Continuing my tour of Wicklow gardens which Orlaith Murphy had arranged for me! After a great lunch at Wendy Nairn’s house I was unprepared for the amazing garden that awaited me next: Kim and Angus Tyner’s Honeyoak garden! WOW! Kim is a wonderful plantswoman and Angus is equally passionate about wildlife, in particular the incredible diversity of moths in Wicklow and won an award for his work on registering wildlife diversity (http://www.biodiversityireland.ie/record-biodiversity/distinguished-recorders/distinguished-recorder-2013). He also runs his own local weather station! Observation!
I arrived 20 years after Kim and Angus took over the land! They had their priorities right right from the start and they started their vegetable patch before building the house! Today, the couple are almost sufficient in vegetables and fruit and there are two polytunnels in addition to the large wild looking diverse veggie garden which integrates a number of perennials and herbs. For me, the garden could have been inspired by permaculture as many of its techniques have been employed. Kim hand digs, uses mulches, saves seed, the house is powered by solar panels and a wood-fired range, and as much as possible is sourced locally. They also have hens, bees and a cow, so no longer totally vegetarian as they were for 20 years (doing it yourself is clearly very important here!). The garden is still evolving with new beds being planted, nut trees and many edimentals in the ornamental beds. There is diversity everywhere, this is clearly a fantastic oasis for wildlife and the large pond they created has even been visited by an otter. It was a dull wet day, so I hope my pictures do justice to this inspirational garden! Oh and I was very “habby” to see one of my babies in the garden, the Caucasian spinach (Hablitzia tamnoides) :)
See more at
After visiting the Kilmacurragh botanical garden (http://www.edimentals.com/blog/?p=20724), my next visit in Wicklow, Ireland was to one of the founders of the organic movement in Ireland now with over 30 years of experience and she had invited us to a wonderful vegetarian lunch with local greens at her house! Wendy Nairn is passionate about producing fresh nutritious vegetables using sustainable wildlife friendly methods and her garden was full of interesting plants and is certainly a haven for wildlife! Shame about the weather as all the wildlife was hiding and we didn’t stay outside for long either! Kim Tyner, whose garden Honeyoak was to be our next stop joined us!
Before lunch, we visited Wendy’s daughter Hazel and her partner Davi’s new organic market farm in nearby Ashford (https://www.facebook.com/HazelandDavisWicklowFarm), reminding me of Mandy Barber’s IncredibleEdibles in Devon, both on what was sheep pasture!
Back in September again and I was in Ireland and my friend Orlaith Murphy had set up a diverse tour of great local gardens for me! Day two, we visited the National Botanical Gardens in Kilmacurragh which is still undergoing restoration after being taken over by the main botanical gardens in Dublin in 1996! There’s been a garden here for a long time and you can read more of its history here: http://botanicgardens.ie/kilmacurragh and its monumental trees here: https://www.monumentaltrees.com/en/irl/leinster/wicklow/2531_kilmacurragharboretum
As usual, most of the pictures are of useful and unusual edible plants discovered on our visit! See also the two videos at the bottom!
Back in 2011, I visited the main botanical garden in Dublin and here are a series of blogs from then: