Daily Archives: December 3, 2018

Garden tour

A Cool Windy Planet Experience at Powerscourt

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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! My first blog was from Carraig Dulra Permaculture Farm, here: http://www.edimentals.com/blog/?p=19592

After Carraig Dulra, the plan was to visit one of Ireland’s great gardens, Powerscourt and to kick off we were to meet  Bruce Johnson (a member of the family that owns the house and gardens). He very kindly treated us to lunch at Powerscourt. As we sat eating lunch, Bruce commented that there weren’t many people around today and we put it down to the storm (Ali; see link below) that had hit Dublin and Wicklow in the night, putting people off travelling. After lunch we  discovered there was another reason when we were told at the  garden entrance that the gardens had been closed because of danger of falling trees and branches after the storm….
What to do? Bruce suggested seeing a video introduction to the amazing story behind the house and gardens including Ireland’s tallest waterfall, the Powerscourt Waterfall at 121m, a 6km walk from the house on the river Dargle (you can see it too here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxrFPrJlTQc ).  Briefly: the house was originally a 13th-century castle and was extensively altered during the 18th century by German architect Richard Cassels, starting in 1731 and finishing in 1741. A fire in 1974 left the house lying as a shell until it was renovated in 1996! Originally the family seat of the Viscounts Powerscourt, the estate has been owned by the Slazenger family, founders and former owners of the Slazenger sporting goods company since 1961.

Bruce’s next suggestion was to go do the adjacent Cool Planet Experience, an “interactive climate action experience” for all ages (see https://powerscourt.com/estate/cool-planet-experience). Very different from what we had expected when we arrived at Powerscourt, but we had great fun!

Before parting ways with Bruce, we visited a wooded area just outside the main garden and saw the best avenue of monkey puzzle trees I’ve seen in the British Isles!
Thanks again, Bruce!!

Storm Ali : https://www.irishtimes.com/news/environment/storm-ali-two-dead-and-thousands-without-power-1.3634177

 

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Digging for victory

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I’ve been following and supporting the discussions that we need to Dig for Victory against climate change as though we were in a war….this is the progress so far! No, I shouldn’t joke :(
The first two pictures shows progress digging a trench along the driveway. 30 years ago, I dug by hand the length of the driveway and filled in with stones and gravel as the previous owners hadn’t wanted a car into the house and it was just a pathway with grass. I started the trench to stop the tree roots invading my vegetable beds, a problem on my shallow soil which I didn’t think was more than 20cm depth anywhere, but where the pictures are taken seems to be part of an old sand quarry and it was much deeper than I ever imagined and I’m still not down to the rock! I gave up having excavated a lot of sand and come down to a layer of clay beneath. I’ve now refilled this with large rocks! I remember excavating this part 30 years ago in the spring and finding a hard layer that I thought was rock…it seems it was frozen :)
The second picture shows another bed I constructed when building the greenhouse (RIP) for my mint collection. The mints were grown in pots and sunk in gravel to stop them wandering. I’ve dug it all out, cleaned the gravel and replanted!