June’s gardening delights at Tinode
REPORTER DAVID MEDCALF PULLED IN OFF THE MAIN ROAD NORTH OF BLESSINGTON TO FIND HIMSELF AT A STRIKING GARDEN IN TINODE. HE SPOKE TO JUNE BLAKE ABOUT HOW SHE HAS DEVELOPED HER GARDEN AS A MUST-SEE FOR ANYONE WHO LIKES FLOWERS
THE driveway off the N80 up to June Blake’s garden runs through the dark shadow of enormous overhanging trees before emerging into a world of glorious colour. With its winding paths and unusual plant life, the place has an Alice in Wonderland feel to it, as though magical and peculiar things could happen at any moment. There are flowers here found in no ordinary garden and they seem to cover the full rainbow range of botanical possibility, like a firework display of petals.
The woman at the heart of this wonderland is a most practical lady, a 64-year-old entrepreneur who has turned a passion into a business. Here in Tinode, where she grew up, a couple of kilometres south of Blessington, June Blake is a master of invention and re-invention. She has been in turn a craftswoman, farmer, nurserywoman and gardener, amongst other things.
Nowadays, insofar as Covid-19 allows, she sells plants to passing customers and welcomes guests to stay in the farm buildings which cluster around her stone-flagged courtyard. This courtyard was once at the heart of a small landed estate in Victorian times and the various structures have names which reflect their original purpose. Assorted stables along with a Corn House, Turkey House, Grinding House and Meal House are all adapted to modern requirements.
Most impressive of all is the Steward’s House, which resembles a backwater railway station, impeccably restored and complete with the bell which summoned workers from the fields. She grew up here, one of a family of six children raised in Tinode by parents Jim and Kathleen Blake. Kathleen is very much still alive, living in Blessington and now tipping 90. But Jim died back in 2003 and his daughter is the first to admit that he was never one to be discreet.
He hailed originally from Louth, though his fortune was founded on a butcher’s shop in Ranelagh, on Dublin’s south side. The business prospered yet he had a hankering for country life and bought Tinode House in the fifties, along with 400 acres of farmland.
What he had acquired was a wreck, the shattered remnants of a grand structure torched by the IRA back in the troubled times of 1922. The fire left only the billiard room and servants’ quarters still just about habitable, so it was there that the expanding Blake family took shelter. June was second oldest of the six who all grew up waiting for the ambitious work of restoration to be completed. Her dad had other projects to attend to, such as keeping the shop in Ranelagh going and running a substantial farm. He also threw himself energetically into the economic and political life of the area, founding the West Wicklow Development Association.
‘My father was annoyed to think that people from West Wicklow had to emigrate,’ she recalls. ‘He was formidable – a bit of a genius.’ June remembers him as a contrary man, a maverick, but the association he started was effective in establishing factories. The butcher-turned-farmer also became very active in the IFA and it was a badge of honour that he went to prison in defence of farmers’ rights in the sixties.
While he was detained in Portlaoise, his children casually informed classmates in school that daddy was in jail, as though this was a perfectly ordinary happenstance. Jim was a strong admirer of Charles Haughey but never submitted himself to the ties of being a member of Fianna Fáil or of any other political party. His constant wars with the county council were instead waged on various fronts through different channels.
His multitude of interests, not least the restoration of the ruined old house, took up so much time that looking after the land was often left to others. He would be away at meetings or at auctions far and wide, picking up items to be used (many years later) in the refurbishment. Meanwhile, June and all her five siblings were expected to work on the farm from an early age, providing her with valuable experience.
She found herself drawn to growing plants and her mother used to pay her for whatever vegetables she managed to produce. Kathleen was a very good gardener, encouraging her daughter to take an interest in how trees and smaller plants grew.
‘I have always liked digging,’ laughs June. ‘I had my own little vegetable patch. I sold the veg to my mother … I didn’t make an awful lot of money.’
June’s horticultural activities were curtailed when she and her sister were dispatched to boarding school in Kilcullen. And when she finished her schooling, she became a silversmith, a skill which she pursued successfully for 10 years.
June was introduced to the trade by Fergus O’Farrell, a good buddy of her father, who had a very successful shop on Dawson Street in the centre of Dublin, selling craftwork to tourists. His workshop, however, was in Blessington where June was one of 20 skilled practitioners turning out goods for the shop. She was apprenticed to Billy Smith and later set up on her own initiative until the recession of the early eighties put an end to her silversmithing days.
By then June was already married, tying the knot in 1976 with Martin Craul with whom she had three children – the couple are now amicably separated. She changed professional tack around that time, becoming a farmer on high land between the N81 and Punchestown on the Wicklow/Kildare border.
‘I had a lot of sheep,’ she recalls. A lot? At one stage she was responsible, with her dog Lassie, for around 1,000 ewes. ‘It was a very busy time. It was hard work but a good living. I like sheep – they are way smarter than people think.’ The returns from all the effort dwindled so that she eventually sold up in 2002 and set out on yet another change of direction.
A polytunnel was erected at Tinode which she used as a nursery, supplying householders with the plants to make their gardens flower. She turned out to be uncommonly good at it.
While her youngest brother Jimmy, who has a celebrated garden next door, took a qualification in horticulture from the National Botanic Gardens, she had no such formal training. Nevertheless, her self-taught green fingers have produced a couple of flower varieties which bear the family name. In amongst her perennial lungwort, she spotted a distinctive silver-leafed modification, now familiar to gardeners as Blake’s Silver. And there is also a primula called June Blake – ‘we sold a lot of that’. Such varieties are copyright so that she is entitled to a small payment every time that a Blake’s Silver or a June Blake is sold anywhere in the world.
‘Gardening is simply about trial and error,’ she muses. Though the polytunnel remains in use, it is now discreetly hidden behind vegetation and the emphasis of her enterprise has changed. The house so painstakingly restored by her father is not hers but she has the run of the old farmyard and a few acres.
Her garden here has become a regular destination for gardening groups who arrive in Blessington by the coachload and many of the old buildings have been converted to become self-catering accommodation. Architect Michael Kelly took charge of the conversion work, his re-invention of the Cow House winning awards.
The coronavirus pandemic has driven away the Americans, British and Germans who typically took up passing residence. In the absence of foreign custom, the various out-buildings and the Steward’s House are let longer term to Irish tenants. Foreign or local, whoever stays here has the glory of June’s garden on their doorstep.
The beds are so packed with carefully chosen plants that there appears, to this reporter’s naïve eye, to be no room for weeds. The work of improving this little slice of floral heaven is constant and it uncovers occasional surprises with the help of Ned Maguire on his digger. The most recent discovery, now incorporated into the garden design, has been the cobbles of an old road which once led to a nearby quarry.
June is no way modest about her achievement, which is open to the public at a cost of €6 until October each year.
‘My design is eclectic and individual with hundreds of different plants – and I can identify all of them.’
Bee-friendly dahlias are a specialty in June Blake’s Garden. For those who like their flowers, it’s well worth calling in.
MY DESIGN IS ECLECTIC AND INDIVIDUAL WITH HUNDREDS OF DIFFERENT PLANTS – AND I CAN IDENTIFY ALL OF THEM