MICK JAGGER GOT DUMPED AT MY HOUSE!
Growing up at Glin in the 1970s with my sisters Nesta and Honor and my parents Olda and Desmond FitzGerald – dad was the romantically titled 29th Knight of Glin – was quite an experience. Our parents were busy combining their writing and conservation work with reviving the fortunes of the place and making it a sustainable business, so they spent long hours in the office or on their travels and we were left to roam freely.
The dusty attics of the house were full of a strange assortment of things left over from my great-grandfather’s time – fur car coats and goggles from early motoring days, mysterious glass bottles and photography chemicals which smelt strange, perhaps from an early dark room, old bottles of coloured ink, and trunks of dressing up clothes, like Edwardian silver lame and purple velvet dresses with narrow sleeves and a Pierrot costume.
We gathered odds and ends together and created what we called our Old Curiosity Shop amongst the lathe and scored plaster.
The Knight of Glin who built the house in the 18th century had run out of money by the top floor and the workmen had downed tools, leaving the rooms unfinished – these rooms were our secret domain.
We also spent days in the woods and gardens letting our imaginations run wild, playing in the hollowed-out centres of old rhododendron bushes creating elaborate dens furnished by stones from the stream and old stumps of wood, and spending hours high up in the twiggy nests of ancient lime trees.
We would get up on top of the high walls of the kitchen garden and run along down the middle of ivy tunnels. If not in the garden we would retreat to the seaweedy strand of the wide Shannnon estuary and walk to the Gate shop, which my mother had set up as a café and craft shop. It was run by a wonderful lady called Joan Stack and there we helped her make scones and sell Aran sweaters and hats to the coaches of summer visitors en route to the ring of Kerry.
My parents had worked in London in the Swinging Sixties and had held many amazing weekend parties at Glin.
The albums show pictures of Mick Jagger and Marianne Faithfull, who had met a great friend of my father, the Irish photographer Lord Rossmore, at one of these weekends. Rossmore and Marianne fell madly in love and Marianne left Mick for him – he was furious.
Another time, my father had organised for David Bailey to come to nearby Hollypark, where Michelina Stacpoole had started a fashionable knitting factory making very cool 1970s kaftans and flares. Bailey took very atmospheric photographs of the ‘it girl’ and top model of the day Penelope Tree with donkeys and ruined keep half cloaked in ivy.
There was always a mix of visitors at Glin – local historians, writers and poets, and musicians would come. I remember Paddy Moloney, who would play his tin whistle for us, and Molly Keane with her tiny dog Hero. Myrtle Allen came to research Carrigeen Moss at nearby Ballybunion.
There was Mary and Nick Robinson and a smattering of glamorous Guinnesses, including Mariga, who wore long tartan skirts in the daytime which I found fascinating, and 18th century jackets.
She was my godmother and gave me unusual presents, such as an old map of west Limerick all covered in notes written by a soldier away in Burma in the 19th century and a yellow enamel Chinese box.
The garden had a deep impact on me – the mysterious woods with the Gothic hermitage hidden in its depths, the tumbling stream, the ancient Killarney oaks, their outstretched branches all covered in moss and ferns, the walled garden which my mother had restored and where she grew vegetables and fruit for our American paying guests each summer.
I loved the ornamental trees my grandmother had planted, the huge pink magnolia that flowered in early spring, the dogwoods with their pink strawberry fruit and white bracts, the Kohai tree with its strange claw-like yellow flowers, my great-grandmother’s stands of vast giant gunnera that looked like towering triffids that might take over the world.
Later on in my 20s, after a challenging period in my life, I decided to retrain as a horticulturalist having originally studied art history at TCD.
Soon after that, I began work for a top landscape design firm in London, where I developed my design skills. I had found my path.
but it was these ‘difficult times’ that led her to change her career. ‘I retrained totally in horticulture,’ she says. ‘I had done some courses in conservation, landscape, history of landscape and how to conserve them. Then I moved on and I wanted to learn more about plants and how to garden and how it all works so I worked for two years as an apprentice to the Royal Horticultural Society,’ she explains.
‘It was really immersive and it completely changed my life. That is what I think of as the healing power of horticulture and I do have that mission and passion to get people into it as I think it is a very healing, very cathartic thing to do. I was having some struggles at that stage of my life and it did bring me a whole new life and really changed everything for me.’
It was a revelation, she says, exploring the world of plants and it is something she is hoping to inspire in other people with the festival. Another huge part of the event is encouraging sustainability and protecting and improving the environment.
‘Design is so important but it doesn’t have to sacrifice gardening for biodiversity,’ she says. ‘We have quite a few speakers who will be talking about that – how to make meadows, how to heal the soil, how to garden for wildlife. You don’t have to have one or the other – that is our message.’
Catherine and Dominic live a country life with their four children when he is not on set for acting roles, living between a country pile outside Bath and the castle at Glin. ‘It’s quite easy for us to get anywhere from here as Dominic has to travel for roles but he likes to live in the country,’ she says. ‘He has pigs, I do more gardening here and then it’s quite easy for me to go from Bristol to Dublin or Shannon so that is the kind of double life I lead.’
Of course, Dominic will be at the festival too, holding court with David Pagan Butler about creating ponds for biodiversity but also for people. ‘David makes natural ponds that you can swim in with beautiful clear water,’ Catherine says.
‘We have lost something like half a million ponds in Ireland and England in the last 30 years and they are the most beneficial thing you can do for wildlife – have a pond with millions of different invertebrates and insects and different plant species.
‘David has made a system where you can swim in the water and have all that going on and Dominic has made one and it is a really overwhelming experience.
‘All the swallows come down in the evening to drink and they whoosh past your ears, the dragonflies land on your head, it’s all full of noise and life. David is going to be great. He’s a hilarious guy and really fun and I am looking forward to his talk with Dominic.’
During the day, the likes of Jimmy Blake will explain how to make a woodland garden, while royal florist Shane Connolly will be speaking with fellow designer Emily Thompson on their art. Of course, Catherine will be there discussing historic garden design along with a host of others.
She wants people to have fun and enjoy exciting talks on contemporary garden design, horticulture, historic gardens and nature conservation. Catherine is audibly excited about the prospect and her passion is infectious. ‘The science tells us that being in nature is healing, it’s different for everybody but our connection with nature has been there since ancient man we have been at one with nature since then,’ she says.
‘Wandering in the wood with the big trees and that sense of peace or if you go out early in the morning, hearing that birdsong, you can’t help but be affected. I think it goes right to the soul of our most primal being and when we deny that to ourselves – because we have to due to city dwelling – it can be hard.
‘People really respond when they get out there,’ she says, insisting this was why we all took to walking during the pandemic, a habit that has stuck with many.
‘Growing plants from seed is such a wonderful thing, this tiny little hard brown speck that turns into something that two months later is 2-3m tall, this beautiful flowering cosmos, whatever it is.’
It’s possible for everyone to grow something, no matter how small your space is, whether it is a balcony or even just a windowsill and it provides a great sense of satisfaction. ‘I love digging and I love getting my hands in the soil,’ Catherine says.
‘I am always moving plants around to get the best position for them. There is something so satisfying when you get order into your garden and you have things in the right place. I always try and encourage people – don’t worry if you get things wrong, it doesn’t matter with gardening, you just move it all around whenever you want. There is something great about that. I like order and getting plants into the places where they really thrive. It’s so nurturing and we have that urge in all of us.’
Catherine is excited about the festival’s debut and hopes perhaps to bring it to Glin one day, which she admits has been a learning curve for her since she took it over.
It’s up and running but Catherine is always thinking about new ways to add to it.
‘I have learned so much and it is beautiful and thriving and adding to the richness of that area,’ she says. ‘I feel very proud and in a really good place with it, so long may it last. It would be wonderful if the festival would go to Glin in a year or two once we have it on its feet.
‘At the minute though Glin has a lovely stream coming out of the hillside and I’m trying to make more of that and plant some lovely tree ferns at either side because the air from the water stops the frost settling and we’ve got a bit of the Gulf Stream there because it is right beside the sea. So you can grow quite exotic plants so you feel like you’re in a New Zealand forest or something.
‘I am always trying to create an atmosphere where people come in and think, gosh, there are wood sprites in here, and it doesn’t feel like the ordinary world. You can transport people to different places through planting.’
‘SCIENCE TELLS US THAT BEING IN NATURE IS HEALING’