Here, time and stress give way to tranquillity
MOUNT USHER GARDENS
We go to Mount Usher Gardens in Ashford, Co. Wicklow, at least half a dozen times a year, its restorative allure, once experienced, never leaves you.
Here, you can see some of the oldest specimen trees in Ireland on a walk along the enchanting riverbank gardens that becomes more personally significant the more I go.
The gardens are run by the Avoca Handweavers group – you pay an entrance fee (€8 adults, €7 OAPs, €4 children). The courtyard entrance has a few shops, an Avoca cafe and a lovely Walled Garden plant centre.
But if you just go for the coffee and the clothes, you are missing everything. Step into the gardens and be transported into another world where time, traffic and stress disappear.
The gardens were created in the 1880s by Edward Walpole along the principles of ‘wild’ garden philosopher/designer William Robinson and are now one of the finest examples of a Robinsonian garden anywhere.
Madeleine Jay bought Mount Usher on impulse in 1979 when she fell in love with its charms and nurtured it for 37 years before retiring at 85. Chemical and poisons are not used here. Plants, trees and bulbs are carefully selected to thrive within their natural setting, weeds and saplings are wildflowers and young trees, not ugly intruders to be destroyed.
The fragrance of new mown grass and the verdant planting of the herbaceous border are the first sensual experience on any adventure through Mount Usher.
Then on to the woodlands, a tree guide in hand to identify the specimens – oak, eucalyptus, sorbus, cornus, birch, mighty beech trees – many centuries old.
There are shady narrow paths through the woods, or you can walk along lawns and wildflower meadows.
Cross the river on one of the bridges and admire the views, their effect calming and practically spiritual.
Walking back past the house, you come to the island fed by waterways cut from the river.
The hours spent here are where you realise that Keats’s ‘beauty is truth, truth beauty’ is all you need to know in this little corner of the earth.