The Pleasure Grounds in Glenveagh Castle Gardens (County Donegal, Ulster Province, in the northwest corner of the Republic of Ireland), on a partly cloudy afternoon in early May 2024.
They consist of a long lawn framed by extensive borders that include plants of varying origins, heights, and colours, such as the Chusan palms (Trachycarpus fortunei), Japanese maple (Acer palmatum “Atropurpureum”), and rhododendrons seen in this view, underplanted with different types of hostas, primulas, and ferns.
The castle, gardens, Lough Beagh (also spelled in English as Lough Veagh, Loch Ghleann Bheatha in Irish) and Derryveagh Mountains (Sléibhte Dhoire Bheatha in Irish) are all within the Glenveagh National Park – its Irish name is Páirc Náisiúnta Ghleann Bheatha – which had its origins in the Glenveagh Estate created 1857-1859 by John George Adair (1823-1885). He became notorious for abruptly evicting 224 of his tenants from the land in 1861, a deed recorded in contemporary documents, history, and local tradition as the Derryveagh Evictions. The castle itself was built along Lough Beagh between 1867 and 1873, designed by architect John Townsend Trench based on the “Scottish baronial” style popular during the Victorian period.
Adair’s widow, Cornelia Wadsworth Ritchie Adair (1837-1921), established the garden from around 1888, a sheltered spot around the castle that she continued to improve and expand, including having groups of shelter trees planted and bogland drained to form the lawn. In the 1940s and 1950s, a later owner, art curator and collector Henry Plumer McIlhenny (1910-1986), oversaw the introduction of many new species. In 1979, he gifted the castle and gardens to the Irish State, after having sold most of the rest of the Glenveagh Estate to it in the mid-1970s. Today, the park is managed by the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS), while the castle and gardens are in the care of the Irish Office of Public Works through its Heritage Ireland unit.
The gardens are noted for their lush appearance, as they benefit from and reinforce the micro-environment of a temperate rainforest in the midst of the rugged landscape of mountain and moorland. They contain a number of plants that originated in other parts of the world, including the palms seen here, bamboo, a wide variety of rhododendrons, and many others. In addition to these Pleasure Grounds, there is the Belgian Walk (with landscaping work done by World War I Belgian refugees), Italian Terrace, Himalayan Garden, Walled Garden, Rose Garden, Oriental Garden, View Garden, Swiss Walk (a woodland garden), and Tuscan Garden.
(Information from the print guide -- Ó Gaoithín, Seán. Guide to Glenveagh Castle Gardens: Glenveagh National Park (Glenveagh National Park, 2022) -- as well as from the NPWS Glenveagh National Park website and Wikipedia, both last consulted 27 June 2024. Place names in English and Irish from logainm.ie, the Placenames Database of Ireland (reference numbers 111338, 111119, and 111025), last consulted 28 June 2024. Names in tags partly from US Library of Congress/NACO name records (reference numbers n84081220, no2004019921, and n84153406).)
[Glenveagh National Park 51 Pleasure Grounds 2024-05-07 s; 20240507_094244]