Contemplative Garden
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Quite apart from the use of plants, there is something particularly restful about the combination of well rounded rock and silver granite gravel, which is no doubt why Japanese landscape gardeners have used it through the millennia.
This garden has a sense of repose, achieved by the soft wending of large paving elements among the boulders and gravel base, and the quiet half enclosed corners where cut stone benches match the other natural materials.
The relatively high banks are well planted to enhance the sense of repose and seclusion. Importance has been attached to foliage plants which provide points of interest through the year, the evergreen Fatsia japonica for example, the finely cut fronds of the Japanese Buckler fern, Dryopteris erythrosora, and the deep hue of the smoke bush, Cotinus coggygria 'Royal Purple' in summer, more vivid still in autumn. Frangrance is provided in early spring - even in late winter - and again in late summer by Coronilla glauca 'Citrina'; and by the splendid Pineapple Broom, Cytisus battandieri. Even in the subdued light of winter, there are shrubs here to lighten the mood, particularly the Hellebores and the lovely bamboo Fargesia murieliae.
A garden such as this has minimal maintenance with neither spraying nor lawn cutting; a thinning of the irises, an occasional pruning of a shrub and tidying of leaves in autumn is about all that is required. It is a garden in which to ponder, contemplate and enjoy the beauty all around you.
Designer
Verney Naylor MGLDA
Dromreagh
Durrus
Bantry
Co Cork
Tel: (027) 61031
Garden maintained by the NGEC staff.
Sponsors
N J Power & Co Ltd
Stonebrokers, Dalkey. (Liscannor stone)
