Master My Garden Podcast
Master My Garden Podcast
EP238- Blending History and Modernity with John Smith at the Irish National Stud and Japanese Gardens
Ever wondered how to blend historical charm with modern sustainability in garden design? Join us as we chat with John Smith, the newly appointed head gardener at the Irish National Stud and Japanese Gardens. John shares his horticultural journey from learning the ropes with his father to leading renowned gardens like Belvedere House. You'll hear about his plans for these iconic gardens, highlighting the crucial balance between maintaining heritage and embracing contemporary horticultural practices.
Discover the secrets behind creating visually stunning, garden spaces that also offer deep emotional resonance for visitors. John dives into the history of the Japanese gardens and discusses how their intricate design continues to captivate visitors. Learn about the meticulous care involved in recent plantings and efforts to enhance the visitor experience, revealing how past and present horticultural practices are harmoniously intertwined.
In the final segment, we explore the future of sustainable gardening with an ambitious five-year plan that transitions to all-electric machinery and eliminates petrol use. John reveals how they are tackling challenges like soil pH adjustments and the undervaluation of conifers, all while planning engaging community initiatives. From garden tours to workshops on fruit and vegetable cultivation, find out how you can connect with these remarkable gardens and contribute to a botanically rich and visually stunning future.
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Until next week
Happy gardening
John
how's going everybody and welcome to episode 238 of master my garden podcast. Now this week we're doing an open garden feature again and this one is it's not a private garden. So we've you know we do a lot of open gardens on the podcast, but this one is a good one, not a private garden. So we've you know we do a lot of open gardens on the podcast, but this one is a good one. It's a garden I've been to probably 10, 15 times over the years and it's the Irish National Stud and Japanese Gardens, fantastic gardens up in County Gildare, and recently John Smith has become the head gardener there, having previously been the head gardener in Belvedere, belvedere House down in Mullingar, and he was also one of the tutors in Belvedere school of horticulture. So John has come with a with a lot of experience, garden designer as well, horticulturalist and, yeah, come with a lot of experience and, I suppose, coming now to put his his stamp on these gardens as well. So, john, john, you're very, very welcome to Master my Garden podcast.
Speaker 2:Thanks, John. It's good to be here. It's good to have a chat. You don't often get a chance to speak to other horticulturists as well, so it's always good to break and get a chat yeah for sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, these conversations they could go in all directions and every direction. So we've been chatting online, I guess, for a while, but we don't know one another in any in any great way. So maybe just tell us a little bit about yourself first. Obviously I saw recently I could be wrong, but I think I saw you had a significant birthday recently. So yeah, gardening, where did that start for you? What, what has been the kind of journey up to now? And then we'll obviously chat about the gardens and so on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I just turned 50, which is not going down very well. I think my body at this stage, after 30 years in the business, knows it's 50. Right, the gardening and the degeneration of the spine, as you know, go hand in hand, so I like working physically. The old gardening and the degeneration of the spine, as you know, go hand in hand, so I like working physically. But, yeah, I look, I got into gardening. Um, my dad actually my dad got me involved in gardening. I was very, very young, uh, my dad, separated from my mum, and I suppose he spent a lot of time with me at the back garden. That's where we spent our time together. We gardened together, we grew veg together and we built a glass house together. So it was very kind of gardening, was very kind of special to me and we spent our time, I suppose, sitting down watching Jeff Hamilton. So I'm kind of showing my age now. That's who I grew up with, jeff and his composting and his fish blood and bone meal. Yeah, I suppose the unusual thing is it's coming full circle, it's going back that way.
Speaker 2:I did a horticultural golf course apprenticeship when I was 21. So that was my way of getting in. I worked with the McLaughlins in North County Dublin, in Swords Golf Course, which is now Swords Rogans Town. Yeah, yeah, that was my first stint of building and but I wanted to get into gardens so I went from there after 10 years to sap landscapes. It was the first time I got a bit of responsibility, vans and crews, and I love that. Yeah, yeah, there then went into landscaping privately and then in around the time of the I suppose, the bubble, when everyone switched off the lights. In 2009, I got an opportunity to go to Belvedere, nice, work as a consultant there for Westmead County Council. So we established the school and worked the wall gardens and started to network with, I suppose, our own people at home Dermot O'Neill and people like that and it's led to so many different people, so many different connections, trips around the world. It's just it's ballooned since then and then I suppose that has always brought its own kind of.
Speaker 2:I love garden design, I love creative. My problem is I love too many things in the industry, and when you get involved with too many things in the industry and when you get involved with too many things, you, you end up, you know, spinning a lot. Yeah, yeah, but I like that it's. It's what makes it interesting, and I like the broad knowledge of it. Uh, I'd like to be able to turn my hand to most part of it, but in recent years it's it's been more kind of management and, uh, bigger, bigger things, you know yeah, yeah, uh.
Speaker 1:Belvedere belvedere went from some transition during that period, from you know that, 2009. I don't know when they started restoration and that started there, but it took a big transition around that time, around 2008, 9, 10 onwards.
Speaker 2:Yeah, look, a lot of the gardens from the garden scheme from you know, the year 1997 onwards when the European funding happened and the major money came into the likes of Burr Castle and Belvedere and Malahide and all of the gardens that benefited from the European restoration scheme yeah, yeah, they it was.
Speaker 2:It was the most amazing thing to revamp these you know, estates which have, you know, checkered past, but we get the benefit of it now and and the benefit of, I think you know people have always looked upon. So what do we get out of it? We get the benefit of building, of enjoying what they built, the engineering, the mastering, everything that came with that, but I think, like everything else, we enjoy the fruits of it and then, over time, we stop investing in it and eventually they start to kind of they're not sustainable and you need to look to ways to make them sustainable. And building and investing in that school was the most important thing because it kept the gardens going and the next step really was to make a college out of it. So that was based on.
Speaker 2:There's a school in Brighton called Plumpton College, stanmere Park, and they created the ultimate wall garden restoration with college, with garden design, where it's all busy and it's getting funding, and that's the similar college that I wanted to develop in belvedere. But it would have took a lot of a lot of people to to put that together and unless you can own everything, yourself, it's, it's difficult to get it.
Speaker 1:Do what you want to yeah, but there's huge benefit in these like these, these big houses around the country and a lot of them actually now are coming under under the umbrella as a county council is. Obviously there was that, as you said, that initial european funding to revive some of these, but there's a huge amount of them actually now are coming under under the umbrellas of county councils. Obviously there was that, as you said, that initial European funding to revive some of these, but there's a huge amount of them now have come under either OPW or county councils. You know, all around the country and the fact that they're getting restored, renovated and improved is an asset for communities all around the country. You know, I think even of you know in carlo you've duckett's grove there's, you know there's lots of them in in the various counties.
Speaker 1:I'm sure it is. It's a huge asset for people in in the locality too and obviously a tourist destination. It adds to the county generally from a tourist perspective and and so on. I suppose the the current garden is irish national, stood in japanese gardens so that like that's fantastic garden, obviously from a tourism perspective is a huge, is a huge draw within ireland. I I guess it's somewhere up in the top 10 of tourist attractions in the country, is it?
Speaker 2:yeah, I think, I think it's. I was looking there recently, uh, you know, to see where it was, and it was in around the top 10 and, and, well, depending where you look, yeah, I think on TripAdvisor they, you know, won the top 10 European destinations, which is great, right. And the feedback the first thing I did when I took on the job here was look at the feedback and there's thousands of them because you want to see what people think, you want to see where you are, and I suppose I'd always gauge a job. You want to see what people think you want to see where you are. Do you know what this means? And I suppose I'd always gauge a job in a place like this, not against the Irish standard, but I'd always look at English standards, like things like Sissinghurst and.
Speaker 2:Dixter and Kew and places. That's where we want this to be, the number of things really that we have to raise, the game, I suppose, of of the staff and the training and else, which are superb, but we need to get a whole new model to push it on to a different level, I suppose it's very interesting to say that on the reading the reviews, so obviously you know for for the job public who's looking at a garden or looking at a restaurant these reviews are are vitally important and probably none so, none so important than trip advisor.
Speaker 1:Now, um, when you went in there, like what were you seeing? And the reason it piqued my interest is I was actually reading a book last night. Um, really good book. It's little snippets from from the advertising industry, predatory thinking. It's called and, uh, it tells a story of an agency of some sort who was looking for a huge contract in the uk for, for, basically the rail network, and they were the underdogs to win the tender by a long ways. I think they're about fifth in people's estimation as to whether they'd get it or not.
Speaker 1:So they brought all the top brass from the, from the rail company, to their offices and in the offices they had. When, when the people walked in and these are the top guys now they walked in, there was nobody in reception, the. The seats in reception were there but they were dirty and there was cigarette, but cigarette holes in them, and there was a bit of a smell in the in the reception area. Now, this is a big marketing company. Then a lady came out a few minutes later to the reception area, started rummaging in drawers. They announced themselves. She ignored them. They announced themselves again.
Speaker 1:She said she hadn't time to talk to them at the minute and basically annoyed these top brass and they were walking out the door and with that the marketing team came out of the back office and said you've just experienced what the consumer experiences on it could be British Rail I forget which company it was, but on British Rail and they won the tender against all odds apparently. But it was a really interesting way to look at it, you know, because you're going in to see what the public sees rather than what you want to see. You know, in your case as a horticulturist, to come at it from that angle is really interesting.
Speaker 2:So what did you see when you went into that kind of well, I suppose when I came down here the first time is that I had a really good experience as far as, yeah, I sat down in the gardens and I don't do that regularly, but I sat down in a very kind of a special you know part of it. I just sat there for 20 minutes and it's the first time in ages I really switched off and got enhanced and really kind of, you know, had a great experience just sitting in the moment. Yeah, it just kind of came to me and I went I said you know what this is? Yeah, I think I like this. Yeah, it's so.
Speaker 2:It's so long since I was here before because a lot of people come to the store for the communion or their confirmation and it always seems so much bigger when you come back. As an adult it's, it's a bit smaller, but I, I saw that it had. It has great potential. You know, as a, as a garden, that could be um, it's stunning visually with the light and all the topiary and there's um, you know what your horticulturist had on. You could always look at something and kind of go. You know this could be horticulturist hat on. You can always look at something and kind of go. You know, this could be better or that could be better.
Speaker 2:That's only a very small percentage of the population. You know, look at things and kind of you know kind of poke at plants, and so we're not always entertaining for the elite. You know, horticulturists, it's the public, and now it's the public, it's the Instagram moment, it's the visuals in the background. That's what people are looking for now. They're looking for that photograph to take home that they can go. You know this was the Japanese gardens and there's lots of places and lots of even within Fieger's garden different things. There's lots of opportunity to be able to develop those stunning kind of visuals within the gardens that will enhance people's experience yeah, for sure, and there is those.
Speaker 1:As you said, there's those places that give you a special feeling as well, and we spoke about that previously on the podcast different gardens. You know, there's a different feeling in a lot of gardens and there is several areas within those gardens that that have a kind of a special feeling to it, and I think people like that as well, that there is several areas within those gardens that have a kind of a special feeling to it, and I think people like that as well, that there is this place. You know, obviously you have the playgrounds and you have the you know, all the usual photo spots within there, but there is spots within it as well that kind of, you know, give you that little bit of solitude.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm an ear wigger and I listen to people a lot and I I observe what people do, you know, and I remember when belvedere, in the wall garden, for example, I used to love the fact that people didn't like it too sparkling and too clean. You know 1850s, you know so you don't want to see it perfect, you want to see ivy on the walls and you want to see a little bit of you know, you like that kind of treading, that line between you. You know restoration again and an enhancement, and I always found that we got the balance right with people, that they liked the fact that it was something different. But in this garden, in the Japanese gardens, I noticed that people, people are genuinely smiling and you can see that they it makes it, it gives them something they weren't expecting. There's lots of kind of kids are running around, they're looking for numbers and they're looking for the story.
Speaker 2:And then there's the. The visual side of it is it's, it's, it's stimulating as well. So you can kind of see in people's faces that they're really excited to be in a garden. Yeah, that for me is very fascinating because it's not just about plants, it's an experience. So people are actually happy and this day and age got to see people off their phones and actually walking around the outdoors is brilliant. You can get a lot of people here with different kind of requirements and needs and they're also very stimulated. And you can see, I like the fact that this makes a difference to people's day and it gives me the energy to want to make it better, you know yeah, for sure, that's that's.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's that's what it's all about, especially in a, in a place like that that is, you know, set up to be a tourist destination and so on for people and it's a well-visited garden. Obviously, you know, set up to be a tourist destination and so on for people and it's a well-visited garden. Obviously, you know, within depending on where you look, as we said, within the top 10 attractions in ireland in terms of visitors. But there's probably a lot of people listening who, who haven't been to the gardens. So we'll virtually go on a on a tour through them, maybe just tell us about them and then we'll sort of get on to what's happening. You know what what's going on today, because I saw you planted some new trees recently and you know there's going to be changes and going to be evolutions as as you start to sort of bed yourself in there, I guess yeah, so it's kind of compared to what I'm used to.
Speaker 2:It's a kind of a new garden, so it was. It was developed in 1904 by William Hall Walker, the owner, and like a lot of these estates you know it was money came through the big house, the gardens, the lands, the usual stuff. But I think his unusual slant was that he had met this guy, tessa.
Speaker 2:Ayuda in 1904, I think it was 1904, at kind of one of these great exhibitions, you know the usual story, but his slant was that Japanese gardens were in vogue at the time and he happened to have an interest in them.
Speaker 2:So he invited Tessa and his son Minoru over to develop this garden, which took four years and 40 men and has a story of life which is very interesting. Actually it took me a while to get used to looking around the garden 40 men and has a story of life and and uh, which is very interesting actually, the when it took me a while to get used to looking around the garden and kind of envisioning his concept first and seeing that concept, because you don't always see it. Uh, but there is kind of different parts around the garden which leads you through that kind of journey in life, albeit that it's more of the story of man and not a woman. That in itself was a bit kind of there's a stage where the man goes on and his female partnership has kind of ended at that point of the garden. I find that was kind of very much of its time, but not considering we weren't far away from Victorians at that stage, it's not a surprise either age.
Speaker 1:It's yeah, it's not, uh, um, it's not a surprise either, yeah and so, so walk us virtually through the garden and give us a little bit of this, of this story, as as we lead through, because, as I say, some people are well familiar with it. I'm familiar with it myself, actually, two years probably, since I was there, uh, but it's, it's funny, you, you kind of. You don't forget them, but I'm trying to picture it here now, and I'm trying to picture it here now and I'm struggling to.
Speaker 2:So maybe, maybe, take us through virtually and just yeah, I suppose you you begin at the, the point of kind of birth, where where you're born into the garden and you go on the journey like that, you know the birth canal, where there's water and there's a stream of of life, and you're led through the cave and and then what happens is you're kind of developing yourself and different journeys on what you can go on in the life, whether you can go on the hard road or the easy track, and then it comes to a point where you'll meet your partner and then you decide what route you take.
Speaker 2:There's lots of water involved and lots of stepping stones and lots of different points of the garden where you will take one you know direction, or the next. You could end up being a bachelor and end up at the dead end, which some people do and then there's the, there's that point of kind of matrimony and crossing the bridge, and there's the island. Uh, there's a beautiful cave in there, a lovely grotto, which is my favourite part of the garden, which is the little island.
Speaker 2:Do you know that, Sean it's beautiful yeah.
Speaker 2:The whole kind of hill of hope behind it. And, yeah, what I find is extraordinary about it was that you have to really take your time, because this garden wasn't built, uh, with modern. You know standards and uh, it certainly wouldn't have been signed off an art by an architect these days. So you really have to take your time and I think that's one of the things that the garden is, that is, that as you're, as you're moving through all the different steps and stages in the garden, you really have to think about where your feet are going, because there's so much, you know, it's not the most ambient, yeah, of places, and I think the focus of the general public is that they really are watching and they're tuned in to what they're doing as they're moving their way through the garden. Some of some of it uh certainly wouldn't have been signed off easily these days by county council, or they'd have yellow ropes around it and cones and the whole lot. I think that's the charm of it and that's the beauty of it. It's just it's part of that heritage. There's certain things you just can't make modern, you know you just, and it's a masterpiece Even from the perspective of building the water and moving the water through it, like really with levels and things like that.
Speaker 2:It was an actual gem, a masterpiece that Tessa Ead completed, one of the things I've been reading some of the literature there recently, and there's a great book I don't know if you can see it here. It's my go-to book called the History of Gardening in Ireland and it was written by Lam and Beau, so you'll always see them referred to a lot in literature and especially Irish gardens. But it tells a story at the end of this garden where there was a bet on between William Walker and, uh, tessa Edith, the builder. So they had a tracky carpus had arrived and Walker had said that this tracky carp is going to survive in the garden and Tessa said no, it won't. So they put a bet on that if he was right and the tracky carpus didn't last, he would leave with no money, no, or he wouldn't get paid the last installment, I think, of the garden.
Speaker 2:But and as it came to the end of the building of the garden, tessa was invited to a local kind of you know um dinner by some of the aristocrats of the of the locality and he was asked his view on chinese whips wisdom and he replied asked his view on Chinese wisdom and he replied that his mum had told him when he was a young man to beware of three things I hope I get this right was that it was the horns of a bull, the hooves of a horse and the smile of an English gentleman. And when he had said this at the meal, the meal went quiet and he got up and left and that was the worst last thing he said before he left Ireland. But he went home penniless then because obviously he lost the bet with William Walker, low over the tracky carpus, I think. Just even at that it really resonates with a lot of us as landscapers, you know, because a lot of projects end up like that yeah, yeah for sure.
Speaker 1:Um, in terms, in hard cultural terms. So describe to people what, what kind of plants we're seeing here. Obviously, japanese gardens, so japanese, huge japanese influences in parts of the garden. Obviously, as you, as you move across to the national stud, it it changes and it's a different, it's a different thing.
Speaker 2:So, just, horticulturally, tell people you know what we're looking at here and and describe it for anyone that hasn't been around the gardens are, um, and this is one of the things where, like if you've become familiar with a lot of new plants, because every time you move into a new kind of thing it's a new set of plants. But there's a lot of Japanese maples in it, a lot of kind of rare ones, unusual ones like, and then, I suppose, ones we're familiar with today, like Taihaku and Eumenensis and all the nice ones. But there's a lot of bonsais, a lot of different Cryptomerias and a lot of evergreens, a lot of cupus suppressus, different, all the evergreen family there and all their kind of glory doing their different things. Some of the bonsais are over 150 years old and so even as a horticulturist, I was looking at them.
Speaker 2:First of all, you have to ask stupid questions like is that still in a pot? Because some of the bonsais are huge and it doesn't make sense that they're in the pots. They are and they've actually cracked through the pots at the bottom and the roots have made it into the ground. So you know, the idea of having a bonsai in a pot which you think is in a pot is not always the case. It's actually broken through and it's in the ground. There's, funny enough, not the most diverse Japanese collection. You'll have the usual plants like the anemones and the, the hostas and the pakisandras and the vinkas and the azaleas and the rhododendrons. They're all there, albeit that one of the things I find unusual with the garden is that I just went out and tested the soil the last day and it's alkaline and, as you know, a lot of the plants in the garden are acidic, they're calcifuges, so I'm going to have to try and readdress the soil, which is an unusual one.
Speaker 1:But they don't look like they're struggling in any way, or do they?
Speaker 2:A lot of the plants I think are just kind of it's a combination now of plants starting to kind of some of them, you know, just giving up and that is possibly just because they cannot get the nutrients they want from the soil you know the pH isn't right.
Speaker 2:So we're going to do a program of buffering the soil back to different pH levels using the kind of drip irrigation system and hopefully address that, because one of the things I want to do this year is I want to do a whole replanting of the bare areas of the garden. I want to introduce new plants and new schemes. So we've just got the irrigation system revamped, yeah, as from yesterday. So now that the irrigation system is working, I can start planting yeah, I know you started recently with um some trees.
Speaker 1:You added in some new trees recently. I know you're there. Is it six, eight weeks at this stage? So it's very, very early days in terms of you know what's going to be happening, but you're already adding some, some plants. So what have you planted recently and in what area?
Speaker 2:you just planted some japanese maples and hostas. So I've down to I think it was our more nursery and again, the, that that kind of whole purist thing of buying plants are, you know, authentic and japanese that is that is, um, well, that's great. If you have access and a credit card, you can buy whatever you want. You know, yeah, big places like this under public procurement, it's very difficult to source plants. So we started, uh, just introducing some new varieties of hostas just to give that a little bit of pop and bling. Yeah, again, and uh, and japanese maples got a few of them in as well. So we've introduced one of the kind of like the, the legacy tree planting, and I think there's a lot of members who would like to plant trees on behalf of, you know, past people who have passed. I think it's a great idea.
Speaker 2:We did in belvedere and we planted over 36 trees, which is now an arboretum of people who contributed, you know, specialist trees for memorial trees. So we've started that and there's already three Japanese maples gone in. I think Blood Gun arrived, which is the good old fashioned, fast growing you know purple one, and then I put in which is my favourite one, which is, oh God, I'm trying to think of the name of it now, the coral bark one. I'll take a bit of a second. Yeah, so yeah. So we've lots of different kind of planting ideas and I think it'll be different next year. I think it'll be another, maybe 30% more plants in the garden. I don't believe in empty spaces and I don't believe in empty spaces and I don't believe in in in um gardening empty spot soil.
Speaker 1:I like plants to fill soil because uh, and it makes your job easier eventually. Anyway, well, it just makes sense, you know, yeah, it makes sense, yeah, for sure, uh, there's, there's something, and even you see municipal parks and people you know going around hoeing in between plants.
Speaker 2:Just plant more plants.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, cover it up. Yeah, for sure there's something there, and even even your background now as we speak, sort of reminds me of it, and you mentioned that there in the original. You know the original planting. There's so many conifer type plants and it's funny, conifers are way out of out of vogue at the moment. You know, in terms of garden center plant sales, they're well down to pick and order all the usual ones, but when used in the correct way, they're phenomenally good, and you'll see examples of that there. You know, throughout the garden, throughout the garden, there's lots of really nice conifers and, as I say, used in the right way, in rockery type situations, as opposed to, you know, around beds on driveways, they're a great plant in the right situation, but they're completely out of vogue at the moment. So maybe just tell us about some of what's there at the minute.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's obviously a lot of different types of cryptobareas, so there's about 15 of those that are bonsai-ed and they've been actually bonsai-ed quite well. And there's a lot of taxes as well. Taxes is one thing I'm trying to watch in the garden because it's quite happy up on some of the mounds because it's dry. As you know, it hates its feet wet and there's a lot of Phytophthora around as well, so I'm watching that. There's a lot of leaf spot fungus on a lot of the conifers. So I'm kind of especially some of the bonsais.
Speaker 2:So the first thing I came in, I saw that I was like, oh my God, let's hit those, because I certainly don't want any of the old trees to disappear on my watch, um, trying to look for a nice kind of organic, unusual ways of of looking after that. But there's some unusual, like celestris and some of the definitely some of the chamisiparas. There's, uh, piscera there's, there's lots of different ones of those. There's some sequoias and there's tons of juniper all over the gardens, which is a great ground cover, and pisces and scots pine. There's a massive big taxodium and everything. In the middle of this there's so much variety which is sometimes you've got to look up as well as down, just as much. Visually, when you look up and everybody walks through the garden, they're all looking down because of the feeling so it's. When you sit back and you look at the areas you look up, you realize how much is up there as well as down.
Speaker 1:You know at your feet level yeah, for sure, and that's definitely something for anyone that does visit the garden or has visited the garden just think of those, as I say, underused, undervalued conifers and and look at them, look at them there and see how how great they can be. So, as I say, totally, totally undervalued at the moment because they're just out of fashion and there's probably lots of other plants like that, but but that's a real good example there. Now I know they've got the time there to develop over over that long period of time and you know you're seeing their full potential and sometimes people don't, don't have that time to wait for something to to show how nice it can be yeah, I think the a lot of the, a lot of the topiary in the garden.
Speaker 2:You can see there's as much moss as there is foliage on it and I was kind of looking. I love moss, one of my favorite things. You can't have enough moss, or even the mind your own business is everywhere, which is beautiful, and that's one of the things that actually makes the garden so hilarious. You know it's everywhere and you need that dampness, obviously, and for the moss. But the moss and the plants themselves, you know, deprives the plants of so much light, even though it's beautiful. So there's as much work in pruning and really specific pruning, especially for, like, conifers are great plants and they can be beautiful, some of the most amazing.
Speaker 2:There's a hedge in Mulligar, in front of the Park Hotel. It's a Texas hedge. It's the most amazing hedge I've ever seen anywhere in the country. It is so well, meticulously kept and such a difficult plant to establish. But with taxes you can do so much with it. You can clip it into so much topiary shapes. It'll take anything. It's bulletproof, you know. Yeah, but a lot of the conifers. You do have to get them at the right time if you're going to do something with them. Cryptomeria is a gorgeous plant. Yeah, brilliant plant yeah.
Speaker 2:You know, with that lovely kind of fluffy foliage and, as you said, a lot of the junipers are beautiful as well, but, yeah, undervalued.
Speaker 1:You'd be hard-pressed to find it in some places at the moment.
Speaker 2:you know it's just not on people's shopping list these days, I think possibly because in the 70s, you know, a lot of people just went off and bought plants and just plunked them in the middle of their garden and we kind of got used to the bad design of conifers all over the country and all those Leylandis that were shaved to an inch of their life.
Speaker 2:You know that all of us now, but conifers can be really, really great plants in garden design if they're chosen at the right place and the right time. We've forgotten about them because they became out of vogue and became old-fashioned.
Speaker 1:it's starting to come back yeah, for sure, and actually interesting. You say about taxes, because I mentioned it on an episode two weeks ago like that's a phenomenally good hedge. As you say, a little bit difficult to establish, but if, if you can establish it in your garden, it's probably one of the most worthwhile because it's one cutting a year to keep it really good. It's compact, it's visually, visually looks as good as any you know boxes or or any of those other hedges is almost there's nothing that affects it in terms of diseases typically. So once you can establish it as gorgeous's gorgeous and even the Aurea, the yellow version of it, is beautiful. It's a really nice hedge as well. You see it less often, but it's a really really class hedge as well.
Speaker 2:I've planted on a few designs in a few gardens now and I've learned my lesson from a few things. So I don't plant it root ball anymore because the disturbance of getting it root balled and planting it in the garden if the soil is too wet or too dry it can be a bit, it just doesn't like too wet or too dry it's a very hard one to get right and the establishment of it can be a little bit. So I do is I plant it in pots. And every time I plant it in pots, and every time I plant in a pot, it does well yeah, again it does those two things between too dry and too wet.
Speaker 1:It's a very hard one for gardeners to get right, but if you does come true, it's bulletproof and it's amazing yeah, it's funny you say that because I actually bought about four years ago kind of a two meter tall cone of it in in a root ball and it's in good, good soil, should, should, grow perfectly. But this is the first year that it actually looks like it's going to take off. Yeah, it's the first year it has. It hasn't looked like it's dying in any means, like it's not struggling, but it's definitely not thriving either. And it has taken that length of time and now that you say it, the root ball, by comparison to the plant, was very small, um, and probably probably was just a bit too harsh of a shock on it at the time and it's taken that length to kind of get back, get back to neutral, I guess yeah, yeah, it's a.
Speaker 2:It's a tricky one.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so you mentioned already you're there not that terribly long, but you don't like bare spaces, so that's going to be one thing. Is there any kind of major plans yet? I suppose, as I say, it's still early days, so there's going to be no major plans developed at this stage, but anything in the pipeline for the next kind of 12 months, anything that somebody who's there are going in the next six months might necessarily have seen before, anything anything kind of in the pipeline well, we're starting to.
Speaker 2:One of the things I want to do is I want to have, when people come in and get a kind of a wealth experience from the gardener, from the gardeners. I want them to see that plants and lots, and so we're going to do a lot more staging as you come into the garden so you can see that the gardens themselves and the gardeners are putting the work in and we're trying to develop this experience for the visitor. And secondly, then they're going to see a lot more pot displays which will change seasonally. So I've inherited, obviously, some nice borders uh, that are my borders, but it inherits some nice borders and I, in order to kind of change them around, and the, the planting and the, the pots will allow me to move around those kind of seasonality of displays. We want to definitely part of the sustainable plan.
Speaker 2:Everybody, every place, has a sustainability plan and we're developing ours now for the next five years. So one of those things will be to go all electric machines. So we have all the still crowd coming in on the 30th to test out all their equipment and when I try and go fully electric, trying to eradicate as much petrol as it can, but planting wise we're going to. There's a lot of gutting, a lot of, you know, trees that are past their best, a lot of chestnuts that are a bit dangerous. We're're gonna have to do a kind of a full assessment on all the trees in the place. I love trees and I hate taking them down, so I'm gonna do a good assessment myself.
Speaker 2:Yeah, um and yeah, just start to develop the garden, start to develop the planting schemes, and you have to work hard now as a garden, you know you can't just inherit what you have and just let it go. Yeah, I think you have to be thinking about every single part of it, on every single level, and working as hard. And thinking is hard, because sustainability, for me, is not just about something that you introduce as a plan that somebody gives you as a menu. For me it's. It's sustainably is thinking about every single part of your daily work and everybody else's and about seeing how we can change and how we can better things and how we can think harder as opposed to working harder.
Speaker 2:Work harder, yeah, but you know, the sustainability thing it does come, I think with about. I estimate, based on what I've done so far and what the you know, using kind of brushes instead of roundup and doing all that kind of thing is about an extra 40% physical labor. So there's a. You know you have to take that from somewhere else, you've got to balance it up and you've got to motivate people. So it's going to be a full winter of thinking and planning, uh, to incorporate those.
Speaker 1:And also we want to do a kind of hopefully a really good japanese festival here next week, next year, somewhere different yeah, brilliant, yeah, so, so it sounds great in terms of pot displays, just obviously you're you're looking to sort of introduce these. You'll have the usual suspects, but just briefly give us an idea of what you're kind of looking at in terms of teams, seasons, you know, plant wise, what, what are we looking at?
Speaker 2:well, I think you know, as you come out, the visitors and the first thing you see should be you know, a collection of pots and in springtime you should have all your snow drops going to your crocus, into your, you know, your fritillaries, whatever, and that kind of evolution of of spring plants and azaleas and things as they're moving, as they're working around. I want the team to be able to see the plants and be able to kind of design and start to use plants and shape and form and color and things so displays almost like it, like a big flower arrangement. We don't make 20 pots and have that evolution kind of moving through the seasons, going into summer planting going into autumn colour and into winter. And you know, november to January is always the hardest part. That's where we'll have to work harder. But just, I think the best way to get a team working with plants is to have them thinking about plants all the time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, for sure, and the gardeners that are going to meet people as they come. They come in. Is that like by appointment? Is that certain times of the day, or what's your your thinking there, or is that is that sort of set in stone? Yet?
Speaker 2:um, well, the idea is that next year is that we'll do garden tours, so we'll do specific garden tours for garden people. So if, if people, 10 or 15 people will do a specific garden tour, that's, you know, bot, botanical tour or plant-based. That hasn't been there before. It's been more of the like a tourist experience. So next year we hope to engage with the people of Kildare. I think there's a huge bunch of people there that we can, we can bring on board and say we want to do nine Fridays we're going to be doing garden design classes in the visitor center, great facilities, and then we're going to do maybe 10 or 12 workshops through the years of really good people in to do fruit, vegetables, all through fitness and garland displays at Christmas, whatever. It is kind of really good and start to engage with the people of Kildare and bring them with us on the journey. And you know you do need the locals with you yeah for sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's good to add, I suppose, more interest as well, you know, and people are coming for a purpose, you know, to, as you say, to make a garland or a christmas wreath or whatever it is, and it's it's creating more interaction with with the general public as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's good for sure and we haven't even mentioned the horses. Yeah, and that's the other thing is that I want to not have to weed next year. So we have a massive amount of horse manure, john, and a massive amount of leaf mold and it's all sitting in a big yard in sections. It's been sitting there for years and it's like coming in and showing somebody the ultimate ingredients for making what people are paying for at the moment, which is, you know, compote mulch. We already have it here. So I want to start kind of making that on volume and start to dress the beds and get that really thick mulch up on top of everything so you don't have to.
Speaker 1:You know, yeah, it's a phenomenal resource to have there between leaf mold and horse manure. You couldn't get anything better. To be fair, and as you say, in terms of sustainability, that you're not. You're not utilizing man hours or or chemicals or whatever to to keep these weeds down. You just have a mulch there to to do the job for you in the wintertime. So, yeah, it's a huge asset to have that on site.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the winter would be the busiest time. You know it's always kind of seen as downtime, for, yeah, it's what it needs to be the busiest time, because you need to enjoy the summer. It's where you need to. You know your flair and your planting the winter and the hard work and all the edging and stuff you shouldn't be doing it in the summer gets happening.
Speaker 2:But I think that's the thing about the stud. For me it stands out especially from like the golf course background is that for me when you come out it is very much almost like golf course type area as far as you've got the beautiful lake and the aesthetics and the borders and the houses and it is that kind of beautiful stud effect. It's not a garden as such. And then you have the gardens off that You've got the Japanese gardens, that you've got the Japanese gardens, you've got the Vickers gardens. So I think visually we want the places really standard, just kind of like a shining diamond, but the gardens to be enhanced, you know, more botanically and everything else yeah, brilliant, sounds like great plans.
Speaker 1:Uh, obviously you know you're, as I said, you're only there a little, a little while really, and so over time you know 12 months, 24 months that you know you'll see obvious enhancements and changes, I guess. Um, so it's not a hard place to find normally. Normally, at this stage we, we direct people to you know how, how people can get tickets and so on it is all ticket, isn't it, I presume? Do you pre-order? Do you just pay at the door? What way is that?
Speaker 2:just pay at the door is the easiest thing. Get tickets online, do you believe? Actually, I don't know the price of the entry.
Speaker 1:I'll put it in the show notes.
Speaker 2:I just can't believe the place is so busy Like Belvedere was, you know, had 100,000 visitors or something a year Like there must be 150, 160, not 200 coming through here. It's phenomenal. Yeah, there's droves and droves of people going through the gardens, which is an unusual thing because it's very hard to sometimes make noise. Or, you know, you want, you want that silence in there. Yeah, you want people to kind of enjoy that. So we're very busy in the first hour in the morning before the public event yeah, and then you'll have to, you'll have to be quiet.
Speaker 1:But again, even even in terms of equipment going to going to battery, it makes some difference yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure um, it's been a really interesting chat, john. Um, best of luck with your, with your new role. Um, I'm sure it's going to be, you know, phenomenal developments over over the next couple of years. Really looking forward to seeing and that and uh, yeah, as I say, really really interesting chat and thank you very much for coming on. Master, my garden podcast thanks, john.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I look forward to you coming down and anyone else always drop by and say hello. It's always good to have company yeah for sure.
Speaker 1:Thanks, john. So that's been this week's episode. A huge thanks to john for coming on. Um, beautiful gardens. For anyone that hasn't been really worth checking out, it's um. I've been, as I said, loads of times over the years, probably probably a couple of years, two, three years since I was there last. So nice to go back and nice to see sort of changes, developments and even how the garden has evolved. Even if nobody touched. It's nice to see how the garden evolves over time as well and the different plants. So fabulous place, nice day out. I'll put the link in the show notes to the website. It's not hard to find anyway, as we said at the start, one of the most visited tourist attractions in ireland. John I'm sure is going to do a great job over the next couple of years in enhancing that, as he says. And yeah, well worth checking out. So that's been this week's episode. Thanks for listening and until the next time, happy gardening, thank you.