It's a garden paradise

SPRING is in the air, but it is also underfoot at Sundale House a family home on exceptional gardens.

Walk the two acres of lawns at the 2.5 acre property and you actually notice the bounce in the grass: the lawns are top-notch, golf course standard. And, the planting and soft and hard landscaping are on a par, too.

If the maxim "You are closer to God in a garden than anywhere else on earth," is true, then viewers with soul will find Sundale close to heavenly. Set just eight miles west of Cork city at Ballinhassig, on a now by-passed stretch of road, and bounded by a deep wooded river gorge that turns to winter cataracts, the four-bed extended home has exemplary grounds. These include a hard-surface tennis court for disportment, water features for soothing sounds, and planting for year-round colour and pleasure.

The south-facing house, with 2,600 sq ft of space and four reception rooms and conservatory, is as pristine inside as the gardens are immaculate outside.

It is hardly an insult to the family home to say that most viewers will breeze through the house, and dawdle in the gardens.

Sundale is being brought to market just as spring throws its splendours at the property, on an overall site of 2.5 acres. Estate agent Donal Cronin of Thomas J O'Driscoll & Co guides Sundale at €750,000.

At this level it is on a price par with trading up homes in new estates such as Heatherfields (Waterfall) and Hayfield (Model Farm Road).

Originally built as a bungalow in the 1960s, the property was extended by two Dutch ladies in the 1970s, and when vendors Paddy and Angela O'Riordan bought it 20 years ago they bought more land for even bigger gardens.

Every year brought a horticultural project, and now well, there's not a lot left to do except maintain it, say the couple, trading down to a smaller site nearby.

It takes a little over an hour to cut the grass thanks to a ride-on mower with 6' cutting width, and then a bit more time trimming edges with a smaller machine, they say. All other gardening work should be done for pleasure.

There's a detached garage, two garden sheds, green-house, stone-ringed pond and pumped water-course, rockeries and hundreds of feet of low stone walls. There are also 10 pop-up sprinklers in place for when global warming and summer droughts really kick in.