Darra: will have strong appeal for gardeners.

A HOUSE for the green-fingered is ripe for the picking, on a suburban site of three quarters of an acre. Darra is an architect designed bungalow below the road at Carr’s Hill, the old road to Carrigaline on the edge of Douglas village in Cork.

Its owners have had a large greenhouse out the back and have both grown and sold cut flowers here to flower arrangers and shops.

They are selling up as, hot house flowers that they are, they have bought a house in Spain and are to transplant themselves to sunnier climes.

The gardens/site not surprisingly are mature, with lots of shrubs, trees and flower beds as well as hedge boundaries: in addition, there is a large greenhouse, but for those that don’t want this sort of amenity the vendors will remove it and lay the space to lawn if required, says auctioneer Tom Woodward.

Woodwards seek €550,000 for Darra, which has a number of other distinctive features to it, such as an upstairs home bar with pitched ceiling, Velux windows and counter with beer taps. Again, for those not into a bar in the house, the 19’ by 11’ room could make for a master bedroom and has a large attic space off it suitable for conversion.

Mainstream accommodation includes sitting room with Junkers floor, family room (currently used as the flower shop,) a living room, and there’s a bright kitchen/dining room with sunroom off it through double doors.

In addition, there are four ground floor bedrooms with built-ins, one ensuite, a main family bathroom, and that overhead bar, convertible attic space and a home office or fifth bedroom.

The property has a distinctive unequally pitched roof redolent of its c 20-year-old design, has oil heating and a mix of teak and double glazed windows, it has Junkers flooring in many rooms, has mains services and has permission in place for retail use, which may leave options open to new occupants.