HOUSE OF THE WEEK

“THE best-fed bees in Cork,” says the owner of Tiburon, of the blessing of a distinctive 1970s house on an acre of gardens, created by time, hard work, and knowledgeable planting.

Just as everything has a season, so too does a family’s use of a property: the couple behind the Trojan work here have uprooted, and moved on to a smaller home that could hardly be more different — they’ve down-sized to a brand-new apartment, across the city, swapping one hillside setting for another. At least their apartment find is one with decent balconies for planters, but it’s a far cry nonetheless from a verdant acre like this. Our gardening writer Charlie Wilkins says it’s “a dream garden in a fantastic setting. It has a collection of rare, unusual, and mature specimen trees, shrubs and perennials, grown by owners who spared neither time or expense in bring it to a high horticultural standard.”

Retired solicitor Nicholas Hughes, and his wife Noreen, shared a passion for gardening, and adapted a single-storey American house design when they built anew at Burke’s Hill, Tivoli, Cork, nearly 40 years ago.