Getting to the soul of a magical place

I had heard of the gardens at Ashton Grove and had met the owners from time to time and discussed what they were recreating on the outskirts of Glanmire, but I was not quite aware of the scale of what they had undertaken.

For all that, what Gerald McGreal is doing in this garden wouldn’t work if it was simply a diligent recreation of what existed before, for a garden needs to possess some of the soul of the gardener for it to work.

A garden has to appeal to all five senses — and Ashton Grove does just that. But to make a garden truly special, it has to appeal to that sixth sense. There needs to be a ‘feel’ to the garden, which can only come from the soul of the gardener and those before him. Ashton Grove is all about ‘the feel’.