Blarney’s top gardens

ADAM Whitbourn’s mission statement when he took over as head gardener at Blarney Castle was that he wanted ‘to make the gardens as famous in their own right as the castle’.

It’s nice to set a target.

Like everybody from Cork I had visited as a child on a school tour and, bar maybe visiting with American friends when in town, I had never really paid much attention to Blarney Castle or the gardens until I visited again recently.