A few years ago, I was among a group of parishioners from Fiddown Union, visiting the world-renowned gardens at Mount Congreve. The occasion was a visit by Kinsale Mothers' Union. The gardens cover about one hundred acres of land, and there are eleven mil of paths and walkways. Although there wasn't time to explore the gardens from the vantage point of every single pathway, I saw enough to bring away with me a lasting and exotic memory to draw upon for years to come. Strolling along The Dutch Walk, in the shade of tiered Magnolias, is a bit like walking on top of the world, for these giants are Himalayan Magnolias. Today, there are probably more Himalayan Magnolias in Mount Congreve Gardens than now remain in the Himalayas themselves. This is, I believe, due to over-cultivation. You're probably wondering, as I was, why it's called The Dutch Walk, when it's tiered and dominated by Himalayan Magnolias. It was so named in honour of Herman Dool, a Dutchman who was Estate Manager and Head Gardener there for many years (and who now lives close by in happy retirement with his good wife).
The estate has its own micro climate, sustained in part by the great shelter
belts of trees that protect it. Those guardian trees were in some peril awhile
ago, as plans were afoot to uproot them to facilitate the building of a new
by-pass for the nearby village of Kilmeaden. There was a great furore about
this. And rightly so. How much more of our great cultural heritage will we uproot
and destroy to facilitate and further convenience the owner-drivers of superannuated
tin boxes in their frantic daily endeavours to get from A to B (or, perhaps,
merely from A to A)? It seemed particularly crass to target Mount Congreve gardens,
as Ambrose Congreve has already bequeathed this great national treasure to the
government and people of Ireland. Thankfully, common sense and decency seem
to have prevailed, and there has, I believe, been a crucial re-routing of the
proposed by-pass. But it adds further weight to the old adage that bureaucracy
is not only a soulless thing, but an inhumane stranger to common sense as well.
The Gardens at Mount Congreve are unique in the world. There isn't anything
like them on the planet. Which would you rather bequeath to your descendants:
one of the world's greatest gardens - as Irish in the world as Ireland is -
full of the beauties of creation, or a string of cold, soulless superhighways,
fuming with traffic from morning till night?
Ambrose Congreve has received international recognition, and has been honoured
on both sides of the Atlantic for his work at Mount Congreve. In 1984, he was
awarded the Royal Horticultural Society's Veitch Memorial Medal, and in 2001,
he was honoured by the Massachusetts Horticultural Society, who awarded him
their medal for 'the greatest garden in the world'. But perhaps the most signal
honour of all came in August of last year, when he was conferred with an Honorary
Degree of Doctor in Law (LL.D) at Trinity College Dublin.
The degree was conferred on him by the Chancellor of TC, Mrs. Mary Robinson,
former President of Ireland, and the address was delivered by Dr. Luce, in time-honoured
custom, in Latin and English. "The poet Virgil had in mind to sing of 'the
care and cultivation needed to enhance the richness of a garden" Dr. Luce
began, with words that well-described the splendid achievement of the Waterford
honorand , "It is with much pleasure that I introduce Ambrose Congreve,
C.B.E., scion of a distinguished Anglo-Irish family, who, in the sunlit glades
of his beloved Count Waterford, has personally created a garden of world-wide
fame."
Mount Congreve is a living, vibrant garden, where propagation is vigorously
carried-out, and no fewer than one million pot plants are exported each year
to countries in Western Europe. In ancient Palestine, water, shade and scent
were noted as the three requisites for a garden. Mount Congreve is blessed with
all three. These lines, written by Dorothy Frances Gurney, encapsulate better
than anything I know, the life-enhancing joy and beauty of a garden:
The kiss of the sun for pardon,
The song of the birds for mirth,
One is nearer God's Heart in a garden
Than anywhere else on earth.
Strolling through Mount Congreve Gardens, and waxing lyrical about the wonders around me, I was also, I think, enjoying a surge of pride in the fact that here we have, as the Massachusetts Horticultural Society proclaimed, 'the best gardens in the world.' Here are gardens wherein dwell Magnolias tall as trees and Rhododendron crowds and all the perfumed glory of Camellias and Azelias. As I had my camera with me, I took a photograph of the MU group standing close to a large ornamental pond. One of the group - a kindly lady named Irene Wills - has, sadly, since passed away. A little while previously, Irene and her husband Leslie celebrated their 60th Wedding Anniversary. They seemed the quintessential couple, for they went around hand-in-hand like a pair of young lovers. Or, at any rate, a couple for whom love was still young (isn't that the same thin?). When I visited Irene at their home near Portlaw, early last year, I brought with me a copy of the photograph taken of the group around the ornamental pond.
"You know" Irene said, with a weary, sad matter-of-factness in her
voice, "that was my last good day." She was very weak, and knew her
life was ebbing. But she insisted on struggling from her chair to show me something
in their own garden. Irene passed away a little over a month later. Her Funeral
Service in Holy Trinity Church, Portlaw, was on a windy, chilly April day of
driven rain - a rain more likely to finish off the last of our daffodils than
bring forth the proverbial May flowers. I remember the way wind animated, and
seemed to agitate, the rare Evergreen Oak in the church yard of Holy Trinity
Church. The way the it threw rooks around the skies like ragged kites. The way
it made you feel cold inside and out. The way the deep dark sheen of the waiting
hearse reflected everything - us, church and trees. After the service, that
sombre vehicle bore Irene's remains to the crematorium, and thence, via ferry
to Coombeteignhead in Devonshire, the place of her girlhood, and last resting-place
of her ashes.
Last time I saw her, she gave me a copy of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare.
It's a gift I like to take down from the shelf and dip into, for it's more than
Shakespeare now: it's also, somehow, an interlude in the gardens at Mount Congreve;
and it reminds me that, in a small way, I was privileged to be a part of Irene's
'last good day.'
It's ironic that Mount Congreve has been renowned internationally for many years,
while most people here in Ireland were only dimly aware of its existence, if
at all. But that's already in the process of changing. More ironical still is
the fact that it took the threat of a new road-works to bring it full into the
public domain, and thus into the consciousness of Irish people at home. People
simply weren't aware of it - a circumstance that always makes life a little
easier for those who would, unwittingly or otherwise, compromise or destroy
a priceless pat of our national heritage.
The old Waterford to Dungarvan railway, for instance, would make a wonderfully
attractive trip for tourist or local tripper. But they closed it down and tore
it up. Some of the most breathtaking scenery in the country reeled pst carriage-windows
in times gone by. The railways, of course, went into decline. It was the nature
of things. What wasn't natural was the indecent haste with which authorities
tore up the tracks and sold them off. And this happened all over the country.
he Waterford-Tramore railway was another example of this bureaucratic penchant
for 'official vandalism'.
Last year, a new venture was undertaken, and a short part of the old railway-line
was reinstated and re-constituted as The Waterford and Suir Valley railway,
by a newly-formed company of the same name. The narrow-gauge line runs from
just beyond the village of Kilmeaden, near the banks of the river Suir, for
about four miles, and will eventually run all the way to the Bilberry area in
Waterford city. It is, perforce, a seasonal service, but from what I gather,
it's proving to be very popular with all age groups. Part of the magic of the
journey is the vista of Mount Congreve Estate and Gardens. At just on four miles,
you couldn't classify it as one of the great railway journeys of the world,
but it's memorable, nonetheless. Mount Congreve Gardens, on the other hand,
is one of the great gardens of the world; and more than that, it's a place where
you make memories.