Ireland Garden Tour 2027: Dublin, Wicklow & Private Gardens

Arrive independently in Dublin and settle into Clayton Hotel Dublin Airport. Today gives you time to rest after your journey before the garden programme begins tomorrow.

Our route stays within Dublin and Wicklow, allowing us to explore a varied group of gardens without changing region throughout the week. The first airport-area night is followed by four nights in Enniskerry and two in central Dublin: a journey from country-house landscapes and private planting into the life of the city.

Our first garden day begins at Airfield Estate in Dundrum, where ornamental planting and food production share the same setting. In the walled garden, trained crab apples—Malus 'Everest'—give structure to generous herbaceous borders. Elsewhere, an organic food garden supplies produce for the estate's kitchen and market, making the connection between growing and eating part of the garden's everyday life.

The planting responds to the conditions of each space. A sheltered border supports tender plants and bold leaves, while a more exposed orchard border relies on plants suited to wind and dry ground. This is useful garden-making to see at the beginning of our journey: choices of shelter, texture and plant suitability expressed in places that are attractive as well as productive. Airfield also has a link with a later visit—Jimi Blake helped establish its reputation before creating Hunting Brook.

We continue to Powerscourt, whose 47-acre gardens offer a change of scale. The formal terraces establish a broad view towards Sugarloaf Mountain, while statuary, water and the Italian Garden draw attention to the composition nearer at hand. The gardens began taking shape in the eighteenth century, with the surrounding landscape central to their design.

Within that larger framework, the walled gardens and Japanese Garden offer different moods and proportions. The herbaceous border brings us back to the combinations of plants, while the mature trees lend weight and continuity to the scene. There is pleasure in seeing both scales together: the garden as a carefully arranged view, and as a succession of places experienced on foot.

Lunch is included at one of today's visits. Afterwards, we settle into Summerhill House Hotel in Enniskerry, our base for the next four nights.

We begin at Russborough, where the Palladian house provides a composed centre to a landscape of mature trees and open parkland. The contrast between the building's ordered proportions and the softer forms of the landscape gives the estate much of its presence. Here, the interest is in the whole setting: the distance between trees, the opening of a view and the way the grounds give the house room to be seen. Lunch is included during our visit, before we turn from the scale of an estate to two gardens created through a much more personal engagement with plants.

At June Blake's garden at Tinode, discoveries beneath the ground became part of the design above it. A long stone wall inspired a reflecting pool, with Stipa gigantea—a tall, airy grass—planted along its top. Raised rectangular beds and paths use the house as a focal point, while excavated cobbles preserve traces of an older road.

Within this framework, June treats the beds as individual compositions. Cooler combinations of purple, pink and blue contrast with areas of red and orange; grasses introduce movement among the perennials. The interest comes from how the planting changes as you move, and from the balance between the firmness of stone and the freedom of growing plants. It is a garden that invites attention to colour without losing sight of structure.

Nearby, Jimi Blake's Hunting Brook brings a collector's curiosity to a landscape of sunny planting, woodland and valley. In its summer beds, substantial leaves are woven together with finer grasses and perennials, creating layers that can feel both luxuriant and surprisingly transparent. The contrast of sharp and soft foliage is as important as flower colour.

The woodland offers a quieter setting for shade-loving plants, and the transition between it and the brighter beds makes the diversity of the garden especially apparent. Seen after June's garden, Hunting Brook encourages a different kind of comparison: how two gardeners working close to one another can use plants with such individual results. There are ideas here for building a planting scheme through contrasting forms, even where the plants themselves would need adapting to a different climate.

At Patthana in Kiltegan, the garden made by artist TJ Maher and Simon Kirby draws us through a series of closely connected spaces. The inner garden's circular lawn and surrounding borders lead down granite steps to courtyards and a small wildlife pond. Changes of level give the planting different roles: sometimes it surrounds us, sometimes it is seen from above or across a paved space.

Maher's interest in colour is expressed through relationships between plants, with foliage contributing to the effect as much as flowers. Patthana is gardened organically, and many plants are chosen for their value to wildlife. The visit brings together two questions familiar to gardeners: how to make a small space feel rich in experience, and how beauty and habitat can be part of the same design.

At Mount Usher, the River Vartry becomes the organising presence. Paths and views follow the water through a landscape of trees, shrubs and underplanting, offering a more expansive setting after Patthana's enclosed spaces.

The garden is celebrated for its Robinsonian approach, associated with William Robinson's advocacy of more naturalistic planting. The idea is to work with a plant's habit and the conditions it needs, allowing cultivated planting to sit comfortably within a less formal landscape. That apparent ease still requires selection and care. As we walk, the relationship between the tree canopy, the planting beneath it and the river gives us a way to read the garden beyond its immediate beauty. Lunch is included during the day.

This evening, we gather at Johnnie Fox's Pub for dinner and live music, both included: a convivial end to a day of contrasting gardens.

Our morning takes us to Knockrose, the cottage garden cared for by Tom and Trish Farrell on the Dublin–Wicklow border. The rocky heights of The Scalp shelter the setting, with an older mixed woodland behind the garden. Here, the garden belongs closely to the house and to the people who live among its plants.

After the larger landscapes of the week, this is a chance to appreciate gardening at a domestic scale. Enclosure, shelter and the relationship between the planting and its surroundings matter as much as any individual specimen. The visit brings the conversation back to something many travellers know from their own gardens: creating a place that feels personal while responding to the ground, weather and space available.

We pause for lunch in an Irish pub before continuing to Corke Lodge, where architect Alfred Cochrane's design creates an altogether different atmosphere. A circular box parterre and axes through the planting bring formal order, while Gothic architectural fragments become focal points within a richly planted setting.

Tree ferns, phormiums and acanthus introduce strong contrasts of leaf and silhouette. A specimen cork oak connects the garden with its name, and the relationship between dense growth, mossy paths and glimpsed structures gives the place a sense of discovery. The semi-tropical, Italianate character is built as much through texture and framing as through flowers. For gardeners, it offers an absorbing example of how foliage and an architectural feature can hold a scene together through the season.

We return to Summerhill House for our final night in Enniskerry.

We leave our Wicklow base and visit a private garden whose identity is being kept as a surprise in the programme. After the established estates and distinctive planting of the previous days, this visit adds another personal garden to the journey. We leave its details to be discovered on the day.

The afternoon is yours to enjoy Dublin. You might choose a museum or gallery, walk through the city's streets and public gardens, browse a bookshop or settle into a café. This is time to follow your own interests, whether they lie in art, history, literature or simply the pleasure of exploring a city on foot.

Our hotel for the next two nights is the Iveagh Garden Hotel on Harcourt Street, in central Dublin.

At Ardán on the Howth peninsula, Nuala and Conall have made a varied garden around their home on a sloping, rocky site. Wind shaped the design: hedges create smaller sheltered spaces, allowing each area to develop its own planting character. Curving herbaceous borders give way to an exotic garden and wildlife pond, while birches and woodland plants change the mood again.

Conall's sculpture adds another layer to the experience, and the productive garden is managed using no-dig methods. The owners describe their approach as joining habitat with beauty. What makes it rewarding to see is the way those concerns are expressed in the design itself—through shelter, changes of level, plant choice and the movement from one space to another. It is a compact garden with much to offer anyone thinking about how to use a difficult site imaginatively.

We then visit the National Botanic Gardens at Glasnevin, founded in 1795. The living collections bring together more than 15,000 plant species and cultivars, placing the week's pleasure in planting within the longer history of botanical study and collecting.

The restored Turner Curvilinear Range and Great Palm House are important parts of that experience. Their iron-and-glass construction is worth attention in its own right, as well as for the plants it shelters. The low, curved roof of the Turner range gives a different sense of scale from the lofty Palm House. After several days in gardens shaped by individual preferences, Glasnevin widens the perspective: plants gathered to be studied, understood and shared. It is a fitting place to reflect on both the diversity of the plant world and the choices that turn a collection into a garden.

This evening, we share dinner in a pub, with time to talk over the visits and the ideas we will take home.

Check out of the Iveagh Garden Hotel and continue your onward journey independently. You leave with a fuller picture of Irish gardening: the structure of the great estate, the energy of contemporary planting and the individuality of the private garden.