Anna Pavord's travel book choices, the crossword and Alice Vincent
THE IRISH GARDEN
by Jane Powers
Frances Lincoln, £40
ISBN 978-0711232228
My husband and I had our honeymoon in Ireland, in the days before generous restoration funds were set up to retrieve historic gardens, such as Killruddery in Co. Wicklow, from falling into 'gracious decrepitude'. The phrase is that of Jane Powers, a terrific writer, who, in glorious detail, has taken in 38 Irish gardens, well spread through the territory. The photos are by her husband, Jonathan Hession, among them Carl Wright's extraordinary Caher Bridge Garden 'on loan from a savage landscape' in the Burren, Co. Clare, and sunset captured behind silhouettes of the ancient trees in the park at Birr Castle, Co. Offaly. It's too easy when writing about gardens, especially those made in the soft, inviting air of Ireland, to descend into lists of plants. Powers never does. She gives us the setting of each garden, the landscape, details of past owners, the different designers involved over the centuries. It is superbly done, the gardens divided into nine different groups, from the grand gardens of the Anglo-Irish to productive patches such as the cookery school at Ballymaloe.
