Magical microclimate flourishes in the great gardens of Garinish

If you've ever made the short journey from the handsome market town of Kenmare in Co Kerry to Garinish Island in Co Cork, you'll know that it's a route that takes you along the curling roads of the Caha Pass, through looming stone-tunnels carved improbably out of mountainous rockface and past a landscape so astonishingly, thrillingly and theatrically wild that it feels for all the world as if you've stepped back in time.

If that wasn't enough, you then arrive in the small seaside village of Glengarriff, a place as prettily picturesque as any postcard. Here, visitors to Garinish, or Ilnacullin as it's also known, must step on board a small, turquoise-blue ferry that chugs its way gently out of the harbour and into the balmy waters of Bantry Bay, past sleepy, sunbathing seals and a clutch of islands in miniature, each covered in its own thick blanket of golden gorse and wild rhododendron. It's a boat journey of no more than 10 minutes, but one so atmospheric that by the time Garinish Island comes into view – a leafy oasis rising steeply out of the water – you could be forgiven for thinking that you'd stumbled upon Tolkien's "Undying Lands".

When the Belfast-born Scottish MP John Annan Bryce bought Garinish Island in 1910, he and his family were already regular visitors to west Cork, seduced by its landscape and the friendliness of local people. Back then, the 37-acre island had no garden to speak of. It took much money, decades of skilled labour, the expert advice of the gifted British architect Harold Peto and the brilliant Scottish horticulturist Murdo Mackenzie (known as "Mac") to allow the Bryce family to create a garden capable of defying the Atlantic storms and salt-laden winds which are a feature of Ireland's south-west coast.

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Double herbaceous border in the walled garden of Garinish Island in Co Cork. Photographs: Richard Johnston

It was Peto who gave Ilnacullin its glorious bone structure – that famous Italianate garden with its formal terraces, reflective pool, colonnades, open pavilions, Casita, Grecian temple and curling flights of stone steps, all wonderfully juxtaposed against the garden’s wilder, Robinsonian elements including its “jungle”, bog gardens and woodland glades.

It was Mac who provided the crucial ingredient of expert horticulture, especially in creating a tough, evergreen shelterbelt of Scots and Monterey Pine that would protect the the sub-tropical planting from the rigours of those briny winds and storms. It’s because of this Scotsman’s great skill that Ilnacullin is now home to a treasure trove of choice trees and shrubs – embothriums, acacias, camellias, magnolias, myrtle, rhododendron and azalea hybrids, eucryphias, michelias and tree ferns – that thrive in its protected microclimate.

But it was the Bryce family who breathed life and love into the project, transforming a barren, windswept island into a tiny paradise.

This is especially true of Annan and Violet’s son, Roland, who lived on Ilnacullin for much of his adult life until his death in 1953, contentedly sharing his island home, Bryce House, with his two good friends, Mac the head gardener, and Margaret O’ Sullivan, who managed the house.

A keen botanist, the gardens of Ilnacullin were Roland’s lifelong passion. Before his death, he ensured their survival by bequeathing the island to the Irish people. Touchingly, he did so on the strict condition that Mac and Margaret could continue to live on in Bryce House until their deaths. They both did. After long, happy lives, Mac died in 1983 while Margaret died in 1999; both had devoted many decades of loyal service to Garinish, playing key roles in its transformation into the leafy idyll it is today.

Fascinatingly, the OPW, which is entrusted with the care of the island, has recently completed an utterly brilliant restoration of their island home. Visitors can now catch a vivid glimpse of a way of life that’s passed into history, from Murdo’s (recreated) study with its garden notebooks and old-fashioned plant-labelling devices to Roland’s library with its neat stacks of old gardening periodicals.

Which is not to say that time and a century of Atlantic storms haven’t left their mark on the gardens of Ilnacullin. Over the years, the OPW has carried out vital repairs on the fabric of the garden’s architecture, while more recently, it has taken the first steps in a process that will see the overall rejuvenation of both the planting and hard landscaping. To date, that’s most obvious in Ilnacullin’s wonderful walled garden, in the shape of handsome new paths and sensitive replanting. Work has also begun on the garden’s Casita and its 19th-century Martello tower, while restoration of its formal pool will soon begin. All in all, it’s expected the work will be completed by the end of 2017.

In the meantime, do your best to pay this magical little island – one of Ireland’s truly great gardens – a visit over the coming months. See heritageireland.ie

Fionnuala Fallon

visited Ilnacullin as a guest of the Sheen Falls Lodge in Kenmare, which is offering a special Buds and Blossoms package (from €536 per room) for May and June. This includes two nights’ B&B, a dinner, boat transfer to Garinish, and entry to both Garinish and Bantry House and Gardens. See sheenfallslodge.ie