Rooting gardens in restful design

The love of gardening, according to the great Gertrude Jeykll, is a seed once sown that never dies. Paul Doyle, one of Ireland’s leading garden designers responsible for many fine contemporary urban gardens and a multiple winner at Bloom is known for his architectural approach, finely tuned spatial awareness and meticulous attention to detail. From formal Italianate gardens to city front basements and atmospheric pavilions, his style has encompassed many different settings.

Sitting in one of his stylish Dublin gardens, the designer, fashionably dressed in cords, quilted jacket and flat cap, describes how it was “a granite box and a neglected wasteland with high grass” when he set about its transformation in July 2011. “The client wanted a canal and to make something stylish out of a side elevation,” he explains, pointing out the flanking box spheres and block planted blue geraniums. The cool contemporary touch in the house’s interior guided the aesthetics of its exterior. “There is always a link between the two and when I finish a garden it has to connect with the interior. I just listen and talk and listen again. This garden is anchored in the past, but relevant. In the sale of the house it was hugely pictorial, looking old and charming.”

Added value

This illustrates the growing awareness of how gardens can considerably add to the value of a property and the increasing role of landscape design. In this case, the vendor retained the mews at the back of the house and the garden was reconfigured by Doyle who placed a high, trellis-topped palisade softened with wisteria against the original line of mimosa trees as a divider using mirrored panels to create optical illusions of length.

“There are subliminal tricks to make a garden look bigger – it is about spatial awareness. There is a lot of structure in my gardens but it is always softened down. A lot make the mistake of forgetting to soften so the garden looks soulless and sterile. It is essential to bring in the seasons and I prefer to bring them in a huge sweep rather than in small trickles,” he explains.

His signature plants include blue geraniums, hydrangeas (for maximum impact), agapanthus and the gleditsia (honey locus tree).

Top end

He has worked in Dublin 6 for the past 25 years benefiting from wealthy owners converting houses from bedsits into private residences. “At the top end everybody wants an instant garden and we can create an astonishing instant view. During the Celtic Tiger years people became more design aware through international travel and that wealth opened up opportunities for garden design which is very property linked and very emotive. People started upgrading gardens and that is how the business grew – in small feeds,” he says.

From a farming background in Grange Con, Co Wicklow, Doyle’s passion for gardening inherited from his mother and grandmother was encouraged at his primary school and further enriched with a degree in horticulture from the National Botanic Gardens in 1990. He left college just at the start of the economic boom and began his career on a bicycle maintaining gardens in Rathgar in 1990 – “that’s how business developed through word of mouth.”

He designs all his projects himself, hand drawing ideas and using top-end garden builders, landscapers, crafts people and other skilled trades to complete projects. Plants and materials are sourced locally and internationally.

“I am a hard taskmaster and look for people with a high level of excellence. It is project management as well.”

Along with garden furniture and sculpture, he has also designed his own website and most recently a small book featuring his gardens. “I don’t hand over design to others,” he says proudly.

Original

So what makes a great garden designer? “It’s the ability to create something original every time and a space to which people feel instantly connected and which engages their emotions. Personally I like restful gardens,” he says, adding that he has two of his own, a city garden in Rathgar and a country garden in Grange Con.

He considers his style timeless and elegant, but also grounded in practical details. “Form has to function. There is no point in great beauty without allowing for practical uses – clothes lines, wheelie bins, toys and a core open space for children to play in.”

He is currently working on 30 gardens (35 is his quota), many at different stages with an increasing number of rural commissions – in Mount Juliet, Rosses Point, Sligo and east Clare, from city-associated clients. He has also created two in London.

His influences are his own – he eschews books and visiting other gardens and the only annual event he attends is the Chelsea Flower Show. “I am more interested in architecture, picture-based books and everyday observation. I observe small, fine details subliminally and that emerges in my designs. I don’t do trends or fashion – my gardens are always timeless and elegant with good clean lines.”

His Wicklow garden called Longstone Beacon (called after a standing stone in a field on the family’s 100-acre farm) was started five years before he began construction on the house in 2000.

The garden furniture and sculpture, such as the Beacon Lumiere – a 4ft-high light sconce and the dramatic “Eclipse”, a 4m-high sculpture made from industrial riveted iron mounted on German limestone – are his own and, as he says, now represent “the epicentre of where my design is. For me it is just doing what I love and it is a passion.”