THE pickaxe is not a tool that you would immediately associate with a lady gardener, but this is the implement of most value to Lorna MacMahon in her four acres of rocky Galway terrain. When she moved there 25 years ago, there was no garden whatsoever, not even a drive. Just the shell of an unfinished bungalow in a wind-blasted wasteland with no soil at all, not even a scraping of soil".
The house came with an acre of land, and Lorna brought in 34 loads of topsoil to make it gardenable. "I made a bargain with my husband, Harry, that I would dig and pickaxe every square inch myself, provided he gave me the amount of topsoil I needed." The topsoil - through no fault of Harry's - was the poorest specimen ever analysed by the lab where Lorna sent it to be checked.
Despite the miserable soil, Lorna coaxed the front garden into a textbook model of manicured, stripy lawns set off by heather and conifer beds. In Galway's extravagantly moist climate (69 to 72 inches of rain a year, as opposed to Dublin's 25), the "dwarf" conifers grew to crazy proportions, looking like magnified versions of the east coast editions of the same plants.
While the first acre was a blank canvas waiting for Lorna to come along and make her picture, behind the house was a wilderness of hazel woodland, probably planted during the last century to be coppiced for wood. The MacMahons bought an acre-and-a-half from the neighbouring farmer, and then a while later they bought a bit more, and then a bit more...
Now the wood is a place of fairytale beauty, its green floor clothed in ferns, mosses and ivy, and shimmering with a haze of blue bells. And as in all good fairy tales, the air is filled with the swish of wind among the leaves and the splash and tinkle of lively water. Meandering paths dip and ramble through the dappled tree trunks, and open into magical clearings holding mystical pools and enchanted plants.
But each one of these heavenly clearings has been vigorously hacked out of the wood and rock by Lorna, armed with her pickaxe and energised by a desire to be always creating a new garden. "I must admit that I like doing new areas more than I like maintaining the older ones. I try to do a new one every year if possible."
Over the years she has carved out about a dozen pockets, each one protected by the enfolding woods from the rampaging gales that rip in from the Atlantic. One of the first that you come upon is the Primula Pool where hundreds of candelabra primulas - with their tiers of bright-eyed tubular flowers - grow. The largest is Primula pulverulenta: the books say its maximum height is three feet, but here it regularly reaches five or more feet. Here also is its smaller cousin, Primula japonica in many varieties, including `Postford White' with its almost edible jelly-orange eye. And the blue Himalayan poppies, Meconopsis grandis and betonicifolia uncrumple their papery blossoms at the edge of the wood.
In the nearby Bog Garden - and this is real bog: squelchy-squelchy and under water part of the time" - more primulas grow, and mats of heather and umbrellas of great gunnera, "miles earlier than usual". A huge, springy mound of Arctostapliylos, a member of the heather tribe, serves as a creche for tiny, infant frogs. In a few weeks time, run your hand over it and they bounce out berserkly.
Further on, a Japanese-style garden has at the water's edge a hefty granite Yukimidoro, or snow-viewing lantern. Lorna was prepared to go to the ends of the earth to get one, but happy fate decreed that there was one, hundreds of years old, just 14 miles down the road in Oughterard. More happy fate arranged that a miniature Mount Fuji - that old favourite of Japanese woodblock prints - would appear when Lorna cleared away the bracken, ivy and moss, 12 years ago.
Lorna has been out with her pickaxe again, creating her most ambitious garden yet and her most important. It is for Harry, who passed away last year. She had to go back to the farmer and get more land because you couldn't make a garden in his memory if it's not better than what you've got already". Harry's garden is shaping up nicely: a network of stream-fed pools have been hewn out of the rock, and water moves cleanly through them. Pink granite - unknown elsewhere on the property - has appeared from under the bracken, and lots of beautiful plants are pushing their roots down into the moist, rocky Galway soil.