As our visit to Derrymore House did not take all that long, we decided to head across to Rowallane Garden and get this week of Trusting off to a flying start. Like Derrymore, Rowallane offers pleasant surroundings for a walk, but there are a few more facilities available, including a café and a secondhand bookshop. We started in the former and ended in the latter, bookending (do you see what I did there?) a walk around the varied gardens and pleasure grounds.
Not for the first time in my recent travels, I had to work a little harder than I would like to pin down some detail about Rowallane and its history. A map is supplied on arrival but there is no guidebook and when I went to track down further information and a timeline of the property in the house, I found several display boards blocked by some dried flower arrangements and secondhand books stacked up on old garden crates. I had to twist myself into various contortions to get the camera high enough or low enough to be able to take snaps of the text for future perusal.
From what I could glean from my acrobatics, it seems that the site was owned by the O’Neill chieftain and his clan in the 14th century and then passed through many different hands until it was bought by the Reverend John Moore in 1858. He spent the next 30 years creating the current house, pleasure grounds, stable yard, walled gardens, etc. and creating most of the Rowallane the visitor sees today. His nephew Hugh Armytage Moore inherited in 1895 and spent another 55 years preserving and enhancing the site, adding the Rock Garden Wood and the Spring Ground. In 1955, a year after Hugh died, the property was given to the National Trust by the Ulster Land Fund. The house was once used as the National Trust’s Northern Ireland office, but parts of the downstairs are now home to the café, bookshop and toilets.
This was a good time of year to visit as the azaleas and rhododendrons are, quite frankly, showing off. And as anyone who knows me is well aware “I do love an azalea”! The Rock Garden Wood was a particularly colourful area and I like a rock garden almost as much as I like an azalea so a combination of the two was heaven. There are very few formal gardens at Rowallane, with only the walled garden and outer walled garden being more strategically laid out. Elsewhere, woodland walks and sweeping grounds are very much the order of the day, but there is still plenty of varied planting to keep more avid horticulturists happy. In fact, we met one lady who had ‘mislaid a man and a dog’ while engrossed in admiration of a eucalyptus!
Fortunately, I had brought along a man who likes a good map, so none of our party got lost. He was an excellent guide and made sure we didn’t miss any of the waymarked spots around the gardens. That left me free to photograph an azalea… or two… or three… or… I think you get the picture (well at least three of them in this post anyway!).
Highlights: Rock Garden Wood; azaleas
Refreshments: Pot of tea and a caramel slice
Purchase(s): None
Companion(s): Phil & Sarah
National Trust Challenge 