The Ornamental Garden

Few traces remain of the original 18th gardens but in the period 1840 to 1950 three generations of the family were keen and knowledgeable gardeners. The 1838 ordinance survey shows the propagating house, the orangery, diagonal paths, and an orchard outside the walls. By the 1870’s the orangery had gone, with some of the cut stone used in the building of the great rockery, and had been replaced with glass houses and a new heating system. However the the most significant change was the building of the cross wall dividing the the garden into the ornamental garden and the vegetable garden with a rustic stone archway connecting them.

After 1950 the gardens fell into decline, the last head gardener died in 1965, and although the family tried to keep them going it was not possible to do very much. The gates finally closed sometime in the 1970’s. It was not until the Great Gardens of Ireland Restoration Programme was launched in 1995 that the decision was taken to work again in the gardens. By that time the ornamental garden was over grown with brambles and other weeds, and sapling ash and sycamore ,and was well past the stage of being a romantic” hidden treasure” as it was once described by a visitor.

After three years of hard work the garden was officially opened to the public in 1999. More remains to be done, and it was not possible, for financial reasons, to rebuild the glass houses but the garden looks well and much as it did in the early years of the last century.

The Enniscoe Garden was restored under the Great Gardens of Ireland Programme and is open to the public from April to the end of October each year.