This 15,000 acre estate was purchased by Mitchell Henry as a gift to his wife Margaret when the couple fell in love with the Connemara area during their honeymoon in 1850. Kylemore Castle was constructed from 1867-1871 and featured many modern and innovative amenities. The castle overlooks a lake and has the dramatic backdrop of wooded mountainside.

Kylemore Abbey was truly fairytale-like in appearance. The Other Half and I took a short tour of a handful of rooms in the castle open to the public, then spent the rest of the morning strolling the grounds. The castle is still being used as an abbey by the Benedictine Nuns who acquired the estate in 1920. And yes, that is a palm tree in the next photo. Cue the Zone Envy.

Strolling the Kylmore Estate

We walked along a wooded path to the mini cathedral Mitchell constructed in memory of Margaret when she passed away. When the Henry’s moved in, Mitchell began planting many of the trees both native and ornamental along this path. “An Choill Mhór” means “Big Woodland” in Gaelic. The plantings included Monterey Pine, Irish Yew, Lawson’s Cypress, Sitka Spruce, Rowan, Holly, Sycamore, Silver Birch, Wych Elm, Ash, Scots Pine, Sessile Oak, Common Larch, Alder, Hazel, Horse Chestnut, Beech, and even Western Red Cedar.

The Other Half and I grabbed a quick pastry and hot drink at the tea house outside the Victorian Walled Garden. There was a handful of children’s furniture designed by second year Furniture Design and Manufacturing students of GMIT Letterfrack around the tea house. All pieces were made from naturally fallen wood on the estate. I really liked this mini band shell made from willow branches.

Kylemore Victorian Walled Garden

What a beautiful site when we entered the Victorian Walled Garden. Plants in this garden are not only grown on a reclaimed bog, but were introduced to Ireland before 1901. The 6 acre garden is built on a South slope of the estate at the foot of Dúchruach mountain. The selected location on the estate provided the best sun, good drainage, and a mountain stream water source. Here is the Eastern half of the garden, containing the decorative flower gardens, glass houses, and Head Gardener’s residence.

The brick walls are lined with various espaliered fruit trees.

Here is a closer shot of the formal, pleasure garden. I was delighted to see a Araucaria araucana (monkey puzzle tree) here. I had just met one for the first time during my visit to Portland, Oregon this past Spring.

The other half of the garden is dedicated solely to growing food. If you look closely in the photo below, you will notice the hedges lining the main garden avenue running east/west through the garden.

Between the hedges on the north and south sides of the path is a decorative, herbaceous border. This was designed to be a natural wall so visitors could stroll through the garden without having to see the garden staff working.

The garden was quite modern for its time. It included 21 glasshouses to grow exotic fruits like bananas and figs. Two of the glasshouses have been restored, but all that is left of the majority are the foundations. However, this allowed us a peek at the pipe systems installed to heat the glasshouses via three boilers and hot water.

These were nice cold frames built off the side of one of the glasshouses. They are still being used by the present day gardeners. All the food from the garden is served on the grounds at the tea house and Mitchell’s Café.

Frondness for Ferns

Something interesting I learned while visiting Kylemore that I will not soon forget is the Victorians’ obsession with collecting ferns. Out the West gate of the walled garden was a wooded walk containing an extensive fern planting. When I researched this further, I discovered “Pteridomania” meaning “Fern Madness.” Yes, there was a fern craze among the Victorians that warranted its own coined term!

On our last day staying in Galway, the Other Half and I rented a car and daytripped to the Cliffs of Moher and the Burren. Both are located along the western, Atlantic coast of Ireland. After visiting the Cliffs , we made our way to The Burren Centre in Kilfenora, Co. Clare. The centre had a short film and small exhibit explaining the formation and history of the Burren, about 250 square kilometers of limestone karst landscape. However, I was disappointed when the Burren walk I had been told would take place was in fact not going to happen because it was off-season hours.

After a half hour or so of trying to locate the entrance of the Burren National Park to attempt a hike on our own, we gave up. This was one of the areas I really wanted to see, having looked forward to it since we planned the trip. Frustrated, we began the trip back to Galway via the scenic, Atlantic coastline. As we drove northwest, we noticed a change in the landscape. More and more limestone was appearing around us with just hints of plant life.

And soon we found ourselves in the Burren. We pulled the car off the road and jumped out to explore. It was utterly surreal. I’ve never seen a landscape like this before.

The Burren first existed as a sea floor over 335 million years ago. Ice, ocean, and plate movements began altering the area to its present form. We often came across rocks and boulders left behind by glaciers.

Then we began to notice traces of life among the cracks.

And a bit more…

And more!

This was the reason I wanted to visit this special area of the country. Even though the Burren only covers about 1% of Ireland, “over 70% of Ireland’s 900 native plant species are found here.” The crevices of the landscape act as seed beds for a diversity of plants, many of which would never grow together in the same habitat.

The national park website describes the plant diversity within the one ecosystem best by saying “Arctic-alpine plants living side by side with Mediterranean plants, calcicole (lime loving) and calcifuge (acid loving) plants growing adjacent to one another and woodland plants growing out in the open with not a tree nearby to provide shade from the sun. Also found here are certain species which although rare elsewhere are abundant in the Burren. Even more amazingly they all survive in a land that appears to be composed entirely of rock.”

Not unlike other growing areas in Ireland, the Gulf Stream plays a large part in creating this ecosystem. In addition, “soft rain, relative absence of frost and the carboniferous bedding of the plants” round out the equation. I would love to visit this area again during the summer months to see all the wildflowers in bloom.