GARDEN LEAVE

Ireland is at its greenest in County Wicklow, a bucolic corner where you’ll find both sublime mountain scenery and artfully landscaped country estates.

- SARAH MOSS

THE REST OF EUROPE was suffering a midsummer heat wave, but on the Irish coast there were cool gray skies, soft rain, and bursts of sunlight on heathered hills. As I drove south from Dublin with my teenage sons, Matt and Felix, the sea was pewter and calm. We had just moved from England to Ireland and were on our way to explore Wicklow Mountains National Park, which is less than an hour from the city and has been a playground for Dubliners since it was established in 1991. County Wicklow, known as the Garden of Ireland, is rich in locally grown food, and has mountains, moorland, and fertile valleys perfect for hiking, although most international visitors stay on the roads.

Wicklow is also where many Anglo-Irish families lived before the country gained independence in 1921. Several of the grand houses and gardens from those years are now open to the public. We stayed near Enniskerry at the Powerscourt Hotel Resort & Spa (doubles from ̀ 31,175; powerscourt hotel.com), a modern building beside the 18th-century Powerscourt House. The grounds—a good day trip if you’re staying in Dublin—include a Japanese garden in shades of Irish green, a collection of trees from all over the world, and a rose garden, which, on our visit, was heavy with bloom and heady with scent.

Powerscourt Estate stretches from the foothills of the Wicklow Mountains down to a deep river. The hotel’s design gestures toward a traditional Irish house in that it’s built into a hillside, and the common areas offer views across the valley toward the mountains. Our suite of rooms overlooked the hotel gardens. I opened the windows to hear the song of woodland birds, wind in the trees, and a tinkling fountain.