Portrait of a Garden

John Curran visits the County Meath home and garden of Jock and Mary Wilkinson.

- John Curran

Somewhere between the Hill of Tara and the Hill of Skryne is a garden like no other. In it stands an old house where generations of Wilkinsons have lived, and Jock and Mary have brought up their three sons Nigel, Neville, and Harry, now adults, there. They are a generous and sociable couple who love gardens. In 1975 local friends Jim and Jill McAleese started up a group of like-minded garden enthusiasts, which includes the Wilkinsons, called the ‘Dig It and Dung It’ which became a vehicle for enjoying one another’s gardens in a sociable way, and for garden visits throughout Ireland and England. In 1981 the group visited Highgrove and later gardens in Sussex and Yorkshire. Among their number is Jim Reynolds, whose iconic Butterstream garden in Trim has now passed into legend.

Many people have a dream of a garden but only the hard-working achieve their ideal. Jock is one of these; by applying himself over long decades everything about his garden attests to his consistency of effort, aptitude for nurture, and patience. In it he grows a wide variety of different vegetables in quantity using traditional methods, which are now called organic, reminding us that once before chemical fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides, that was the only way there was of nurturing garden crops.

The Wilkinson’s garden is local, sustainable, organic, light on or free of pesticides and artificial fertiliser – the sort of gardening that is much easier to write and talk about than actual practice. Given our planet’s changing climate patterns, organic gardening chimes with a contemporary horticultural ideal few enough of us can live up to. Jock Wilkinson is one of the exceptional few. He has always used traditional time-honored, sustainable methods in the cultivation of his extensive garden.