OPENING the shutters at Glin Castle in Co Limerick of a morning, generations of Catherine FitzGerald’s ancestors would have looked out at the same ring of sessile oaks as her family and guests do today. Descendants of the Killarney forest that once stretched down to the shores of the Shannon river in front of the castle, the gnarly, moss- and fern-covered branches of the oaks protect the 10 acres of landscaped garden from the westerly winds that whip up the estuary. ‘You can see their arms are outstretched and they circle the place to create an embrace,’ says Miss FitzGerald. ‘They are its presiding spirit.’
The family has owned the Glin demesne since the 13th century and this genius loci is of great importance to Miss FitzGerald.
It is something she always seeks out in her work as a landscape designer on large projects, such as Hillsborough Castle near Bel- fast (‘Building for peace’, October 2, 2019), and Glenarm Castle, Co Antrim (2023 Historic Houses Garden of the Year), as well as in private gardens in both Ireland and Britain. She studied horticulture at RHS Wisley in Surrey, after Trinity College, Dublin, then worked for Arabella Lennox-Boyd before setting up her own practice, formally joining forces last year with her long-term collaborator Mark Lutyens, a landscape architect, to become Lutyens & FitzGerald.
Miss FitzGerald is the eldest of the three daughters of the 29th and last Knight of Glin and, together with her husband, the actor Dominic West, she has taken on Glin, which, today, is more of a castellated grand Georgian house than anything that could withstand an attack. Even when her parents, Desmond and Olda, were in charge and running the place as a smart boutique hotel, she was given pretty much a free rein in the garden. It was a generous gift to the nascent designer and one that she has been working on for 25 years.
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