Feeling On Top of The World

The transformation of an old hillside garden on Ireland’s east coast leaves Non Morris feeling exhilarated and inspired

Mount Eagle is a substantial, early-Victorian house built on an extraordinary piece of coastal land, sandwiched somewhere between Enya’s castle and Bono’s pile, in a part of Dublin Bay that feels like the setting for an F. Scott Fitzgerald film on the French Riviera.

once you’re within its protective walls, the views from its upper terraces are exhilarating. In one direction, you gaze out over cool, mature woodland—mostly chestnut and oak made lush by light-catching tiers of tree fern—across the blue of Killiney Bay to the dashing white Sorren to terrace, a row of houses said to be the most expensive real estate in Ireland. In the other, beyond the stone-speckled sweep of Killiney Beach, you can make out the Wicklow Mountains, only 30 minutes’ drive away to the south.

When landscape designer Dominick Murphy was commissioned to work on the garden, it had become a stark, un welcoming place, dominated by a road-like drive that looped heavily around the house and so sheer and inaccessible that much of the 41 ⁄2 acres was left to lawn that could only be managed by attaching electric mowers to ropes and lowering them down over the slopes. His brief was to create a comfortable and welcoming garden for the family to enjoy and for entertaining.

Mr Murphy’s first triumph was to remodel the driveway. He created a turning circle that allowed cars up to the house, but sped them out of the way again as efficiently as possible. In doing so, he liberated the glorious area between the south-west-facing house and the sea and began the enjoyable task of surrounding the terraces and lawn with the sort of scented, slightly exotic planting that is only possible because the climate here is so mild.