Day 1 Arrive Dublin. Meet Driver in Dublin Airport. Transfer, with city centre familiarisation tour, to the Hibernian Hotel, a charming Victorian town house hotel minutes from downtown Dublin. Day at Leisure. Optional tour to the Botanic Gardens at Glasnevin and Malahide Castle Gardens. P.M. Transfer to Sandford Road to see Helen Dillon's superb town garden. Dinner at Hotel.
Day 2 Head south to Bray, visiting Fernhill Gardens on the way if there is time and Kilruddery House. Lunch in the Village of Enniskerry after which a visit to Powerscourt Gardens. From Powerscourt to Mount Usher Gardens at Ashford. Dinner at Roly's, a fashionable Bistro in Dublin.
Day 3 To visit to Jim Reynolds Butterstream Garden, the Irish Sissinghurst. Jim Reynolds is garden designer for the Prince of Wales. A visit to the Tollymore Forest Park in the Mourne Mountains. Tollymore has remarkable and unique garden follies as well as a fine arboretum. Overnight in The Portaferry Hotel
Day 4 To Seaforde Gardens, a magnificent walled garden with a maze with the national collection of Eucryphias. Other gardens to visit today will be Rowallane which is run by the National trust and has one of Ireland’s premier plant collections & Castlewellan Forest Park, located in a dramatic setting of mountains and sea, with fine conservatories and an arboretum.
Day 5 To Mount Stewart, where exceptional examples of every style of gardening popular in the last two centuries is represented. The garden is of 78 acres comprlsing formal garden areas, terracing, pergolas, pavilions, woodland gardens and a water garden encircling a large lake in the park. It is generally acknowledged as one of the greatest gardens in western Europe to grow as many rare and tender plants as possible, especially those giving a tropical effect. Then to Physick garden at the Cistercian Grey Abbey. Belfast has its own horticutural splendour including the Botanic Gardens, that date from 1829, Oakhill Gardens at Dunmurry a delightful plantsmans garden.. Return to Portaferry
Day 6 Antrim Castle, a 17th century garden layout with canals and clipped allées. On to Leslie Hill, with its large 18th century walled garden Benwarden with its roses, shrubs & herbaceous borders & Drenagh an important landscape garden with fine planting. Overnight Limavady Radison Roe
Day 7 The Mountains of Donegal and Glenveigh Castle Gardens, one of Ireland’s most celebrated gardens with the strangely contrasting Belgian & Italian gardens created in a rugged & remote valley by the American millionaire Henry McIlhenny. Overnight Limavady.
Day 8 Via the arboretum at Brook Hall - Dating from the 1600s the garden is a 30 acre collection of curiousities including the largest selection of escallonias in the country. Fox Lodge is a 2 acre plantsman's gardens, started 30 years ago and strong on alpine and bulbs. Barons Court, the Duke of Abercorn's stately demesne, has formal parkland, a romantic "flower wood" with many specimen trees and shrubs and fine terraced gardens. Our final stop will be Lake View which is the home of the well known Irish gardening family the Shackletons. There are wonderful herbaceous beds in the the 2 acre walled garden. Overnight Ashbourne
Day 9 Depart Dublin