At Bantry House Gardens, the constant interplay of formal elements with the sweep of the bay is unforgettable, writes Nigel Everett.
Modern gardening tends to reflect a good deal of interior design – tastes typically conditioned by an often tedious mixture of labour-saving devices and showiness. The Bantry House gardens derive from a very different aesthetic tradition – an exercise in the grand style, but equally attuned to the stimulation of thought, imagination, and an instinct for the magical. The gardens were conceived as a fitting accompaniment to one of the finest of natural settings, a remarkable enterprise in cosmopolitan connoisseurship, and a dynastic history intimately connected with various crises of both local and international importance.
