Digging deep: William Laffan praises an absorbing study of a group of eighteenth-century Irish landscape gardens that illuminatingly unravels their many meanings

Apollo, Sept, 2005 by William Laffan

Landscape Design in Eighteenth-Century Ireland: Mixing Foreign Trees with the Natives Finola O'Kane Cork University Press, E59 ISBN 1 85918 362

In 1762 the Duke of Leinster was rebuffed in his attempts to lure 'Capability' Brown to Ireland; the great gardener rather haughtily excused himself on the grounds that he had not 'finished England' yet. Perhaps this was no bad thing, as the school of landscape design that arose in eighteenth-century Ireland, while drawing on English and continental models, was robustly native, distinctive and at times idiosyncratic. Although this subject was surveyed magisterially as long ago as 1976 in Edward Malins and the Knight of Glin's Lost Demesnes, Irish Landscape Gardening, 1660-1845, the present study's close reading of a variety of sources, documentary and physical, offers a wholly new perspective.

Unlike most previous discussions of the topic, this book engages not just with form, but with meaning and experience also: the author concludes 'there are many ways to make a garden and many more ways to use a garden. We only have to remember them.' O'Kane sets out to provide a more detailed focus to the pioneering work of Malins and Glin, suggesting that her 'smaller compass is ... countered by a more detailed context.' She examines four estates created in the course of the eighteenth century (all within a short distance of Dublin), that of Robert Molesworth at Breckdenston, the twin estates of the related Conollys and FitzGeralds--Castletown and Carton (brought to life by Stella Tillyard's book Aristocrats)--and the FitzGeralds' seaside villa at Frescati. O'Kane explores how the landscapes of these estates were created, or remodelled, and the decisive move from the formal Dutch model of planting (which in Ireland had specific associations with loyalty to the House of Orange) to the self-consciously informal English mode associated with Alexander Pope and William Kent.

Molesworth, an influential Whig theorist, was instrumental in the introduction of the 'farmlike way of gardening' to Ireland. His letters to his son John travelling on his grand tour demonstrate the flow of ideas, engravings and books from the continent. Perhaps Molesworth's most important contribution to Irish architecture was his invitation of Alessandro Galilei to Ireland. Unlike 'Capability' Brown, Galilei accepted, and was to design Castletown, the grandest Palladian house in the country. However, Galilei's appeal to Molesworth was as much his expertise in hydraulics as architecture, and at Breckdenston the harnessing and control of water, for ornamental and practical use, was the leitmotif of a self-consciously improving spirit.

Although the Molesworth correspondence has previously been exploited several times as a source, O'Kane's reading of it, combined with her examination of the physical remains of Breckdenston, is subtle and thought provoking. Gardening in eighteenth-century Ireland was far from a neutral activity. The idea of a ferme ornee could be perceived as a 'callous and ironic typology to introduce into a country which has had considerable difficulty in providing for its population'. However, the 'narrative of improvement' blurred the boundaries between the useful and the merely beautiful, allowing political and philosophical opponents such as Molesworth and Jonathan Swift to agree that Breckdenston provided a utopian model of an ideal Irish landscape.

The famous demesnes of Castletown and Carton are explored in similar detail. The often-told story of their development during the course of the century is enlivened here by a nuanced awareness of the differences between the two, which reflect the differences of status and wealth between the fabulously wealthy Conollys and the aristocratic FitzGeralds, as well as political, familial and personal agendas. In addition to formal discussion of design, O'Kane explores how these landscapes were used and perceived, echoing, at times, John Dixon Hunt's recent introduction of reception theory into garden studies.

Although O'Kane modestly ascribes a narrow focus to her study, this is belied by the breadth of the themes with which she engages. She treats desmesne landscape as very deliberately created works of art that demand a careful iconological reading, and shows how neighbouring estates were designed to complement each other within carefully choreographed hierarchies of importance, often reflecting family alliances. The famous Castletown obelisk, for example, is on land that forms part of the Carton demesne. Although she does not explicitly make the comparison, the estates along the Liffey valley--Lyons, Castletown and Carton--were as knowingly conceived as their more famous counterparts along the Brenta or Thames.

O'Kane treats with a delicate touch the sometimes overused discourse of 'separate spheres' of male and female influence, and the differences of decorum and behaviour appropriate in town and country. These were blurred at the FitzGeralds' suburban villa, Frescati at Blackrock, where Lady Emily's garden 'was designed to express Rousseau's controversial pedagogical agenda and to transfer educational and political ideas of a radical cast to her children'. Emily achieved this all too successfully, with tragic results for her son Lord Edward, martyr of the 1798 United Irishmen Rebellion. O'Kane has previously researched Patrick Pearse's garden at St Enda's and her chapter 'Gardening and Rebellion' is highly suggestive in the parallels it draws between gardening imagery in Ireland and revolutionary France. Similarly potent analogies are made between demesne landscape and the theatre.