Customer Reviews

The Garden Lover's Guide to Ireland (Garden Lover's Guides to)

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This is an attractive but brief outline of many of the outstanding gardens in Ireland. Reeves-Smyth allots 2-5 paragraphs per garden and uses good graphics to help you find your way around the gardens.

If you are planning a trip to view gardens, this is a lovely guide. If you are looking for more indepth information and images, it is rather slim.

Terence Reeves Smyth brings to this, his most recent guide to the gardens of Ireland, the knowledge, commitment and passion characteristic of his earlier books on Irish demesnes,castles and gardens. A widely recognized authority in this field, he conveys clearly and engagingly to the reader and traveller, an invitation to roam throughout the island and discover the beauty of a wide range of gardens and parks. While gardens are the focus of this guide, he offers as well, descriptions of other sites, perhaps the best of which is the Crom Estate in
Fermanagh, where one can visit the finest ancient woodlands in Ireland and spend many a dreamy afternoon, gliding in a small boat on Lough Erne.
The guide is set out in a very practical fashion, its size permitting thoroughly inviting descriptions of the gardens and information indispensable to the visitor, to appear on the same page. Accompanying the descriptions are captivating photographs, all but for one or two exceptions, taken by the author. One can only imagine from his charming narrative portraits of the gardens the hours he enjoyed, with their owners, while he undertook the preparation of this
book.
On a recent trip to Ireland I found this guide both a companion and an inspiration.