The closest thing to gardening experience that renowned plantswoman Helen Dillon had before starting her legendary garden was working as a junior staffer at Amateur Gardening magazine in England at age 22. She ran errands for famous British gardeners, "and then at the end of the day," says Dillon, "you'd get what you were waiting for—a cutting of one of their plants."
For the next 40 years, Dillon nurtured her backyard garden in Dublin, wrote several gardening books—including Down To Earth With Helen Dillon—and eventually became what House & Garden calls "the undisputed queen of Irish gardening."
Today, we're visiting her colorful Dublin garden.
Photographs by Rachel Ryvar courtesy of Garden Improvements except where noted.
Above: Helen Dillon's garden in full bloom in July. Photograph courtesy of the Dillon Garden.
After working at Amateur Gardening, Dillon became an antiques dealer, married, and moved to Dublin. There, behind the Georgian townhouse she shared with her husband, she began planting what would become her namesake garden.
Above: Another view of Dillon's full-to-brimming space.
Dillon does not subscribe to any one gardening style and loves that her tastes are constantly changing. "Creative things happen when you're not thinking about something; you're just playing," Dillon says of her time in the garden.
Above: Dillon is known for creating flower borders of organized chaos. Photograph courtesy of the Dillon Garden.
Once a devotee of strict, color-themed borders, she learned to loosen up: "I remember when Christopher Lloyd came here 15 years ago," she says, "and he said very politely, with a glint in his eye, 'Don't you ever feel like putting a little bit of blue in the red border, and a little red in the blue border?'" (Read about Lloyd's garden in Garden Visit: Great Dixter.)
Above: The garden has undergone countless variations over the last 40 years. A previous version featured not only neatly color-themed borders, but also a pristine, high-maintenance lawn. ("I had never seen such a beautiful or more perfect lawn," says blogger Michael B. Gordon.) Dillon tore out the lawn and replaced it with a pond and canal set in Irish limestone.
Above: The garden features a small greenhouse in which Dillon grows warm-weather flowers.
Above: A relatively new addition to the garden: an all-green grouping—most from the Aralia family—planted in gravel.
Above: One of Dillon's signature looks: plants growing in galvanized trash bins. Photograph courtesy of the Dillon Garden.
Above: Blue delphiniums in bloom in summer and rosa 'Rhapsody in Blue' beneath. Photograph courtesy of the Dillon Garden.
Above: Helen Dillon is not sentimental about removing plants from her garden. "Good gardening is a constant process of editing," says Dillon. "Really what it boils down to is not what you put in, it's what you take out."
Above: Among the flowers in Dillon's garden are dahlias, cannas, lythrum, fuchsias, alliums, sweet rocket, geums, alstroemerias, trilliums, and poppies.
Above: The garden is more formal at the far end of the reflecting pool, where it features trimmed hedges and an ivy-covered arbor.
Above: The Dillon Garden is located at 45 Sandford Terrace in Dublin. It's open to the public from Monday to Sunday, from 2 to 6 pm, in March, July, and August. The garden is open on Sundays only during April, May, June and September. Entrance is 5€ per person. Visit the Dillon Garden for more information.
For more from Ireland, see Architect Visit: An Irish Stone Stable on a Dramatic Landscape; Steal This Look: Irish Cottage Garden; and, on Remodelista, Guard Tillman Pollock in Ireland.