Ballycommane House and Gardens, West Cork Garden Trail

Peter Donegan chats with Ballycommane House and Gardens owners Ingolf Jungmann and Andy Stieglitz.

With very special thanks to Bev and Miriam of West Cork Garden Trail this was a little bit of a treat.

Set on a landscape of about 4 acres, Andy and Ingolf hold around 1000 exotic native shrubs and trees chosen from literally the world over. In context, they include subtropical palms, bananas, tea trees, tree ferns and myrtles. They further specialise in growing their own collections from the southern hemisphere (Gondwana flora) and the Azores.

But Ballycommane is a little more than that. It is the owners, the out buildings, the homemade cakes and fine coffee and the attention and detail given to the landscape that surrounds it. And, I not only visited there when invited by West Cork Garden Trail, but I some months later then returned to visit with my good friends Anthony and Darren when I went camping with them.

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Peter Donegan will be talking at the Blarney in Bloom Festival, July 9, 2017. It takes places at Blarney Castle and Gardens.