Gardening: Two well-grounded reads on the fleeting essence of time and bittersweet beauty of natural world

It’s often said that making a garden teaches all kinds of valuable life lessons, from the importance of patience and the virtue of persistence, to a recognition of the fleeting nature of time and the bittersweet beauty and resilience of the natural world.

Many would also say that it helps to nurture a kind of inner tranquillity, supporting mental wellbeing and serving as a path towards personal spiritual enlightenment, all of which is underscored by two great new books by Irish gardeners.

One, called Grounded in the Garden, is by the Tipperary-born artist TJ Maher, creator of Patthana Garden in Kiltegan, west Wicklow. It was published by Pimpernel Press last month.

The other book is the self-published Growing Beauty by garden designer and former jeweller Des Doyle of Lavistown House, Co Kilkenny, which comes out later this month. Both are beautiful publications that are intensely personal, contemplative and celebratory accounts of the magic that comes with making a garden and the lessons learned along the way.

Patthana Garden, which I first wrote about for this paper in 2017, will already be well-known to many as one of Ireland’s loveliest small gardens, albeit not anything as small as it used to be. Maher and his husband Simon Kirby extended the garden after buying the field adjacent to the original site in 2020, so that it now stands at a little over an acre.

It’s in this new area that the author has developed his new Torc garden, as well as Patthana’s native flowering meadow. A charming and atmospheric country garden, it’s known for its expert use of space and its joyful, exuberant, expansive use of colour. In the hands of an artist like Maher, sizzling pinks, fiery oranges, rich reds and magentas are combined in