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

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

In 1762 the Duke of Leinster was repercussioned in his attempts to bait 'Capability' Brown to Ireland; the great gardener rather haughtily excused himself upon the grounds that he had not 'finished England' nevertheless Perhaps this was no bad thing, as the seminary of landscape design that arose in eighteenth-century Ireland, while drawing upon English and continental models, was robustly native, distinctive and at times idiosyncratic. Although this bring under rule was surveyed magisterially as drawn out ago as 1976 in Edward Malins and the Knight of Glin's missing Demesnes, Irish Landscape Gardening, 1660-1845 the not absent study's close reading of a variety of sources, documentary and physical, presents a wholly new perspective.

Unlike greatest in quantity previous discussions of the topic, this work engages not just with form, on the other hand with meaning and experience also: the author bring to an ends 'there are many ways to make a garden and many more ways to use a garden. We sole have to remember them.' O'Kane stations 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 hundred (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 means of Stella Tillyard's book Aristocrats)--and the FitzGeralds' seaside villa at Frescati. O'Kane explores by what mode the landscapes of these estates were created, or remodell and the decisive stir from the formal Dutch design of planting (which in Ireland had specific associations with loyalty to the House of Orange) to the self-consciously informal English way 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 alphabetic characters to his son John travelling upon his grand tour demonstrate the stream of ideas, engravings and volumes from the continent. Perhaps Molesworth's greatest in quantity 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 geographical division However, Galilei's appeal to Molesworth was as plenteous his expertise in hydraulics as architecture, and at Breckdenston the harnessing and sway 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 tricky 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 region which has had considerable difficulty in providing for its population'. However, the 'narrative of improvement' blurr the boundaries between the useful and the purely beautiful, allowing political and philosophical opposers such as Molesworth and Jonathan Swift to agree that Breckdenston provided a utopian prototype of an ideal Irish landscape.

The famous demesne of Castletown and Carton are explored in similar detail. The often-told story of their disentanglement during the course of the hundred is enlivened here by a nuanced awareness of the differences between the sum of two units 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 in what manner these landscapes were used and perceived, echoing, at times, John Dixon Hunt's novel introduction of reception theory into garden studies.

Although O'Kane modestly ascribes a narrow focus to her research this is belied by the breadth of the themes with which she engages. She treats desmesne landscape as real deliberately created works of art that demand a careful iconological reading, and exhibits how neighbouring estates were designed to tale each other within carefully choreographed hierarchies of importance, oftentimes reflecting family alliances. The famous Castletown obelisk, for example, is upon 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 region These were blurred at the FitzGeralds' suburban villa, Frescati at Blackrock, where Lady Emily's garden 'was designed to expres Rousseau's controversial pedagogical agenda and to transfer educational and political ideas of a radical cast to her children'. Emily achieved this all too favorably 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 efficacious analogies are made between demesne landscape and the theatre.