Parks & Gardens in Donegal

Close to the coast in scenic west Donegal and surrounding a traditional farmhouse, this garden was established in 1979 in a valley on a rocky hillside surrounded by four acres of native hazel woodland with blackthorn, juniper, burnet rose, ash and oak. Native primroses, bluebells, orchids and varied ferns abound. Emphasis has been placed on the blending of nurture with nature and the provision o…

The Celtic Prayer Garden is Ireland’s only such garden and is set in six acres of natural bog land, approximately 10 minutes out of the city centre of Derry. Here we invite you to step back in time to an Ireland of saints and scholars, a people who had a very strong sense of creation, a robust attitude to religious practice and who believed in a close relationship with nature. Walk back in t…

Swan Park is a unique and invaluable amenity. Personified by its mature tree population, the Park itself is a narrow linear park extending east-west along the Crana River (An Chrannach) flowing into Lough Swilly through Castle Bridge at the river mouth, hence the towns name Bun Crannchcha, meaning ‘foot of the river Cranca’. Donegal County Councils’s Swan Park Regeneration Project has seen an e…

Oral tradition has it that the first house was built on this site in 1711 by the Babington family. The Bartons expanded and remodelled the house in the early 1800s and the Perry\s, who moved from Bunlin, Milford in 1965, renovated and added to the buildings. The Walled Garden and mature trees date from the early Barton era. A plantation of 15 acres of broadleaf woodland was established in 2003. T…

The country estate garden of Glenalla is a hidden world surrounded by native woods and moorland. Established in the late 18th century with extensive landscaping by the Franklin family since 1913. Beyond the house and walled kitchen garden are the formal elements of the rockery, rose beds, arbour and stone edged lily pond. There are collections of rhododendrons together with summer and autumn flow…