Longueville House Gardens
Set on a prominent hillside commanding superb views over the Blackwater Valley, Longueville house is surrounded by 500 acres of lush landscape. The estate is comprised of woodlands, farmland, and apple orchards, a Victorian style walled garden, and ornamental gardens including the Flower Garden and Courtyard Garden.
The Walled Garden is a large Victorian era garden covering 2.5 acres that are surrounded by large stone walls erected in 1829 by Ivan Longford. In its heyday the walled garden at Longueville would have employed 20 men to oversee the operation. At that time there were glasshouses along the south wall, heated by a large wooden furnace. Such conditions allowed the garden to garden to produced rare and exotic fruits.
Today the Longueville’s Walled Garden are a bit on the wild side, with only a few part-time gardeners to maintain it. Yet it is still one of Ireland’s finest kitchen gardens, producing an impressive array of vegetables, fruits and herbs each year. If it can be grown in Ireland chances are its growing in Longueville’s Walled Garden. Corgettes, rasberries, leeks, artichokes, cabbage, potatoes, onions, asparagus: the list goes on. Nevermind the fruits, including rasberries, apples, pears, plums, and nectarines. Proprietor and Chef William O’Callaghan directs its operations, crafting the offerings to supply his kitchen throughout the year. Every day he browses the garden to inspire his culinary creations.
Guests who wish to explore the walled garden can follow the pathways among the various beds, among the two polytunnels and through the apple trees. The vegetable beds and fruits are nourished naturally each year with manure from the farm and compost made from kitchen vegetable trimmings and leaves from the surrounding woodlands. Longueville house also employs its wild ducks as slug patrol.
To the west of the house there is also a fine flower garden, that also contains long rows of grapes vines, used in good years for producing their own House wine, one of the only produced in Ireland.
If You Go: Longueville House Gardens are open only to guests of Longueville House and diners at the President's Restaurant
