Peter Donegan Garden Design & Landscaping
I have always thought of gardens in two ways.
The first: When you go to a place in Ireland like Inis Mór. Nothing wrong with it at all, but it’s not really a Dublin City Centre with too much to do type spot, if you get me. And though you come away knowing you it is the place where fairy tales are made, in reality we and you both know you saw very little outside of Joe Watty’s pub and your accommodation. In short, it is the people that make the island so fantastically beautiful.
I’ve always said that there’s a big difference between owning a lovely house and having a lovely home. In the context of this patio it was so perfectly well thought out that it’s addition to the rear of the house very simply extended that homely feel by another 15 square metres.
Measuring 3 by 5, it is large enough to cater for a full on Donegan sized family gathering (I have 7 siblings) without looking like just another big patio area of stone. What’s more, and though it is kind of hard to put into words…. in this case it very simply, fits.
What makes it for me [?],
There are two main factors that make any garden really something to be really proud of. And though it does play a role, if you are thinking that it’s the budget then I’m afraid you are somewhat mistaken.
The main culprits are in fact one really cool client [I hate that word…] and an end result that is an interpretation photsynthetically speaking, so to speak, of what the client actually wants.
Sometimes in garden landscaping, it’s not so much what a garden has become but also – and in some cases moreso – what it was before.
And it is that transformation that I can see in the future in my sometimes very funny head that kind of reminds me of those late night shopping weight loss adverts. You know the ones…. here’s Jimmy with his old trouser pants the size of a tent and now he’s the width of a very thin squirrel, all because he used the ab-buster-express for just 3 weeks with extra added vbefore and after images now on your screen. You get the picture I’m trying to paint ?
And it is that before and after that I do love so dearly in my creating of gardens.
I was having a rummage through some old images of plants for a little garden research last week when I stumbled across these pictures taken during my time landscaping at Howth Golf Club.
Their date stamp tells me they were taken January 22nd, 2004. Timeline-wise, I would have just completed my 2nd year in business as Donegan Landscaping and was still but 27 years of age.
If memory serves me right, I believe my time spent working on the grounds there would have been done over a two/ three-year period. And for a wee young cherub of the Irish landscaping scene at that time, to have an established and very respected name employ me to work on their front of house, was only ever a good thing to happen to me.
As I remember it, I needed some images for an article in The Irish Entrepreneur Magazine [March 2004] and a lot of calling around eventually found me one person I knew who knew owned a digital camera.
Almost ten years on, it makes me smile every time I drive past the what was very new at the time planting to see how it and the now established avenue of Tilia cordata Greenspire trees that I planted have evolved.
Regarding the article in The Irish Entrepreneur magazine article, the first ever piece written about me, I found this scanned in section of it; the print version of which hangs framed in my bathroom to this day.
