Qualla: Derreen Garden

Derreen Garden: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Tree ferns from Tasmania are not supposed to grow in Ireland. Yet here, on a promontory jutting into Kilmakilloge Harbour, hundreds of Dicksonia antarctica stand twenty feet tall, their fronds throwing soft green shadows on paths covered in moss. Derreen Garden does not look like Ireland. It looks like something a botanist's fever dream might invent if you asked it to imagine the wettest, most sheltered place on earth and then handed it the entire plant catalogue of the British Empire at its peak. The man who built it had access to exactly that. The Fifth Marquess of Lansdowne served as Governor General of Canada, then Viceroy of India, and he brought home plants from both.

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Derreen Garden: From the O'Sullivans to a Cromwellian Doctor

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Long before any rhododendron grew here, this promontory was the seat of the Mac Finin Dubh O'Sullivan family, a branch of the O'Sullivan Beare, who held the land from around 1320. After the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland in the 1650s, the property was confiscated and granted in ...

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Derreen Garden: The Viceroy's Garden

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In 1870, the Fifth Marquess of Lansdowne, then 24 years old and newly come into the estate, looked at the bare rock and scrub oak around Derreen House and decided to plant a garden. By tradition, he employed 40 people to clear, drain, and plant 400 acres of land. From his posting...

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Derreen Garden: A Royal Visit, and Two Bamboos

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In 1903, King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra visited Derreen House. They planted two commemorative bamboos. Both are still alive, somewhere in the garden, though after more than a century of vigorous spreading they have lost any sense of being two distinct things. The garden is k...

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Derreen Garden: Burned and Rebuilt

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Lansdownes were absentee landlords, summer residents only. They visited for three months a year, except during long absences for imperial service and during the Irish War of Independence and Civil War, when it was not safe for them to come. In 1922, during the Civil War, Derr...

Read more: Derreen Garden on Qualla