Parks & Gardens in County Kildare

Three of the six sit within a few kilometres of Rathangan, in the peatland country of north-west Kildare. The Irish Peatland Conservation Council’s Nature Centre at Lullymore is the one spot where a raised bog spreading over five midland counties becomes something you can walk and understand, with a boardwalk over living peat, bog-preserved finds and a carnivorous-plant greenhouse. Lullymore Heritage Park is beside it on a 60-acre island of firm ground, run as a community social enterprise, and its galleries run from Mesolithic hunters to a Famine emigrant cottage. Killinthomas Wood lies 2 km north of Rathangan, 70 hectares of conifer and broadleaf with five easy loops totalling about 10 km.

The other three are scattered. The Irish National Stud & Gardens at Tully is a working state-owned thoroughbred farm, with two gardens alongside the yards: the symbolic Japanese Gardens and the wilder, water-fed St Fiachra’s. Pollardstown Fen near Newbridge is the largest spring-fed calcareous fen left in Ireland, a flat hour-long boardwalk loop out to a bird hide. Mondello Park at Caragh is the outlier, a motor-racing circuit rather than anything green.

Timing matters more here than the category usually suggests. Late April and early May are the weeks for Killinthomas, and a weekday is better, since the small car park fills on spring weekends. The fen’s orchids and dragonflies come in summer. Killinthomas aside, you will want a car to move between these.