The south of the county holds three of these six within a short run of each other. Heywood Gardens is just north of Ballinakill village: a formal garden Edwin Lutyens designed, its sunken oval terrace dropping to a long pool ringed by carved turtles, set inside Frederick Trench’s 1770s parkland of moved hills and dug lakes. Ballinakill village itself adds lime avenues and a heated outdoor pool that runs through the summer, and Abbeyleix, levelled and rebuilt on higher ground in the 1790s by the de Vesci family, has a community-run restored raised bog on its edge with two free loop walks.
The other three sit apart. Emo Court is in the north at Emo, where James Gandon’s neoclassical house took 70 years and three earls to finish; the house is tour-only and seasonal, but the 35 hectares of parkland, the 20-acre lake and the mile-long avenue of giant sequoias are free and open all year. Gash Gardens lies west at Castletown, four acres on the River Nore that a dairy farmer turned from a cow paddock in 1986. Ballintubbert is east again, in a valley between Stradbally and Athy.
Heywood, the Emo parkland and the bog loops ask nothing of you but turning up, and Heywood is about an hour to walk. Ballintubbert opens on scattered days only, so that one needs checking before you drive out.
Seventy years and three earls went into Gandon's design, and the 35 hectares of parkland, lake and sequoia avenue are free all year.
A town levelled and rebuilt in the 1790s, with a community-run restored raised bog on its edge carrying two free loop walks.
Lutyens laid out the sunken oval terrace and turtle-ringed pool here inside 1770s Romantic parkland; free, open daily, roughly an hour to walk.
The village beside those Lutyens gardens, with lime avenues, a heated outdoor pool through the summer and a 1641 siege recorded by a Patagonian servant.
Four acres on the River Nore made out of a cow paddock in 1986, centred on a waterfall dropping past a round window into a lily pond.
6 of 6 shown — tap a pin for the place.
Emo, laois
Emo Court took 70 years and three earls to finish to James Gandon's neoclassical design. The house is tour-only and seasonal, but the 35-hectare parkland, with its 20-acre lake and mile-long avenue of giant sequoias, is free and open all year.
laois
Abbeyleix was levelled and rebuilt on higher ground in the 1790s by the de Vesci family, and its carpet factory wove rugs for the Titanic. Just outside town, the community-run Abbeyleix Bog is a restored raised peatland with two free loop walks and 25 of Ireland's 34 butterfly species.
Ballinakill, laois
Heywood pairs Frederick Trench's 1770s Romantic parkland – hills moved, lakes dug, follies scattered – with a formal garden Edwin Lutyens designed and Gertrude Jekyll is thought to have planted. The centrepiece is a sunken oval terrace dropping to a long pool ringed by carved turtles, with a loggia carrying a line of Alexander Pope. Free, open daily, and about an hour to walk.
Ballinakill, laois
Just north of the village, Sir Edwin Lutyens laid out the formal gardens at Heywood – a sunken garden pool, a loggia and lime avenues, free and open every day. The village also runs a heated outdoor pool through the summer, and its 1641 siege was recorded by an unlikely witness: a Patagonian servant, the only account of its kind in the Irish archives.
Castletown, laois
On the River Nore near Castletown, Gash Gardens is four acres that dairy farmer Noel Keenan turned from a cow paddock in 1986 into a plantsman's garden. Its centrepiece is the Moon House grotto, where a waterfall drops past a round window into a lily pond. His daughter Mary and her husband Ross run it now, nursery and all.
Ballintubbert Gardens & House, laois
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