Johnstown Castle is a gem of gothic revival architecture. The Irish Heritage Trust has overseen its careful transformation into Johnstown Castle Estate, Museum and Gardens, now a successful visitor attraction in Ireland’s south-east.
For many years, Johnstown was not open to the public. The castle had been donated to the Irish State in 1946. It went on to become a base for Teagasc, Ireland’s Agriculture and Food Development Authority, which owns the property.
The Irish Heritage Trust was appointed by Teagasc to bring this enchanting castle and its beautiful estate to life as a landmark attraction in Ireland’s Ancient East. Following vital conservation and development work, Johnstown Castle opened to the public for guided tours for the first time in the summer of 2019.
Projects are funded from a range of sources, including ticket sales, membership and philanthropy; the Department of Rural and Community Development; and capital grants from the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage.
The demesne surrounding this magical 19th-century castle – located just ten minutes from Wexford town – offers spectacular lake walks, colourful walled gardens and graceful garden sculptures.
On a self-guided visit, visitors can take time to stroll through the ornamental gardens and along lake paths designed by the Victorian architect Daniel Robertson, whose other work included Wicklow’s Powerscourt Estate. There are follies, including a fishing tower and seven statues around the middle lake. Children can lead the way on the fully accessible lower lake path before dropping into the woodland play area nearby, or to our welcoming visitor centre and café.
Johnstown Castle Estate comprises 120 acres. In this area we have 50 acres of woodland, 22 acres of lakes (Garden Lake, Castle Lake and Lower Lake), and a 15-acre arboretum. There are also 9 acres of native hay meadow, 8.5 acres of lawn, 6 acres of grassland, a 4-acre walled garden, and a half-acre sunken garden – as well as the castle, museum and visitor centre. 5 km of pathways meander through it all.
We’re a team of three gardeners – Peter Jordan, Marty Reville and myself – but we couldn’t do what we do without the help of our dedicated team of Irish Heritage Trust garden volunteers.
Most of our woodland at Johnstown Castle is engulfed in laurel, an invasive species that we’re working to remove. We dedicate between 4-6 weeks during the winter months to this task; but progress is slow, clearing approximately 2 acres per year.
We are pioneering techniques from native American reservations and large rewilding projects in continental Europe and Scotland to ensure we are using the most sustainable means to manage the estate and its biodiversity.
Instead of shipping the dead laurel away where it could be burned, thus releasing its stored carbon back into the atmosphere, we store the wood in log piles on site and put it to use where we can. Thus the log piles which visitors will see around the estate are part of our sustainable approach to clearing the laurel, which makes up 80 per cent of our woodland.
Some of the deadwood is used for wood chips, to nourish our edible woodland, for example.
This year we will be using deadwood to create ‘turloughs’ or seasonal lakes for flood management during the winter months. The logs will be used for mini dams to help slow the flow of water from the Garden Lake, which we will allow to flood naturally. Deadwood and willow planting will create a living wall to keep the water in the woodland, and out of the walled garden.
We think we’re the first estate garden in Ireland to be using this technique, all part of our focus on sustainable practices. The log piles are on pallets, to ensure the cleared laurel plant doesn’t re-root. As well as acting as carbon stores, these log piles provide homes for biodiversity such as insects and fungus. Biodiversity is a top priority for us. A concern is that our recent mild and wet winters have led to a falloff of a third of our bee population.
Our blueberry bushes are said to be the oldest in Ireland. In the edible woodland we’re developing, we’ve planted 85 heritage apple trees, along with some cobnut trees (a variety of hazelnut). We plan to add mushrooms, perennial vegetables, edible flowers and much more.
We’ve replanted 6,000 trees since 2019, all of Irish provenance, and 90 per cent of which came from the estate itself. Everything we grow at Johnstown Castle is propagated on-site from seed or cuttings.
All the lakes at Johnstown Castle were man-made as famine relief projects, and the Lower Lake is the largest inland freshwater lake in Wexford.
We’ve undertaken so many projects over the last few years; big ones include the sunken garden redevelopment, the walled garden herbaceous border, restoring the glasshouses, and native meadow planting.
We’re currently working on phase three of the walled garden, developing the pathways to make it fully accessible for the first time. We’re also discovering, rebuilding and restoring buried structures around the estate, such as the extension of the statue wall. The foundations of this were only discovered in recent years.
Secret rooms at Johnstown Castle Estate are not confined to the castle. We discovered two secret rooms under the fishing tower and viewing platform at the Castle Lake. Only accessible from the water, these brick-lined dome rooms are like secret grottos. Their original use remains a mystery.
With its 800-year history, Johnstown Castle continues to reveal its stories and remains a work in progress. Projects are ongoing all around the estate. We are blazing a trail in sustainable horticulture, biodiversity and landscape management, and enjoying (almost) every minute of it.
Johnstown Castle Estate Museum and Gardens are open year-round. Find out more at johnstowncastle.ie.
Ciarán Fitzgerald is at the forefront of the garden transformation at Johnstown Castle. He is a graduate of Waterford IT and Dun Laoghaire CFE, and has vast experience in the horticultural sector spanning 20 years. Ciarán is passionate about naturalistic planting, organic practices, establishing native habitat and native planting. He shares his expertise in sustainable gardening and protecting biodiversity through workshops, lectures and guided garden tours.
