In this month’s magazine Rae McIntyre visited Dorothy Brown’s delightful garden in Ballymoney, Co. Antrim…
We visited the garden in late April when there was abundant growth and plenty of colour. At the front gate, there was a welcoming Cornus controversa ‘Variegata’ also known as the wedding cake tree because of its tiered habit of growth. It has an unfortunate tendency to sucker but this one doesn’t because Dorothy keeps any undesirable growth in check with some judicious pruning. At its base, there was a dwarf form of Chaenomeles japonica with bright, orange-red flowers. The trees in the front garden are not a run-of-the-mill selection. Dorothy’s favourite is Acer griseum, the paperbark maple, with an attractive, cinnamon-coloured bark. An unusual holly, Ilex crenata ‘Mariesii’ is not often seen – it still retained some of its black berries with which it was festooned in winter and doesn’t look like a holly at all being crowed in tiny, round leaves.
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