seaforde

The garden one sees today was created in the 1970s by the present owners, Patrick and Lady Anthea Forde, on the site of a formal Victorian ornamental flower garden. Those interested in tropical plants should find it edifying to visit the Butterfly House on the west side of the nursery. Some of the attractive tropical planting features the African Cyperus papyrus, the banana plant Musa basjoo, the violet-flowering Lantana camara and the Brazilian spider-flower.

The Seaforde garden occupies the southern half of a five-acre walled garden on the perimeter of a beautiful demesne park, probably created by the great eighteenth-century landscape designer John Sutherland. Visitors arrive by the Downpatrick gate on the Belfast Road and drive through pleasant woodland to a car park, formerly the estate tree nursery located just north of Seaforde on the Ballynahinch Road.