derreen

Derreen is designed around the house - a pleasant, unassuming, mid nineteenth-century building, rebuilt and enlarged in the 1920s after being burnt down in the Civil War. Plush, undulating lawns sweep down from the house to the woodland below. In this area a number of fine rhododendrons from the Himalayas flourish, including a magnificent R. falconeri with huge creamy-white bell-shaped flowers and a large R. sinogrande, notable for its enormous dark green leaves with their silvery-grey underside. From the Middle Walk the path north passes an attractive Thujopsis dolabrata from Japan with large flattened sprays of silver-backed leaves. Close by an extremely beautiful Pinus patula graces the scene, drooping foliage. Many of the paths in the garden provide marvellous glimpses of the sea and distant mountains, particularly the Broad Walk around the north of the peninsula. On the way back to the house along the Rock Garden Walk visitors will not fail to be impressed with a remarkable specimen of the beautiful Japanese cypress.

A subtropical jungle of luxuriant Vegetation occupying the whole of a ninety acre peninsula in a sheltered inlet amidst the splendid setting of the wild and majestic Caha Mountains. Located north of Lauragh, 15 miles south west of Kenmare. NGR: V 775585.