Ewe’ll love Glengarriff garden book

A NEW book has been published to mark the 30th anniversary of the Ewe Experience gardens in Glengarriff. 

It’s written by co-owner Sheena Wood, featuring her poems and art, and is just one of many exciting features to mark the garden’s three decades. 

‘We have always had lively information boards on natural history and the environment, plus poetry as part of the trail, and visitors have been asking to buy copies and ‘when are we going to get them into a book?’ Getting the trail up each year with new ideas, takes a lot of background work – however, we’ve been promising a poetry book, so for the big anniversary, we wanted to make a special effort to get this finished. I am thrilled that we managed it,’ said Sheena

The amenity has also been shortlisted for TG4’s series of Beidh Mé Ar Ais by TG4. It’s in the running to win ‘Ireland’s Next Big Tourist Attraction’ which has a prize of €5,000.

As part of its 30th celebrations the Ewe Experience is also looking for a local community project or charity that would like to benefit from their ‘Wish-you-Well’ in the award-winning gardens.

Local groups or charities interested in having a small garden project created, can e-mail [email protected]. The actual work will be carried out by the garden design team from Two Green Shoots, Glengarriff.

Artist Sheena and writer Kurt Lyndorff arrived in Ireland in 1993 from Costa Rica, where Kurt was the Latin America correspondent for a Danish newspaper. With two infants, Kloe and Eliza, they had decided to give up their nomadic life, covering the dangerous conflicts of the Falklands, then the Middle East and finally South America.

The couple bought a derelict sheep farm on the Mizen peninsula, which they renovated, and opened ‘The Ewe’. They ran residential courses, teacher training and developed the sculpture/nature garden. They settled in, loving the less stressful life amongst the Mizen farming community in the hills above Goleen.

Although they had vowed never to move, 10 years later they started all over again in Glengarriff, after falling in love with a spectacular site, beside a beautiful waterfall, which felt perfect for their growing nature project and where they have created a much-loved and award winning attraction.

‘It’s quite something to have lived and worked in Ireland for 30 years, after moving so much as a foreign correspondent. Children that came to us in the early days, return with their children and even grandchildren! It’s lovely to see such different ages enjoy the trail and coming back each year to see what new creatures and features they’ll find. We enjoy it, and it has been quite a journey,’ says Kurt.