Heywood Gardens | Oeil-de-boeuf
A vignette I discovered at Heywood Gardens near Dublin while on a magical architecture and garden tour with @lutyens_trust_america . This oval, called an Oeil-de-boeuf, or an ox-eye window, looks into the inner gardens designed by legendary architect Edwin Lutyens & equally legendary horticulturist Gertrude Jekyll.
Heywood House Gardens, generally Heywood Gardens, form the grounds of a now-vanished house in County Laois, Ireland. The estate was developed in the late 18th century by Michael Frederick Trench, a politician, landowner and architect. He built a substantial house and laid out an extensive park, under the direction of James Gandon. In the early 20th century, Heywood was owned by Sir Hutcheson Poë who commissioned Edwin Lutyens to develop the gardens immediately surrounding the house. Lutyens engaged his long-time collaborator Gertrude Jekyll to undertake the planting. The house was demolished after a fire in 1950 and the gardens are now in the care of the Office of Public Works. [WIKI]
The 50 acres of landscape: ponds, vistas, follies, were entirely recreated in the 18th century in the ideology of the then emerging and flourishing Picturesque movement. To experience a false natural landscape designed to celebrate the nature, the culture, the soul of that very place was simply breathtaking.
