Adare Manor Estate

Adare Manor Estate

Inspired by Ireland's Tree Alphabet
An ancient Irish ‘Tree Alphabet’ inspired the sensitive transformation of a 340 hectare country estate in Limerick Ireland into the world’s leading resort.

The 340 hectares (840 acres) of Adare Manor Estate provide an exceptional natural environment of great beauty and significance in the local area, dating back to the 17th Century.

The landscape proposals to improve the guest experience having been developed within the context of a detailed understanding of the historical estate and its natural, built and heritage assets to ensure that they are protected and enhanced, and to safeguard them for the future.

The landscape strategy for the project was set within a comprehensive masterplan framework of interconnected landscape improvements which seek to create a memorable character for the guest, whilst importantly improving the biodiversity and habitat of the estate and respecting key historical elements and views across the estate.

The entire estate includes formal parterre gardens, cloister gardens, walled courtyard gardens, arboretum planting, meadow parkland planting and swathes of new woodland habitat, woodland understorey planting and native hedgerows. The estate encompasses many heritage assets, monuments and protected archaeological structures within its parkland and woodlands including; a columbarium (dove cote), historic rent house, hunting lodge, lantern lodge, and many historic gates.
One of the most unique of these heritage assets are The Ogham Stones, which are stone monuments displaying an early Irish written language (Ogham Alphabet) dating back to the 4th to 6th Century. Each series of markings each are assigned a letter which in turn are each assigned a different species of tree. As such this very primitive alphabet was also known as the 'tree alphabet'. The landscape design proposals across the estate seek to reference this by including species from the ogham alphabet list.
An important heritage feature of the Estate, the arboretum has been protected and enhanced for future generations to enjoy. In tribute to the great plant collecting expeditions of the past, the arboretum has been supplemented with a collection of new trees including Zelkova Serrata (Japanese Zelkova), Pterocarya fraxinifolia (wing Nut), Prunus Kanzan (Kanzan Cherry) and Juglans nigra (Black Walnut).
Adare is Gaelic for ‘Ford of the Oaks’ and this has inspired much of the tree selection across the estate, and in particular, within the arboretum with Quercus alba (White Oak), Quercus rubra (Red Oak) and Quercus suber (Cork Oak) enriching the diversity of trees within the gardens.
Project:

Adare Manor Estate, Ireland

Client:

Tizzard Holdings

Size:

340 Hectares

Services:

Sitewide Masterplanning, Landscape Design of Estate & Gardens
Planning Approval, Concept to Tender, Construction monitoring

Awards & Accolades:

Condé Nast Traveler Awards 2023: #1 Resort Europe
Condé Nast Traveler Awards 2022: #1 Resort in the World 
Condé Nast Traveler: Gold List 2021
ALCI Landscape Awards: Best Commercial Development 2019
Society of Garden Designers Awards 2019: Finalist ‘International Garden or Landscape’
European Heritage Garden Awards (EGHN) 2018 / 19: Finalist
AHEAD Europe Hospitality Design Awards 2018: Finalist in Landscape Category

Collaborators:

Conservation Architect - Consarc Design Group 
Golf Course Architect - Tom Fazio 
Planning Consultant - Tom Phillips and Associates
Heritage and EIA - Creagh House Environmental

Photo Credits:

Adare Manor / Jack Hardy / Paul Lehane