Early history of the Garden
Although we believe that the house at Earlscliffe was built around 1845, the earliest recorded history of the gardens occur at the time when Sir John Lumsden moved into Earlscliffe in 1930.
When Sir John moved into Earlscliffe the gardens, according to his daughter, Betty L'Estrange, were "virtually shrubless and flowerless" 2. He set about transforming the garden, planting shrubs and building a number of terraces.
He also celebrated his work at the St John Ambulance Brigade by building a Maltese Cross sundial at Earlscliffe, which gave him "enormous pleasure". 2 This sundial can still be seen today.
See "Earlscliffe in the time of Sir John Lumsden" for further information about life at Earlscliffe in the 1930's, with some great early photographs of the garden and some wonderful living memories from one of Sir John Lumsden's grand daughters, Margery Stratton.
After the Lumsden family moved out in 1945, Earlscliffe was bought by William Martin Murphy and his family. William was a keen gardener who looked after the orchards and developed a particular interest in growing gladioli, apparently successfully enough to win a prize at the Dublin Flower Show.
The next detailed descriptions of the garden come from Olive Stanley-Clarke, who lived at Earlscliffe in 1950.
In the book "In An Irish Garden" by Sybil Connolly and Helen Dillon 3, Olive described Earlscliffe as a "large ugly house" with a neglected garden overrun with Aubrieta and "a hideous mauve Gladiolus", perhaps a lingering remnant of William Martin Murphy’s enthusiasm for the flower.
However, by the time Olive and Kit moved into Earlscliffe in mid-1950, the house had stood empty for well over a year. The previous owner, Lily Margaret Graham Gough, had purchased the property in March 1949 but sold it again a year later without ever moving in. In those circumstances, it is perhaps not surprising that the garden had begun to appear neglected.
When Andrew Knowles moved into Earlscliffe in 1961, he was already a keen gardener. He had previously lived at Reen-na-Furraha (or Reenafura) in Sneem, Co. Kerry, where he had created a beautiful garden of his own.
Although separated by almost 300 kilometres, Sneem and Howth share certain climatic similarities. Both benefit from relatively mild maritime conditions influenced by the Atlantic Ocean, allowing gardeners to experiment with a range of tender and unusual plants that might struggle elsewhere in Ireland. It was therefore possible for Andrew to bring many tender plants with him from Kerry and successfully incorporate them into the Earlscliffe garden.
With the help of several full-time gardeners, he gradually reshaped and enhanced the formal Edwardian-style layout at Earlscliffe, with its numerous small lawns, box hedges, shrubs, and flower beds.
According to later recollections, the neighbours greatly admired what Andrew was doing at Earlscliffe and were somewhat wary of the newcomers when David and Muriel Robinson bought the house from the Knowles family in 1969. What, they wondered, would happen to this beautiful garden under its new owners?
Changes in the swinging sixties - from formal garden to Robinson transformation
In retrospect, it was very fortunate for David and Muriel Robinson that Earlscliffe came on the market in 1969 and not some years later. The decade has been referred to as the swinging sixties when many people developed interests away from the home. Gardening was not yet the popular pastime that it is today.
In 1964 the Robinsons had moved into a brand new bungalow in the first housing estate in Malahide called Ard Na Mara. They had enjoyed the challenge of owning the first house built there and in building a garden from scratch. However by 1969 the small garden they had been making around the bungalow was complete and David was looking for the challenge of a new home with a larger garden. Earlscliffe with its five acres was ideal but it seemed inevitable that it would be beyond their reach. Miraculously, the large well-manicured garden intimidated would-be purchasers at the time. The house did not reach its reserve at auction and David and Muriel subsequently bought it.
With the Knowles' full time gardening staff available up until June 1969, Earlscliffe garden had developed in a labour-intensive way. There were eight lawns to be mowed and many of these were surrounded by tall, well clipped hedges. There were also beds of roses, shrubs and herbaceous plants to be weeded. As the five acres now had to be maintained without outside help, David Robinson decided to simplify maintenance by reducing the grass area, eliminating all internal hedges and using herbicides as far as possible to control weeds.
To their neighbours the simplification process seemed rather brutal. One Saturday morning shortly after arrival, David killed five of the lawns with a herbicide and planted small shrubs directly into the dying sward. This action was taken, as maintaining shrubs is much less time consuming than mowing grass. In the following few years, they removed about 500 metres of tall, broad hedges inside the garden. This greatly reduced the workload as previously the gardener and his helper had spent about three weeks cutting the hedges (apart from the time required for cleaning up the clippings) and they repeated this operation twice a year!
The large wind-pruned pines and cupressus were allowed to stay and now frame exhilarating views of Dublin Bay with the Baily lighthouse to the North and the mountains of Wicklow head, which protrude magnificently from the coast, further south.
Low maintenance and high yield
David's background as a horticulturist scientist working, among other topics, on the elimination of soil cultivation in fruit crops enabled him to transfer this knowledge to garden maintenance. Spraying a low concentration of a soil-acting herbicide uniformly over clean soil surface controlled annual weeds for a period of many months. Spot treatment with appropriate leaf-acting herbicides eliminated perennial weeds along with any annuals that survived the soil-acting treatment. No digging or cultivation was done except during planting and the problem of weed control was reduced to a very low level.
Whist David realised that the garden had a good microclimate being close to the sea and sheltered from the north by the Hill of Howth, he was unaware at the outset of the full potential of the site.
Once the formal gardens were cleared, David started planting. "I wanted to explore the limits of plant hardiness at 53. 3 degrees latitude and also develop a labour-saving garden" said David to James Wickham in an article for the RHS publication, The Garden 1
David's doctorate had been on weed control and he used all of his skill and knowledge to bring the best techniques to the maintenance of the gardens at Earlscliffe. "My wife and I have never had any outside help so I cut every corner there is to be cut. I don't use fertilisers on trees and shrubs, insecticides or fungicides and I don't hoe or cultivate after a new plant is in the ground. No plant gets any artificial protection in the winter or special attention".
Although the soil tends to be shallow it has the advantage of being acid and so rhododendrons and other lime hating plants grow without difficulty. These are the most colourful plants that thrive here but the subtropical (Climatic Zone 9) plants that only survive in the mildest parts of Ireland but thrive at Earlscliffe are much more interesting.
The extent of what can be grown at Earlscliffe is was not simply due to the result of skilled plantsmanship but is mainly due to a favourable microclimate.
Horticultural Research and the links to the commercial world
David's background was in horticultural research and his aim in developing Earlscliffe was not just to create an attractive garden, but to also find out facts that could have some commercial relevance. For example, he had a vision in the 1960s that Ireland could become an important producer and exporter of cut foliage such as Eucalyptus, a genus which grows well in Ireland. He raised over 100 different genera of Eucalypts in the garden to see which would do well in the Irish climate. This research benefited the cut foliage industry which finally took off around the mid 1990s.
However, it was in the area of plant hardiness that Earlscliffe is renowned. As far as David was aware, this part of Howth can grow a wider range of plants than any other area of similar latitude.
For more details of his research into plant hardiness, see the paper that David gave to the International Magnolia Society in 2001.
Check out the following pages:
- Earlscliffe as seen on television, and the controversy around one visit in particular
- Earlscliffe - articles in books
To learn more about the history of Earlscliffe House, read the following pages:
References
- Irish Cream - Earlscliffe in the Republic of Ireland, a sanctuary for tender plants,
James Wickham, The Garden Magazine Volume 126 Part 11 866-9, RHS November 2001. ↩ - Letter to the Irish Times on June 22 1987, reproduced in https://www.earlscliffe.com/history/house/1930-lumsden/lumsden_years.php ↩
- In An Irish Garden, Sybil Connolly and Helen Dillon, Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson (Sep 1986), ISBN: 0297789295 ↩
Page last updated: 29 Jul 2026