Kilgraney House & Herb Garden - Home grown herb garden open to the public

‘Herbs are big here: in fact, Kilgraney does wonders for one’s karma’.

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Member of the Carlow Garden Trail

Consisting of a series of interconnecting herbal gardens there is a large kitchen garden, a tea walk, a medicinal herb courtyard, a medieval monastic herb garden and a garden of aromatic and fragrant herbs.

The enclosed kitchen garden supplies the guesthouse with fruit, vegetables, salads and herbs and has been run on organic lines for almost ten years. It consists of gravel paths and eleven raised timber beds of varying sizes grouped to form a modern rectangular ‘potager’. Here you will find unusual leafy plants such as mibuna, mizuna and komatsuna amongst more traditional salad varieties. Next to the kitchen garden is the tea walk, a short gravel path lined on one side with plants suitable for infusions and herbal teas.

The medicinal garden, set in a granite courtyard, consists of nine raised beds in Irish oak timber. Each bed is planted with herbs suitable for treating a particular part of the body. There is one bed for relaxants and stimulants and one for each of the following areas of treatment: headaches and migraines, ear, nose and throat complaints, pulmonary conditions, digestive ailments, cardiac problems, muscle pain, urinary conditions and skin complaints. In a lower courtyard you will find an aromatic garden planted with herbs for fragrance and also for their usefulness in cosmetic preparations.

In an adjoining courtyard there is a modern interpretation of a medieval monastic herb garden with four oak raised beds surrounded on two sides by an oak timber cloister.

Finally a cosmic garden: a wheel shaped herb garden divided into 12, each section containing the herbs associated with a different zodiac sign.

Admission € 3.00

Herb gardens are open to non-residents, from May to September, Thursday to Sunday and bank holiday Mondays between 2.00pm and 5.00pm. Groups by prior appointment only.

Selection of herb plants for sale. Refreshments Available.

We regret that the main house is not open to garden visitors.

kilgraney house. country house accommodation, with spa facilities, overlooking the barrow valley, situated halfway between kilkenny city and carlow town.