Garinish Island

The seals on the seaweed-covered rocks take only brief notice of the boat drifting slowly past. On board, meanwhile, the sight of these marine creatures, so ungainly on land, sparks a wave of excitement. They seem to yawn, wave, and almost tumble into the water by accident. Pure comedy. Encountering seals is a regular feature of any crossing to Garinish, and yet it’s a highlight every single time. So the bar is already set high before you’ve even set foot on the island. But Garinish Island, also known as Ilnacullin, tops even that with its gardens and its collection of exotic plants, shrubs and trees – particularly when you consider that this was once a barren rock in Bantry Bay, before the Bryce family came along in 1910 with a vision. Work began just a year later, to plans by the landscape architect and garden designer Harold Ainsworth Peto, and initially consisted of covering the rocks with fertile soil. It was with the arrival of the Scottish gardener Murdo Mackenzie that the island’s metamorphosis really gathered pace. Through decades of passionate dedication, a paradise unlike any other in Ireland flourished under his care. Not the Bryce family’s financial troubles, nor the resulting handover of the island to the Irish state in 1953, could deter him from his calling. Mackenzie officially retired in 1971 but continued to live and work on the island until his death in 1983, at the age of 87. His legacy is a garden island that still captivates on every visit. I, for one, would happily sail across again on the spot, for an eleventh time.

Garinish Island is scattered with numerous photo locations, and not just because of the plants that thrive so lushly here thanks to a microclimate favoured by the Gulf Stream. The real magic lies in how architectural elements work hand in hand with nature. The Italian Garden is a perfect example: with its classical lines and strict symmetry, it plays effortlessly off the exuberance of the planting around it. When you see this spot for the first time, you’ll want to rub your eyes and wonder where you took a wrong turn. It’s about as untypical of Ireland as it gets. Ciao e benvenuti in Italia.

The archaic-looking tree ferns in Happy Valley never fail to impress me either (Happy Valley is the name of a hollow on the island, and it’s an apt, affectionate name for it). They seem to particularly relish the climate here, growing so tall that even a professional basketball player could stand beneath them with room to spare.

Photography here is a handheld affair. A tripod would only get in other visitors’ way, and you won’t need filters, beyond perhaps a polariser now and then. So it all comes down to finding the best vantage point to capture the spectacle around you. With the tree ferns, for instance, I shot from a low angle to play up their scale and make them look even more imposing. In the Italian Garden, I positioned myself centrally opposite the pavilion, so all the lines converge symmetrically towards the centre of the frame. At the same time, I made sure the statue’s reflection in the pond didn’t overlap with the bonsai in front of it. Garinish is a wonderful place to play with details like these, and doing so gets you better shots than simply pointing and shooting. For snapshots, there are the seals on the crossing.

The recently published book ‘Entrückt – Vom Leben auf Westirischen Inseln‘ includes a feature on Garinish Island with my photographs, looking at the reintroduction of white-tailed eagles to the island. But alongside the king of the skies, a little bird also made it into the picture spread: a robin. The shot came about during a photography workshop, and the story behind it was unusual enough that I’d like to share it here.

In early October 2019, I wanted to show a group of workshop participants how I’d managed to lure a robin in from seemingly nowhere. The trick had worked for me on Garinish two weeks earlier. As soon as I started chirping, I was met with looks of disbelief – it happened again. A curious robin fluttered in, settled at eye level in the rhododendron thicket right beside me, and answered my chirping with some excitement of its own. This went back and forth for a few minutes, and I was every bit as astonished as everyone else, though it did earn me a reputation among the group as a formidable bird whisperer. The robin didn’t just chat away with me, it posed for the whole group too.

That day, the seals gave us beautiful subjects on the crossing to Garinish, and we got one of the island’s resident white-tailed eagles in front of the lens too. But when I asked the group that evening which animal had thrilled them most, everyone agreed: the encounter with the robin was the absolute highlight. Garinish still tells its very own stories – small ones and large ones.