Altamont Gardens

Corona North inherited Altamont from her father in 1970 and spent the next thirty years working the garden herself, largely alone, before leaving it to the state in 1999. What she made is informal and unusually personal for a garden of this size: a lake dug by hand in the 1850s as famine relief work, a lawn of old roses, herbaceous borders, a bog garden and an arboretum, and the Ice Age Glen - a steep wooded ravine reached by the Hundred Steps down to the River Slaney, planted with rhododendrons and ferns among glacial boulders. Altamont holds a national collection of snowdrops and a substantial one of old roses; the snowdrop displays in February bring people who come for nothing else. The garden is free to enter, run by the OPW, with a plant nursery on site. Sections including the glen are steep and rough underfoot.

What you actually see

• The Ice Age Glen - a wooded ravine down the Hundred Steps to the Slaney.
• The snowdrop collection - a national collection, at its best in February.
• The famine lake - dug by hand in the 1850s as relief work.
• The old roses - the collection Corona North built over decades.

When to go

February for the snowdrops, which are the garden's speciality; May to September for the roses and borders. It is free and open year-round with reduced winter hours.

Honest expectations

The glen is steep with a hundred steps and rough ground - not suitable for limited mobility. Free entry but the visitor facilities are modest. Wet underfoot for much of the year.

Nearby

Duckett's Grove is north; Browneshill Dolmen and Carlow town are west.