Reconstruction of Moira Demesne, c.1725. Pen and watercolour by Phillip Armstrong.
(LMILC.2015.475, purchased)
The Rawdon family had an interest in botany and were responsible for creating the garden at Moira. At great expense, Sir Arthur Rawdon (1662-95) employed James Harlow to bring back over 1,000 trees and shrubs from Jamaica. They were planted in his stove or hot house (a type of conservatory), possibly the earliest in Ireland, erected in the demesne in 1690. Sir Arthur shared specimens from Moira with a network of landscapers throughout the British Isles, as well as botanical gardens in Amsterdam, Leiden (Netherlands), and Leipzig.
Aside from the hot house, features of Sir Arthur’s garden at Moira included parterres, a bowling green, orchards, a lavender lawn, a kitchen garden, a labyrinth, bosquets (formal groves), a wilderness (formal wood), and canals (ornamental ponds). You can see some of these features in the above contemporary reconstruction of the demesne as it may have looked around 1725.
Walter Harris, writing in 1744, described how ‘a handsome well planted and full-grown Avenue’ led up to ‘the House of Sir John Rawdon [note: Sir John Rawdon, 1st Earl Moira (1720-93)] … The Improvements and Gardens here are extensive, the Walks, Vistas, and Espaliers regular and grown to Perfection, and furnished with Variety of good Fruit. The Garden is adorned with a pretty Labyrinth, Ponds, Canals and Wood cut out in Vistas’.