ENCHANTED GLIN

Along the River Shannon, landscape designer Catherine FitzGerald grows her family's castle gardens into a living wonderland bridging generations

- CAROLINE DONALD

CATHERINE FITZGERALD is supervising three of her four children and their friends as they prepare vegetables they have just picked from the family's walled garden at Glin Castle, County Limerick in the west of Ireland. Meanwhile her husband, Dominic West, has been tied into a frilly flowered apron by the kids and is whisking mayonnaise with the help of a YouTube video, as he is a novice in such culinary matters. It's a far cry from the award-winning actor's role as Prince Charles in the Netflix series The Crown, let alone the hard-drinking Baltimore police officer Jimmy McNulty in The Wire.

We are joined for dinner by Catherine's mother, Olda, in the formal dining room, the deep red walls of which are lined with portraits of FitzGerald ancestors, for Catherine is the eldest of three daughters of Desmond, the 29th (and last) Knight of Glin, who died in 2011. He and Olda ran the castle for a while as a boutique hotel, and now that Catherine and Dominic have taken it over, it can be let out as a whole and used for events.