Stand on the upper terrace first
Everyone walks out of the house and immediately starts down the steps. Do not. Stand at the balustrade on the upper terrace for two full minutes and let the thing arrange itself: the Italianate stairs, the Triton Lake with its jet, the winged horses, and then the Great Sugar Loaf sitting exactly where a landscape architect would have put a mountain if he had been allowed to.
That view is the reason Powerscourt is on lists of the best gardens in the world. It is also entirely free of charge to look at for as long as you like, which is a very Irish arrangement.
The gardens, in ninety minutes
You could spend a whole day. Most people have an afternoon. This is the order that works.
- Italian Garden
- The terraces and the lake. Ten minutes standing still is worth more than thirty minutes walking.
- Japanese Garden
- Built on reclaimed bog in 1908, with red bridges and a small grotto. Children like it more than anything else on the estate.
- The Walled Garden and Tower Valley
- Herbaceous borders that peak in July, and a folly tower you can climb for a view back at the house.
- The Pet Cemetery
- Genuinely moving and completely unexpected. Nineteenth-century headstones for estate dogs, horses and one much-loved Jersey cow.
The waterfall is a separate trip
This is the practical thing worth knowing before you go. Powerscourt Waterfall, the tallest in Ireland at 121 metres, is not in the gardens. It is a six kilometre drive around by road and has its own entrance, its own ticket and its own closing time, usually earlier than the gardens in winter.
It is worth the detour if you have children, a picnic or an hour to spare. It is not worth rushing the terraces for. Do the gardens properly, then decide.
Enniskerry, and where to eat
The village at the estate gates is a Victorian model village around a clock tower, and it is where we send people for lunch rather than eating in the visitor centre. Coffee and a bun on the square, then the gardens, then a walk before dinner if you are staying at the hotel.
If you are staying on the estate, the walk down the avenue at seven in the evening, when the day visitors have gone and the light is on the Sugar Loaf, is quietly the best twenty minutes of a Wicklow trip.