ALAN POWER: Hello and welcome to the National Trust podcast.

In this mini episode, we'll be hearing about the strange tale

that Edith Lady Londonderry had clipped into hedges in Mount

Stewart's famous Shamrock Garden.

Now I'm standing here in the Shamrock Garden at Mount Stewart

surrounded by tall Yew hedges. But what's really striking and

quite unusual is a series of topiary that runs across this

hedge.

Thankfully, Neil the head gardener is here and he's going

to explain the whole thing to me.

NEIL PORTEOUS: Well, the Shamrock hedge on the top of it,

is a children's story in topiary.

And Edith was a great children's story writer. She's published

the Magic Ink Pot in 1928. But on top of the Shamrock hedge is

a different narrative that she just made up on her own with the

artist Edmund Brock who lived in the house quite a lot of the

time during the 1920s.

So after 1928 I think they sort of dreamt up this new narrative,

which was the Stewart family coming in a leather bottom

sailing ship at Curragh to Ireland.

Edith's at the back blowing a horn, three young children,

Helen, Mary and Margaret are under the rigging. And the

artist Edmund Brock is at the bow with a bottle of whiskey.

And the Macaw, Edward, who used to had his wings clipped, but he

could climb up people's backs and sit on their shoulders.

So he's on his shoulder, they're going off on the hunt. So Edith

is depicted as a Huntswoman blowing a horn and they're off

hunting the White Stag, which in Irish mythology, when you die,

your spirit is taken by the White Stag to Tír Na NÓg the

land of the ever young.

So they catch up with the stag.

Edith has depicted as a- an Amazon with a bow and arrow. And

ultimately, she or originally she had a sort of Robin Hood,

Errol Flynn hat with a feather in it.

So we're trying to grow- she'll have a mohawk for a while and

then we'll develop this, Errol Flynn hat and she shoots the

White Stag in the bottom or haunches it.

And so you can see the White Stag with a bit of arrow

sticking out of it. And because all of this is Pagan and pre

Christian, the devil gets involved and he brings down all

the hawks of the air who then swoop down and disrupt the hunt,

scattering everybody.

And in the confusion, he rides the wounded stag to safety and

saves him.

And ultimately, you know, the this hedge was much taller and

we'd like to grow it up taller one day again, this is not the

original hedge.

And we now have this narrative in six pieces. But before

originally, the pieces were much bigger and there were 24 of them

telling the narrative.

And one day we'd love to have the hedge taller and all 24

back. And if we did the last figure right at the end of the

Shamrock hedge would be a boy walking home, disconsolately

with a skinny hair and a pole. And that's all they bring back

from the hunt. So it's complete shambles.

The original structure was made by a man called Robert Burnett

of Skipton in Yorkshire. And we've got pictures of him in his

shed in Yorkshire making the devil.

You know, and the level of detail of this metal structure

is so refined. You can see his eyelashes. I don't know how

you'd ever translate that into topiary.

But the idea is that you the young shoots of the Yew, it's

usually Yew that we're using, although we're starting to use

Chilean Yew now, which is, doesn't get any of the diseases

that Yew get. But it's the same deal is you wrap the little

fresh growth, spiral it around the metal cage really and stop

the end.

So you tie it on, wrap it round, stop the end and this bushes it

up, and makes it much more sort of fluffy.

So what you're trying to do, you know, ultimately is have the

growth about half an inch above the metal. And then you can cut

that with a set of sort of sheep shearing shears and keep it nice

and fine.

And the other trick with the topiary is when you have a right

angled edge, you can't leave it right angled, otherwise, it

looks ragged.

So you take a chamfer off, just you take the corner off and that

makes it look much sharper.

So when we finish, you know, the figures are done with sheep

shearing shears with the chamfer for it looks really sharp.

They haven't quite done it. We find if we leave the work till

early August, when we cut it, we won't have to cut it again. It

won't grow back. So we let it get a little ragged at this time

of year, but it saves us work long term.

ALAN POWER: Thanks for listening to this week's National Trust

mini episode. The next full episode will be available in a

week's time.

Kate Martin, one of our west coast rangers will be in Kinder

Scout in the Peak district exploring the wonders of the

landscape there.

I've really enjoyed taking you with me on our tour of some of

the National Trust's most beautiful gardens and looking

forward to exploring some others in the third season of the

National Trust podcast. Until then from me, Alan Power.

Goodbye.