Ballyrobert Gardens

About the garden

Owned by

Maurice Parkinson

Owned by the Parkinson family, Ballyrobert Gardens is a uniquely created Ulster Garden nestling in the countryside near Ballyclare, County Antrim, home to the famous Glens of Antrim and Antrim Coast Road. The setting for the garden is a 17th-century landscape complete with the original cottage, Irish barn and farm layout extending to 16 acres. Sensitively integrating the elements is a six-acre garden containing one of the province's most extensive collections of herbaceous plants, laid out in intimate settings and sweeping borders.   

Ballyrobert Gardens has many delightful features such as the traditional entrance, fairy tree, hole tree and Celtic spiral. These sit together handsomely with the lake, stream, formal garden, orchard, meadows and woodlands. A Robinsonian-style garden, it appeared in 2016 on BBC TV's Breakfast programme as an exemplar of a naturalistic garden. It is an all-year-round garden and has a collection of more than 200 varieties of snowdrops. There is also an adjoining specialist plant nursery stocked with a large range of herbaceous plants.