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Helen Dillon (born 1940 in Dunning, Perth and Kinross), is a Scottish and Irish gardener, garden designer and lecturer, and media personality, who operated one of Ireland's most-visited private gardens for 44 years. [1]
Dillon grew up in the small village of Dunning in Perthshire, Scotland, where she gardened from an early age. [2]
Dillon later moved to London, and worked for a time for Amateur Gardening magazine, where she met gardeners and garden designers, and as an antiques dealer. She moved to Dublin when she married fellow antiques dealer Val Dillon. [1]
The Dillons managed one of Ireland's most-visited private gardens on a one-acre site behind a Georgian terraced house on Sandford Road in Ranelagh, an inner southern suburb of Dublin, from 1972 to 2016. [1] The garden was named by one of the UK's leading gardeners, Christopher Lloyd, in his book Other People's Gardens, and is listed in other reference works. However Dillon did comment on the challenges of building up the garden, especially around aging of the soil, and the pests and diseases which tend to develop in older garden environments, including weevils, fungal rust, and persistent weeds.
After the Ranelagh property sold for over 4.5 million euro, and the Dillons moved on in September 2016, they relocated to Seafield Road, Monkstown, where a new garden was announced in 2018, opening for group visits, and with plans for classes. [3]
Dillon has presented The Garden Show, Garden Heaven (which also featured Dermot O'Neill), and Antiques Watch for RTÉ, Ireland's national State broadcaster. [2] She also co-presented Greatest Gardens for the BBC, with Diarmuid Gavin. [4]
Dillon and her garden appeared on television, and the developing new garden was also featured on Gardeners' World, and was mentioned on Radio Ulster's Gardeners Corner, in 2017.
Dillon has designed gardens over more than twenty years, including work on the garden at Kiltinan Castle, Fethard, Co Tipperary, for Andrew Lloyd Webber, for the American Embassy in Dublin, and on Roy and Patty Disney's garden in County Cork. [2]
She has participated in plant-hunting expeditions in New Zealand, parts of South America, Nepal, China, and South Africa. [2]
Dillon has lectured in Ireland, the UK, the USA and Canada, Australia and New Zealand. [2]
Dillon has written a range of books and articles on gardening and garden-related design.
Dillon wrote a gardening column for the Sunday Tribune in the early 1990s. She has also written for The Garden, the magazine of the Royal Horticultural Society.
In 1999, Dillon received a gold Veitch Memorial Medal from the Royal Horticultural Society, and in 2003, a Medal of Honor from the Massachusetts Horticultural Society. [2]
She is a Distinguished Counselor to the New York Botanical Garden Board of Trustees. [5]
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The Royal Horticultural Society (RHS), founded in 1804 as the Horticultural Society of London, is the UK's leading gardening charity.
Alan Fred Titchmarsh HonFSE is an English gardener and broadcaster. After working as a professional gardener and a gardening journalist, he became a writer, and a radio and television presenter.
Ranelagh is an affluent residential area and urban village on the Southside of Dublin, Ireland in the postal district of Dublin 6.
Monkstown, historically known as Carrickbrennan, is a suburb in south Dublin, located in Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown, Ireland. It is on the coast, between Blackrock and Dún Laoghaire while also bordering Sallynoggin and Deansgrange inland.
Diarmuid Gavin is an Irish garden designer and television personality. He has presented gardens at the Chelsea Flower Show on nine occasions from 1995 to 2016, winning a number of medals, including gold in 2011. He has also authored or co-authored at least ten gardening-related books.
Joseph Forsyth Johnson was an English landscape architect and disciple of John Ruskin. He "played a pivotal role in introducing the notion of naturalistic planting."
Frederick William Thomas Burbidge (1847–1905) was a British explorer who collected many rare tropical plants for the famous Veitch Nurseries.
The Victoria Medal of Honour (VMH) is awarded to British horticulturists resident in the United Kingdom whom the Royal Horticultural Society Council considers deserving of special honour by the Society.
(Ernest) Charles Nelson was a botanist who specialised in the heather family, Ericaceae, especially Erica, and whose past research interests included the Proteaceae especially Adenanthos. He was the author or editor of over 24 books and more than 150 research papers. He was honorary editor of Archives of Natural History between 1999 and 2012 and remained closely linked with the journal as one of the Associate Editors, and was honorary editor of Heathers for 23 years until 2017.
Dermot O'Neill was an Irish gardener and editor of Garden Heaven magazine. He appeared on several radio and television programmes for RTÉ and BBC Northern Ireland and contributed regular columns for Irish newspapers and magazines including the RTÉ Guide, The Irish Times, and the Sunday Independent.
Rachel de Thame is an English gardener, television presenter and actress.
The Veitch Memorial Medal is an international prize awarded annually by the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS).
Christine Helen Walkden is a British television presenter and gardener, best known for her appearances on gardening programmes and The One Show. She has hosted her own series centred on her home garden in Sawbridgeworth, Christine's Garden, on the BBC.
Charles Moore was an Australian botanist and director of the Royal Botanic Garden, Sydney.
Dún Laoghaire is a suburban coastal town in County Dublin in Ireland. It is the administrative centre of the county of Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown. The town was built up alongside a small existing settlement following 1816 legislation that allowed the building of a major port to serve Dublin. It was known as Dunleary until it was renamed Kingstown in honour of King George IV's 1821 visit, and in 1920 was given its present name, the original Irish form from which "Dunleary" was anglicised. Over time, the town became a residential location, a seaside resort, the terminus of Ireland's first railway and the administrative centre of the former borough of Dún Laoghaire, and from 1994, of the county of Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown.
Helen Morgenthau Fox was an American botanist and author of popular gardening books.
Dan Pearson is an English landscape designer, specialising in naturalistic perennial planting.
David Moore was a Scottish botanist who served as director of the Irish National Botanic Gardens for over 40 years.
Alice Jacob was an Irish botanical illustrator, lace designer, and design teacher.
Gerald "Gerry" Daly is an Irish Horticulturist, garden designer and media personality and editor of The Irish Garden magazine. He has featured, over a period of nearly 40 years, on multiple radio and television programmes on RTÉ and BBC Northern Ireland channels, and has contributed, as he still does, regular columns for Irish newspapers and magazines, over more than 30 years, including the Irish Independent, the Sunday Independent and the Farmers Journal.
