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.

Life

Dillon grew up in the small village of Dunning in Perthshire, Scotland, where she gardened from an early age.

Career

Dillon later moved to

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

, 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.

The Dillon Garden

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 Ranelagh ( , ; , ) is an affluent residential area and urban village on the Southside of Dublin, Ireland in the postal district of Dublin 6. Ranelagh was originally a village called Cullenswood. It has a history of conflict, including the at ...

, an inner southern suburb of

Dublin Dublin is the capital and largest city of Republic of Ireland, Ireland. Situated on Dublin Bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Leinster, and is bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, pa ...

, from 1972 to 2016. The garden was named by one of the UK's leading gardeners,

Christopher Lloyd Christopher Allen Lloyd (born October 22, 1938) is an American actor. He has appeared in many theater productions, films, and television shows since the 1960s. He is known for portraying Emmett Brown in the Back to the Future (franchise), ''B ...

, 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 Rusts are fungal plant pathogens of the order Pucciniales (previously known as Uredinales) causing plant fungal diseases. An estimated 168 rust genera and approximately 7,000 species, more than half of which belong to the genus ''Puccinia'', are ...

, 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.

Media

Dillon has presented ''The Garden Show'', ''Garden Heaven'' (which also featured Dermot O'Neill), and ''Antiques Watch'' for

RTÉ (; ; RTÉThe É in RTÉ is pronounced as an English E () and not an Irish É ()) is an Irish public service broadcaster. It both produces and broadcasts programmes on television, radio and online. The radio service began on 1 January 1926, ...

, Ireland's national State broadcaster. She also co-presented ''Greatest Gardens'' for the BBC, with

Diarmuid Gavin Diarmuid Gavin (born 10 May 1964) 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 als ...

. Dillon and her garden appeared on television, and the developing new garden was also featured on

Gardeners' World ''Gardeners' World'' is a long-running British gardening programme, first broadcast on 5 January 1968. The 2024 series is the 55th. Its first series was presented by Ken Burras and came from Oxford Botanical Gardens. Up until 2020 most of its e ...

, and was mentioned on Radio Ulster's ''Gardeners Corner'', in 2017.

Lecturing and design

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. She has participated in plant-hunting expeditions in

New Zealand New Zealand () is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and List of islands of New Zealand, over 600 smaller islands. It is the List of isla ...

, parts of South America,

Nepal Nepal, officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, is a landlocked country in South Asia. It is mainly situated in the Himalayas, but also includes parts of the Indo-Gangetic Plain. It borders the Tibet Autonomous Region of China Ch ...

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...

, and

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. Its Provinces of South Africa, nine provinces are bounded to the south by of coastline that stretches along the Atlantic O ...

. Dillon has lectured in Ireland, the UK, the US and Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

Publishing

Dillon has written a range of books and articles on gardening and garden-related design.

Books

* ''The Flower Garden''; Conran Octopus, London * ''In an Irish Garden'', co-editor with Sybil Connolly; Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London * ''Garden Artistry''; Macmillan, London * ''Helen Dillon on Gardening'', TownHouse, Dublin, 1998

Press

Dillon wrote a gardening column for the

Sunday Tribune The ''Sunday Tribune'' was an Irish Sunday broadsheet newspaper published by Tribune Newspapers plc. It was edited in its final years by Nóirín Hegarty, who changed both the tone and the physical format of the newspaper from broadsheet to ta ...

in the early 1990s. She has also written for ''The Garden'', the magazine of the Royal Horticultural Society.

Recognition

In 1999, Dillon received a gold

Veitch Memorial Medal The Veitch Memorial Medal is an international prize awarded annually by the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS). Goal The prize is awarded to "persons of any nationality who have made an outstanding contribution to the advancement and improvement ...

from the

Royal Horticultural Society The Royal Horticultural Society (RHS), founded in 1804 as the Horticultural Society of London, is the UK's leading gardening charity. The RHS promotes horticulture through its five gardens at Wisley (Surrey), Hyde Hall (Essex), Harlow Carr ...

, and in 2003, a Medal of Honor from the Massachusetts Horticultural Society. She is a Distinguished Counselor to the

New York Botanical Garden The New York Botanical Garden (NYBG) is a botanical garden at Bronx Park in the Bronx, New York City. Established in 1891, it is located on a site that contains a landscape with over one million living plants; the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory, ...

Board of Trustees.

External sources

Official website of the new Dillon Garden in Monkstown

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Dillon, Helen Scottish gardeners Irish gardeners Irish garden writers Veitch Memorial Medal recipients Irish television personalities Monkstown, Dublin People from Ranelagh Living people 1940 births People from Perth and Kinross British emigrants to Ireland Broadcasters from County Dublin