Market Square
Antrim
BT21 4AW
Seamus has traveled extensively in China and elsewhere to seek out plants for cultivation in Irish gardens and to further his research into the Irish botanist Augustine Henry. Now he has turned his attention to the travels of Sir Joseph Hooker (1817-1911) in the eastern Himalaya in the mid-nineteenth century, an expedition where Hooker collected the seed of a wide range of plants, especially rhododendrons. This was a landmark first introduction to cultivation of many highly ornamental species. Many of the Himalayan collections of Joseph Hooker came to Kilmacurragh and formed the basis of what was to become Europe’s most complete collection of rhododendrons from Sikkim, Bhutan and Nepal.
Examples of Hooker’s remarkable collection include the blood red Rhododendron thomsonii, R. edgeworthii, R. wallichii, R. barbatum and the magnificent R. falconeri. Many of these survive as veteran specimens at Kilmacurragh to this day and in his lecture Seamus will highlight expeditions he led to Sikkim in 2012 and 2013.
Refreshments provided!