If there are two men in Ireland who can get more excited than Brian Whyte or Charlie Hosty when discussing gardens, you’d search hard to find them

As we prepare to leave their offices near Moycullen for a guided tour of their nursery, they stress that the place is not looking its best – no surprise given the grey day outside. But the dreary weather is no match for their enthusiasm, which is so infectious that even the most committed couch potato would be fired up with a passion for gardening after a couple of hours in their company.

The two, who met when they were studying horticulture in UCD, set up Radharc landscaping in 1988. Brian grew up working alongside his father Jack in the well-known family garden centre, Whytes of Ballinasloe. Charlie’s interest in horticulture came from his father Cathal, a keen gardener.

From the beginning their aim with Radharc was to bring a professional standard of design and craftsmanship to the landscape gardening in the West of Ireland.

But the Ireland in which they set up their business in 1988 was like a different country. Money was even less plentiful than it is today and very few people thought of having their gardens professionally landscaped.

Even after five years in business, they still had question marks about whether the venture would work or not, recalls Brian, who is holding the fort while Charlie is out on a job in Cornamona.

Determination, hard work, and quality designs saw them survive and, in 1993, they bought about seven acres of land in Moycullen where they established a nursery, he adds.

Charlie, whose degree is in commercial horticulture, has focused growing and producing plants and trees which they use themselves and also sell to others. Brian is a landscape designer and he specialises in that area. Both aspects of the business have grown very well, he says.

“The nursery would be probably the primary wholesale nursery in the West and Radharc Landscaping would be the best known in the West and would have a good reputation.”

Radharc grew strongly during the boom years and they prospered with a huge range of private and commercial clients, the latter including Blackrock Medical Partners, Boston Scientific and Coco Cola.

Some commercial clients remain, some have gone, but Brian says that they have remained strong enough withstand the economic downturn.
“That’s partly b

ecause of the weather. The biggest difficulty in this job can be getting the work done, especially in the past two years, because of rainfall, so you always had to be wary about carrying people when the weather got bad.”

Radharc employ 30 people now – at the peak of the boom, that would have been 40, says Brian.

“We have a huge range of clients and we would have a pretty big workforce, so we have to be fairly all encompassing,” he explains.
“So we cover everything from small semi-detached gardens to large commercial areas of up to 100 acres.”

For instance, on the day before we met, he had signed off on a deal to landscape a small front garden in Knocknacarra, at a cost to the client of €1,000.

“So, I can go to a domestic house with a small garden and price it there and then. For a half acre site, I’d take the details away and do it item by item.”

For a three-acre garden, a quotation from Radharc might be three pages long and would be pretty detailed.
People can use these like a menu to guide them

along the way, he explains. It’s also possible to design a garden so that the work can be done on a phased basis.

“And I’d say, if you want to do the work yourself, that’s fine, but get a plan before you start.”

A significant portion of their landscaping work is about redoing work that has been done wrongly in the first place, either by the individual homeowner or by landscapers who haven’t thought the particular garden plan through.

By now Charlie has arrived in from Cornamona and it seems like a good time to ask what, in their eyes, makes a garden work?
They don’t have to think too long before answering.

“It has to work for the people who use it, and that’s basically it,” they agree.

So, when they are planning a garden, they’ll ask questions about the number of cars in the household, clothesline requirements, people’s dining habits and their attitude to maintenance.

They will also assess the soil and the garden’s exposure and work to combine those practicalities with what people want.

The needs are also different depending on whether is a building is for personal or public use – for instance, a hotel or hospital will need a smoking area and area for staff.

The second thing when designing a garden is that it must have a sense of its place, says Brian.

And so, a city garden will be different to something they would design in Barna or Athenry. And, he says, it should be different, in terms of plants and in terms of hard material, such as the type of stone you would use.

This should blend with the natural material locally. Getting all that right is important.

And it’s also important to design in accordance with people’s budgets, and while Radharc might be best known for large scale projects, they are flexible, they say.

For more, read this week's Connacht Tribune.