1. Landscape Masterplan
The masterplan envisions a seamlessly connected campus where heritage and contemporary spaces transition naturally while maintaining distinct identities. The landscape will serve multiple functions—enhancing biodiversity, heritage value, sustainability, and user experience.
Key campus “villages” are linked through coordinated landscape features:
• Content Village: Courtyard, orchard, parklands, and woodlands
• Clermont House: Entrance lawn, formal garden
• Learning Village: Formal garden, social areas
• Food Village: Kitchen garden
• Sustainable Village: Kitchen and social gardens
Enhancements to the wider estate will improve wellbeing, recreation, and connection with nature, while also supporting campus identity and creativity. All interventions must be evaluated in detail for sustainability, biodiversity, heritage, and visual impact.
2. Mobilisation: Entrances & Circulation
The plan includes the improvement of existing and historic entrances, addition of new ones, and expansion of vehicular, pedestrian, and cycling routes.
Key interventions:
• Enhanced existing entrance with lawn and plaza
• New and historic entrances reinstated
• Expanded car parking near facilities
• Network of walkable routes, loop walks, and restored paths to encourage active travel and accessibility across the campus.
3. Aspiration: New Landscape Spaces
New Formal Garden – A contemporary reinterpretation of a traditional garden linking old and new spaces, planted with herbs, edible and pollinator species for year-round sensory appeal.
Kitchen Garden – The “heart” of the campus, combining edible and aromatic planting with social gathering spaces such as lawns and communal seating.
Terrace Garden – A tiered landscape connecting new and existing buildings, enhancing usability and outdoor dining near the canteen.
Garden Parking & Environs – Softly designed parking with tree planting and gravel surfacing, sensitive to heritage views and fully accessible.
4. Ecology & Sustainability
Based on the ecological appraisal by Deborah D’Arcy, the landscape integrates biodiversity goals with heritage management.
Core ecological measures:
• Bat-friendly lighting and nesting schemes for bats and swifts
• Woodland management plan for invasive species removal (e.g., cherry laurel, rhododendron)
• Habitat connectivity through tree and hedgerow planting
• Biodiversity-focused mowing regimes (cut-and-collect meadows, flowering lawns)
• Restoration projects: tree-lined avenue, pond, canal walk, orchard
• Native and pollinator-friendly planting compatible with heritage character
The approach balances ecological enhancement with conservation—reducing inputs while maintaining legibility of the historic landscape.
5. Conservation: Heritage Landscape Strategies & Projects
Focus on protecting and enhancing the historic designed landscape of Clermont Demesne through sensitive management.
Key actions:
• Views & Vistas: Protect key visual axes, restore and maintain view corridors.
• Demesne Boundaries: Preserve distinctive northern arcs and reinstate southern boundary lines.
• Drives & Walks: Retain and restore historic routes while integrating new complementary paths.
• Victorian Terraced Lawns & Central Walk: Maintain historic formality; encourage native understorey planting along avenues; manage Monkey Puzzle trees as key features.
• Victorian Water Garden: Restore pond and surrounding area primarily for biodiversity, with heritage restoration as a secondary goal.
• Parkland & Woodland: Implement successional planting, control invasives, and plan for long-term tree sustainability.
• Key Specimen Trees: Protect veteran oaks, entrance lawn arboretum specimens, and framing trees along historic routes; plan for succession planting where necessary.
Overall Vision
The Wicklow Campus landscape will function as an ecologically rich, culturally layered, and socially vibrant environment. Through restoration, new design, and sustainable management, the campus will integrate learning, heritage, and biodiversity—forming a living, evolving landscape that supports education, wellbeing, and creativity.
