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heritage · Saturday 25 July 2026 · Various 
Carlow Garden Festival - Heritage Garden Tours
At Various venues across County Carlow · Various, Co. Carlow
At Various venues across County Carlow · Various, Co. Carlow
The Carlow Garden Festival is one of the oldest garden festivals in Ireland - now in its twenty-third year - and this nine-day celebration brings together heritage estates, expert speakers, and gardens not normally open to the public. If you have any interest in historic houses, garden design, or the quiet pleasure of walking somewhere genuinely beautiful, this is a fine reason to spend a few days in County Carlow in late July.
The festival runs from 25 July to 2 August 2026 across multiple venues spread throughout the county. The programme is built around guided tours, workshops, and specialist talks, with heritage gardens as the backbone of the whole thing.
Huntington Castle in Clonegal is one of the standout venues - a 400-year-old family home with seventeenth-century formal gardens, a French linden walk, and a rose garden. Guided tours run through the castle’s drawing rooms and halls, and there is exclusive access to the Temple of the Goddess in the castle’s dungeon. Tours are ticketed and run hourly in the afternoon.
Borris House and its walled gardens feature across several days of the programme, including a talk by BBC Gardeners’ World presenter Arit Anderson on 29 July. The focus there is on plants as the starting point for design rather than an afterthought.
Altamont Gardens - one of the finest informal gardens in Ireland - offers free tree tours on select days. The wooded walks and lakeside setting at Altamont are worth the visit on their own.
Speakers at previous festivals have included Adam Frost, Peter O’Mahony, and Robin Lane Fox, who gives a talk on making gardens beautiful without complicated effort. The full 2026 programme is published at carlowgardentrail.com in the weeks before the festival opens.
Carlow Town is on the main Dublin to Waterford road (N9/M9), about 80 km south of the capital - roughly an hour by car. Irish Rail runs regular services on the Dublin Heuston to Waterford line, stopping at Carlow station. Bus Eireann also operates routes connecting Carlow to Dublin and other towns. Once at the festival, a shuttle bus connects venues from five pick-up points in Carlow Town, which makes it straightforward to move between gardens without driving between each one.
The county is compact and easy to explore on foot or by car, with the River Barrow running along the eastern edge and the Blackstairs Mountains to the south. There is more to see in Carlow and across Co. Carlow.
Heading to Various venues across County Carlow in Carlow? Carlow has plenty more to see. Read the Carlow area guide, find what else is on, and explore the towns and villages nearby.