The Burren Perfumery garden of today doesn't conform to the traditional designs portrayed in books dedicated to herbal gardening, which is strange because that is exactly where the original design first grew from. When we were asked to create an herb garden 10 years ago, something we had never done as gardeners, we promptly went to the library and scoured any and all books having to do with herbalism. Armed with images of intricate seventeenth-century knot gardens and dizzying combinations of geometric configurations, we set to work on creating a large rectangular grid that quickly and easily fitted into the already existing space allotted for the garden.

It seemed perfect. It was symmetrical, easy on the eye, clean and orderly, even safe. But with safe there is no deviation and inevitably the garden was in danger of becoming boring. As well as this there was a mounting pressure to weed any plant that wasn't intended as it distracted from the "stagnant" flow of the increasingly familiar planting. Armed with straight lines and uniform plantings the garden design was fairly intolerant of any chance seedling even when the unwelcome weed might be a plant that usually eludes germination when sown by hand. As time passed we became more confident as gardeners and began to think that the herb garden needn't be restrained by what some book deemed to be an appropriate layout but to take our cue from nature.

There's no place in the world like the Burren, a landscape filled with outcroppings of limestone bedrock and erratic boulders forgotten by the receding ice age. To the left of the main garden a shallow bed of light soil hid a stream of limestone that runs parallel to the boundary wall. It was always such a problem area trying to find a crevice to plant into. To amend this, more soil would be added but the plants would never really thrive though the weeds certainly would! This is where there was a light bulb moment, a kind of "if you can't beat them join them" scenario. Why not imitate what was going on outside the boundary wall?

We carefully exposed a beautiful vein of smooth grey stone that was dotted by shallow, earth-filled pockets, perfect for the dry loving herb thyme, a Burren native. This beautiful natural form of limestone was the impetus that created the garden we have now, a true reflection of the surrounding natural landscape. So now there are few straight lines that survive from the original design and chance seedlings are always welcome. The feedback from visitors has never been better. The more relaxed lines and flow seem to agree with people, making me think it's really important that a garden is a relaxed retreat free of knots and tension, particularly 17th century ones.

Sarah Casey