Garden Holidays & Tours

Frances MacDonald has been gardening professionally for over forty years and has been arranging and has experience in guiding garden tours for nearly 30, at home and abroad, in Europe and further afield in South Africa, the States, China and Japan.  For the past ten years, she has been Garden Tours Manager for Travel Department. She trained in the National Botanic Gardens in Glasnevin and worked in Japan and the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew where she met her husband, Iain and returned to live in Co. Wexford with him.  They opened their previous garden at The Bay for many years before downsizing their garden in the past year and moving to Gorey.  She writes for The Irish Garden magazine and you can follow the progress of their new garden on Facebook.

Iain MacDonald has been a garden guide for Travel Department for the past 10 years and particularly enjoys bringing his groups to France, Scotland and Madeira. He worked for many years in the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew and moved to Wexford, where,  with his wife, Frances, he had a large garden open to the public. They also ran a successful design and landscaping company. Although they have down-sized their own garden and he has retired from giving lectures and gardening classes, he has not retired from designing gardens or putting other people’s gardens into good order!   

Brona Dore has been an enthusiastic gardener from childhood - which was filled with homegrown vegetables and fruit.  Now living in Gorey, Co. Wexford, she continues that tradition with something on her table from her garden every day. Brona has completed many garden courses including studying with Dublin School of Horticulture where she achieved her RHS certificate and then continued there as a tutor for the RHS Practical course.  She has designed and given horticultural classes for transition year students in a number of schools and is passionate about encouraging young people into gardening. She worked with Frances and Iain MacDonald at The Bay Garden during the latter years when it was opened to the public and has been involved in organising garden holidays for her own garden friends.  She is a regular on many of the Travel Department Garden Tours and we are delighted to welcome her as a garden guide.

Rosie Maye has been gardening since the age of 4 alongside her mother who nurtured her lifelong passion for all things garden related. She studied Tourism in college and went on to work in Aer Lingus for 16 years travelling the world. Rosie gardened in every home she lived in but it was in her present home in Slane, Co.Meath, she realised her dream of having a big garden.  Although her garden is not open to the public on a regular basis, she is happy to take groups of gardeners (minimum 10) by appointment.  She writes about her garden journey on Facebook, Instagram and on her blog under the title of The Insomniac Gardener; she is also a columnist for The Irish Garden magazine. She lectures to garden clubs and is the garden advisor to the Ledwidge Cottage Museum in Slane.

Peter is a knowledgeable and keen gardener and is currently President of the RHSI. He has a wealth of experience planning and guiding garden tours for this, and other organisations, over the past twenty-five years. He will lead two of our 2025 tours: Gardens of Antrim & Down in July and Gardens of East Anglia in August.