Edith Helen Vane-Tempest-Stewart (1878-1959), the wife of the 7th Marquess (1878–1949), designed much of what one sees upon visiting, including such distinctly-different landscapes such as the Shamrock Garden with its Irish harp topiary, the Sunken Garden and stone pergola, the Spanish Garden, the Italian Garden, and Fountain Pool. Also of note is the Dodo Terrace, containing cement statues of living, extinct and mythical creatures. The garden and statues commemorate the high-society members of Lady Londonderry’s Ark Club, created in 1915.
While you're waiting, enjoy Mike Jackson's A Balanced Diet blog for inspiration. His write-up includes numerous photographs of the house, the gardens, the parkland, the temple, and more.
It’s the statues of the dodos I find interesting, if only for very circumstantial reasons. The Mansion in the Mist (1992) includes a Temple of the Winds and there is a similarly named structure on the Mount Stewart property. The dodos on the property remind me of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) where we meet the dodo, one of the many birds running the Caucus race. I already pointed out a few Lewis Carroll inspirations in the Bellairs Corpus, including the misanthrope Nathaniel Wabe from Mansion. And what is wabe? According to Carroll, the the grass plot around a sundial.
Yes, there is a sundial on the Mount Stewart grounds, too. M. J. Harley's Homepage for Sundials in Ireland (yes, there really is such a thing) notes the inscription on it reads as such:
SERENE I STAND AMONG THE FLOWERSAND ONLY COUNT LIFE'S SUNNY HOURSFOR ME DARK DAYS DO NOT EXISTI'M A BRAZEN FACED OLD OPTIMIST
The inscription on the sundial in the garden outside the Autarch mansion reads: "Life is a dream."
Eh, I like the Stewart inscription more. Stuff that, Autarchs.
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