Charles Haughey’s secret therapy: Ex-Taoiseach’s former landscaper on CJ’s love of plants

Few realise that the late Taoiseach Charles Haughey indulged in a secret therapy. When the going got tough, the tough got growing. Tree planting to be specific.

It seems CJH was a closet tree hugger. And there was nobody he trusted more to help him in trying times than well-known horticulturist and renowned garden designer John Joe Costin.

As a young research officer at the agricultural institute in Kinsealy, Costin was despatched across the road to Abbeville one afternoon in 1971 when Haughey was looking for advice on his gardens (and also licking his wounds after the Arms Crisis). So began a lifelong rapport between the two men.

“Every time Haughey had a crisis, he would plant trees,” Costin says. “It was like a therapy for him, to get his mind off things. He liked to meet early in the morning before he would go into the office.

“This seemed to be a distraction for him from his problems. He was totally absorbed in what we were doing. It was his outlet. And then he’d go back to his problems and deal with them in a more efficient manner.”

Abbeville was Haughey’s pride and joy and he wanted to restore it to the best of his ability. He was willing to learn from Costin and was very amenable to new plants.

“Where people vie with each other now over big cars, years ago when it was all about home entertainment, very often there was great competition to see who had the latest acquisition from South America, be it a monkey puzzle or a pine,” Costin says. “Haughey understood that arboretum was part of big houses.”

The controversial leader didn’t like to get his hands dirty, in the literal sense at least. “I still have his walking stick,” Costin says. “He would walk with that and he would supervise. We planted trees every year there. He was a small man, but had no interest in small plants. His interests lay in the great giants of the forest. We got on well because I didn’t fawn on him. I was blunt with him, which he liked.”