The Rabbit Hotel and Retreat is just 20 minutes from Belfast and 10 minutes from Belfast…
Our View
Irish gardener and journalist William Robinson believed that the garden should ‘fit the place’, and the owners of Ballyrobert Cottage followed the Robinsonian principle when transforming this garden, once a farm, into a traditional Ulster Cottage Garden. The 6-acre garden was designed around the 17th-century landscape, with the original cottage and barn at its heart. A series of naturally linking themed areas create year-round interest and a huge collection of herbaceous plants bring colour, texture and form. At the last count the garden held over 4,000 different plant varieties. Many attractive features such as the traditional entrance, fairy tree, hole tree and Celtic spiral will surprise and delight you as you wander around the lake, formal garden, orchard, meadows and woodlands. A host of interesting events and lectures take place here throughout the year.
Facilities – at a glance
Refreshments
Features
- Cafe
- Accessible toilets
- Opening Times: Open Mar-Sep
Also in the area
About the area
Discover County Antrim
At its closest point, County Antrim is only 12 miles from the Mull of Kintyre, and its coastline is both beautiful and geologically diverse. Alternating sandy bays, rocky shores, high cliffs and forbidding headlands produce a dramatic scenery. Inland, the beautiful wooded glens rise to meet dizzying moorland heights.
The complex coastal geology ranges from relatively recent volcanic activity several millennia ago – represented by the massive basalt moorland plateau – to the silvery schists in the northwest, which are about 250 million years older. It includes rocks laid down more than 500 million years ago on an ancient ocean floor, pudding-stone that was later a desert floor, a belt of coal formed out of a swampy delta, salt trapped in the stone 200 million years ago, and mudstones and limestones from the time of the dinosaurs. In between are rich red sandstones, grey clays and dazzling cliffs of white chalk. This fascinating mixture is best seen at Fair Head and Murlough Bay, where, in startling contrast, the chalk cliffs overlie the older red Triassic sandstones. The Antrim Coast and Glens were designated an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) in 1988.
Nearby stays
Places to Stay
Dining nearby
Restaurants and Pubs
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