Such features, sometimes called pleasure grounds or ornamental demesnes, were laid out to guide the eye and the foot through carefully composed views, often incorporating ha-has, walled gardens, specimen trees, or artificial water features. What sets a designed landscape apart from a working farmyard or a kitchen garden is precisely this intention: the land arranged not for yield but for effect.

The historical record for Doon is thin, and without firmer documentary evidence it would be unwise to attribute the feature to a particular family, architect, or period with any confidence. What can be said is that County Galway has a long tradition of estate-making, stretching from the great Anglo-Norman landowning dynasties through the improving landlords of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, many of whom engaged gardeners and landscape designers to lay out grounds in the fashionable styles of their day. Doon, sitting within reach of Lough Corrib, would have offered natural advantages for such a project, given the lake's scale and the wooded character of its eastern and western shores.