THE IRISH SUZHOU CHINESE GARDEN IN ST. ANNE’S PARK – A PLEASANT SURPRISE
If you ever get the chance to visit St. Anne’s Park you should notice an old clock tower which is located in a walled garden. The walled garden, to which access is limited, contains a really big surprise in the form of an attractive Chinese Garden known as the “Ire-Su Chinese Garden”.
When I first visited this Chinese garden in August 2018 a lady who I had a chat with told me that it had been there for at least a hundred years and that surprised me as it appeared to be new. About ten minutes later she returned and told me that here friend told here that it was installed in 2012 [not 1912 as she had believed].
The garden was first shown at the Bloom Festival in 2011 and it was designed by workers from the Suzhou Garden Bureau, which looks after nine famous UNESCO-listed gardens in China. Parts of the garden were relocated to St Anne’s Park in Raheny after the festival as a gift to coincide with Dublin’s twinning with Beijing in 2012.
Believe it or not there are some large turtles living in the pond but they can be difficult to locate.
Poet Thomas Tickell owned a house and small estate in Glasnevin and, in 1795, they were sold to the Irish Parliament and given to the Royal Dublin Society for them to establish Ireland’s first botanic gardens. A double line of yew trees, known as “Addison’s Walk” survives from this period. The original function of the gardens was to advance knowledge of plants for agricultural, medicinal and dyeing purposes. The gardens were the first location in Ireland where the infection responsible for the 1845–1847 Great Famine was identified. Throughout the famine, research to stop the infection was undertaken at the gardens.
Walter Wade and John Underwood, the first Director and Superintendent respectively, executed the layout of the gardens, but, when Wade died in 1825, they declined for some years. From 1834, Director Ninian Nivan brought new life into the gardens, performing some redesign. This programme of change and development continued with the following Directors into the late 1960s.
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