URBAN PHOTOGRAPHS

Urban Expression And Depression By Infomatique

Public Gardens

THE HORIZONTAL SUNDIAL BY LYNCH

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THE HORIZONTAL SUNDIAL BY LYNCH AT THE BOTANIC GARDENS IN GLASNEVIN

There are two sundials in the National Botanic Gardens, Glasnevin. One in front of the Palm House is the more familiar horizontal dial. This one was made in the mid eighteenth century by Lynch of 26 Capel Street, Dublin. It is one of the few dials in Ireland with a time-scale graduated in single minutes. It also features the names of other cities from Bombay to Rio de Janeiro, indicating the moment of solar midday for them. On the right, the cities of Madrid, London, Paris, and Rotterdam can be seen adjacent to the gnomon.

Across the Tolka river, in the Rose Garden, is a modern, armillary type dial. The arrow points directly at the North Star – Polaris. As the sun crosses the sky it casts a shadow from the shaft of the arrow on the inside of the ring that represents the equatorial line of the earth, giving the hour of the day. The shadow cast by this equatorial band against the ring supporting the arrow indicates the progression between the solstice dates (midwinter and midsummer days) through the equinox (Spring and Autumn).

ORNAMENTAL GRASS GARDEN

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ORNAMENTAL GRASS GARDEN AT THE BOTANIC GARDENS IN DUBLIN

As well as being a tourist destination and an amenity for nearby residents, the gardens – offering free entry – serve as a centre for horticultural research and training, including the breeding of many prized orchids.

The soil at Glasnevin is strongly alkaline (in horticultural terms) and this restricts the cultivation of calcifuge plants such as rhododendrons to specially prepared areas. Nonetheless, the gardens display a range of outdoor “habitats” such as a rockery, herbaceous border, rose garden, bog garden and arboretum. A vegetable garden has also been established.

The National Herbarium is also housed at the National Botanic Gardens. The museum collection contains some 20,000 samples of plant products, including fruits, seeds, wood, fibres, plant extracts and artefacts, collected over the garden’s two-hundred-year history. The gardens contain noted and historically important collections of orchids. The newly restored Palm House houses many tropical and subtropical plants. In 2002, a new multistorey complex was built; it includes a cafe and a large lecture theatre. The gardens are also responsible for the arboretum at Kilmacurragh, County Wicklow, a centre noted for its conifers and calcifuges. This is located some 50 kilometres (31 miles) south of Dublin.

A gateway into Glasnevin Cemetery adjacent to the gardens was reopened in recent years.

FARMLEIGH ESTATE – HOUSE AND GARDENS

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FARMLEIGH ESTATE – HOUSE AND GARDENS – MAY 2015

It is a long time since I last visited Farmleigh House and Gardens.

Farmleigh is the official Irish state guest house. It was formerly one of the Dublin residences of the Guinness family. It is situated on an elevated position above the River Liffey to the north-west of the Phoenix Park, in Castleknock.

The estate of 78 acres (32 ha) consists of extensive private gardens with stands of mature cypress, pine and oak trees, a boating pond, walled garden, sunken garden, out offices and a herd of rare native Kerry cattle. It was purchased by the Government of Ireland from the 4th Earl of Iveagh in 1999 for €29.2 million. A state body—the Office of Public Works (OPW)—spent in the region of €23 million restoring the house, gardens and curvilinear glasshouses, bringing the total cost to the state to €52.2 million. Farmleigh was opened to the public in July 2001.

The estate was purchased from The 4th Earl of Iveagh by the State in 1999. The official purpose for the €29.2 million purchase, and subsequent expenditure of €23 million in refurbishment, was that it would be used for state purposes. Specifically, it is designated as “an official State guest house for visiting heads of State and dignitaries. Some notable visitors have been hosted at Farmleigh including the Chinese Prime Minister, the Prime Minister of Ethiopia, the King of Malaysia, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, the Governor-General of New Zealand, and Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom. However, the estate only hosted seven visiting dignitaries in 2006 (the most in one year), six in 2008, and only two the following year. Also in 2009, 246,000 members of the public visited the estate.

In 2006 it was announced by the Office of Public Works (OPW) that the Steward’s Lodge which is located in the grounds of Farmleigh had been renovated. It was speculated at the time that the lodge was to become an official residence of the Taoiseach. Former Taoiseach Brian Cowen used the lodge for this purpose on occasion, staying at the lodge while in Dublin. His successor, Enda Kenny, has also stayed on occasion at the Steward’s Lodge.

Today Farmleigh is operated by the OPW and the estate and gardens are largely open to the public, with the house closed except for organised tours. Seasonal events, such as craft and food markets, are held on the grounds. The estate has also been used as the venue for the RTÉ proms, a public concert series that took place each summer in a large marquee erected on the grounds.

IVEAGH GARDENS

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IVEAGH GARDENS OFF CLONMEL STREET

This park is very close the Harcourt Luas tram stop.

Iveagh Gardens are popularly known as Dublin’s ‘Secret Garden’. However, if they are known as such then they are not really secret.

I went to school and college in the area and I visited this public park on a regular basis, back then very few were aware of the park, and as kids were were fascinated the broken statues and old ruins. One of my teachers told us that many of the items were follies and therefor fake [i.e. old roman statues were less than a hundred years]

Designed by Ninian Niven in 1865, but with a history dating back over three hundred years, the Iveagh Gardens are located close to St Stephen’s Green Park in Dublin city centre.

From modest beginnings as an earl’s lawn, the gardens went on to host the splendour of the Dublin Exhibition Palace in 1865. Many of the original landscape features are still in place, or have been restored and conserved since 1995. These include the yew maze, the rosarium, and the fountains. The cascade in particular is a stunning spectacle in summer.

IRISH NATIONAL WAR MEMORIAL GARDENS

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IRISH NATIONAL WAR MEMORIAL GARDENS [ISLAND BRIDGE DUBLIN]

The Irish National War Memorial Gardens is an Irish war memorial in Islandbridge, Dublin, dedicated “to the memory of the 49,400 Irish soldiers who gave their lives in the Great War, 1914–1918”, out of over 300,000 Irishmen who served in all armies.

The Memorial Gardens also commemorate all other Irish men and women who at that time served, fought and died in Irish regiments of the Allied armies, the British, Canadian, Australian, New Zealand, South African and United States armies in support of the Triple Entente’s war effort against the Central Powers.

Designed by the great memorialist Sir Edwin Lutyens who had already landscaped designed several sites in Ireland and around Europe, it is outstanding among the many war memorials he created throughout the world. He found it a glorious site. The sunken Garden of Remembrance surrounds a Stone of Remembrance of Irish granite symbolising an altar, which weighs seven and a half tons. The dimensions of this are identical to First World War memorials found throughout the world, and is aligned with the Great Cross and central avenue. Opposite to the Phoenix Park obelisk, it lies about three kilometres from the centre of Dublin, on grounds which gradually slope upwards towards Kilmainham Hill.

Old chronicles describe Kilmainham Hill as the camping place of Brian Boru and his army prior to the last decisive Battle of Clontarf on 23 April 1014. The Memorial was amongst the last to be erected to the memory of those who sacrificed their lives in World War I (Canada’s National War Memorial was opened in 1939), and is “the symbol of Remembrance in memory of a Nation’s sacrifice”.[ The elaborate layout includes a central Sunken Rose Garden composed by a committee of eminent horticulturalists, various terraces, pergolas, lawns and avenues lined with impressive parkland trees, and two pairs of Bookrooms in granite, representing the four provinces of Ireland, and containing illuminated volumes recording the names of all the dead.

At the north of the Gardens overlooking the River Liffey stands a domed temple. This also marks the beginning of the avenue leading gently upwards to the steps containing the Stone of Remembrance. On the floor of the Temple are an extract from the “War Sonnett II: Safety” by Rupert Brooke:

“We have found safety with all things undying,
The winds, and morning, tears of men and mirth,
The deep night, and birds singing, and clouds flying,
And sleep, and freedom, and the autumnal earth.”

The Garden was subject to two Irish Republican paramilitary attacks. On Christmas night 1956 a bomb was placed at the base of its Stone of Remembrance and memorial cross and detonated, but the County Wicklow quarried granite withstood the blast with little damage. Another attempt was made to bring it down again with a bomb detonation in October 1958, which once more failed, resulting in superficial damage.

A subsequent lack of financing from the Government to provision its up-keep and care allowed the site to fall into dilapidation and vandalism over the following decades, to the point that by the late 1970s it had become a site for caravans and animals of the Traveller community, with the Dublin Corporation’s refuse disposal office using it as a rubbish dump for the city’s waste. In addition fifty years of storms and the elements had left their mark, with structural damage unrepaired to parts of the Garden’s ornamentation.

In the mid-1980s economic and cultural shifts began to occur in Ireland which facilitated a regeneration of urban decay in Dublin, and the beginning of a change in the public’s view of its pre-Irish Revolution national history and identity, which led to a project of restoration work to renew the park and gardens to their former splendour being undertaken by the Office of Public Works, co-funded by the National War Memorial Committee. On 10 September 1988 the fully restored Gardens were re-opened to the public, and formally dedicated by representatives of the four main Churches of Ireland, half a century after its creation.