BOTANIC GARDENS – THIS TIME I USED A SONY 70-200mm F2.8 GM LENS
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 closed at present because of Covid-19 restrictions].
Harold’s Cross got its name from a cross that marked the boundary of the lands owned by the archbishop of Dublin and the lands of the wild Harold Clan from Rathfarnham hundreds of years ago. The cross was probably located somewhere near the present junction at Kenilworth Road. The Celtic Cross, shown in some of my photographs, at the northern tip of the park was erected in 1954.
The green in Harold’s Cross, which is now Harold’s Cross Park, is visible on many of the oldest maps of the area. The archbishop maintained a gallows on the green which helped to keep the Harold Clan at bay. Later, the gallows were replaced with a maypole and this became the centre of dancing and festivities each May, until the practice ceased around the middle of the 19th Century.
In 1890 the Harold’s Cross Improvement Association was formed, and three years later they persuaded the Rathmines’ and Rathgar commissioners to purchase the three acre green from the Irish Land Commission for five shillings. Local businesses contributed £500 toward the creation of a new park.
The park was designed by Mr William Sheppard, the eminent landscape gardener of the time, who is also credited with the design of St. Stephen’s Green and Palmerston Park. Assisted by his son William Junior the park was completed in two months. It officially opened on 1st May 1894.
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