Mary Reynolds Designs

What is an Irish garden? There is no such thing as a garden in the Irish tradition apart from within the monastic tradition of food production. Gardens are an imported concept to this island. People travel from all over the world to visit Irish gardens but what they are actually seeing are gardens from the English, Italian and French traditions. The land to us, is so much more than a pretty garden. It is full of mythology history, pain, poetry, longing, loss and passion. This connection we have with the land is a deep and intrinsic connection that is expressed in our language, writings, poetry, art and music. However, it is rarely expressed in our garden designs.

 Did you ever notice the vast quantity of gardens in Ireland that are like fortresses? They are like pods dropped from outer space onto the landscape. Completely disconnected from it, completely ashamed of the wildness and beauty around them, completely sad and small looking.  Awareness of our native and naturalised plants is minimal and most of our plants have been filed under “weed’ or ‘Sceach’. They are of little or no value to us and like most things Irish, we push them away to make way for the things of “real’ value. We build town parks and plazas that look like any American or European standard, we have somehow established the shiny 70’s character free bungalow as the ‘traditional’ form of architecture in our planning process. The Irish language is to the most part filed under “useless” when in truth it is the most tangible living way we have of creating a vital sense of cultural identity and of growing a sense of community spirit in this crumbling society of ours.

 I am lucky enough to live in Kerry, and recently had a conversation with my neighbour where he described to me how the school they went to brought them regularly on nature walks. The teacher showed the kids the emerging plants in each season, described to them the uses and myths associated with these plants, they learned the place names of every bóthar and cove, field and bump. All this knowledge kept alive a real connection within us to this land. Literally kept us grounded.

A lot of the knowledge still lingers on. Farmers will still never cut down a lone hawthorn tree for fear of retribution from the fairies, we still know on a deep level that oak trees symbolise strength, birch tree stand for new life and new beginnings, yew trees symbolise death. Simple stuff that we just feel. There is such colour and depth of information about each native plant. Once you learn about them it is very hard to see them as just a weed ever again. Once you get to know their character, understand the significance they held in our society for countless generations, the smallest reed or plantain suddenly achieves a regal status and our respect for them automatically rises.

We are brazen enough to try and sell to the world a romantic image of Ireland as being a place of magic and fairies. This is a landscape that is fast disappearing in our little island and unless we start to change our attitudes to this land of ours, it will be gone before we know it. The land will always be there of course. It will recover from us and we will feed the worms within it one day. . . . but I kinda want my kids to grow up in a land rich in depth, beauty and variety. I want them to know and feel the support and strength they can have from a strong sense of place, an awareness and knowledge of where they came from so that they have a well of strength underneath them when they take off into the world on their own so that when they do come home, they are knocked down with the wind of familiarity, of where their roots are, of who they are. They are not gonna find that in the new and “Improved” Eyre square, in any town park, plaza or housing scheme designed by the Celtic tiger era and beyond. They are not going to feel a connection with this land if they walk into any of our super garden centers and try and find even one tiny corner devoted to our native and naturalised plants. I guess its down to the anarchists to rail against the boration that is modern Ireland. I want to live in Ireland. I don’t want to live in New York or London or Paris. Our economy is in a large part dependent on tourism yet we seem determined to remove any sense of cultural identity from Ireland because we seem to be ashamed of it. Why do you think people come here? To go to Mc Donald’s and visit an English garden? Its time to turn this place around before that becomes the cultural standard, please.