Bidding a fond farewell to a universe-in-miniature

In her last column, FIONNUALA FALLONtells the history of the Phoenix Park's once-neglected walled garden

FOR ROUGHLY two-and-a-half years I’ve written about the wonderful universe-in-miniature that is the 2.5 acre walled Victorian kitchen garden in the Phoenix Park, and of the work being carried out and the crops being cultivated by its dedicated, skilful and resourceful gardeners, Meeda Downey and Brian Quinn.

I’ve written about the garden’s freshly planted native apple orchard, its many heritage vegetable and fruit varieties, its lovingly tended pumpkin patch, giant sunflowers and even its once-off crop of tobacco, as well as about the gardeners’ determined and doughty battles with a sometimes startling range of garden pests, from gooseberry sawfly to ravenous badgers.

I’ve been made privy to the secret whereabouts of the various birds’ nests tucked away inside its quietest corners, have enjoyed tasting some of the garden’s delicious produce and have been one of a small group of people that welcomed the recent arrival of the first of its new hives of bees.

Yet, somehow or other, I’ve never quite got around to telling the story of how the walled garden itself came to be.

Or rather how it very nearly came not to be, because like so many other very old gardens, the tale of Ashtown Walled garden is a cyclical one of beginnings and endings, of bloom and decline, of brief splendour and renown as well as long grey years of neglect and obscurity.

It’s the story of a once wonderfully productive and very beautiful kitchen garden that, during its Victorian heyday in the 1860s and as part of the Under-Secretary’s 60-acre Ashtown demesne, was home to its very own vinery, pineapple pits, mushroom shed, fruit stores and gardener’s bothy, and which was particularly famed for the quality and variety of the fruit it produced. (The Under-Secretary for Ireland was the permanent head of the British administration in Ireland before 1922).

Yet it’s also the story of a garden that by the late 1980s was so overgrown and abandoned that most visitors to the Phoenix Park were unaware of its existence. Deserted, neglected, with its vinery and garden buildings long since disappeared, it had become a forlorn and forgotten place.

Why, one might wonder, this slow and sad decline? The reasons are many and complex, and have much to do with the far-reaching economic, cultural and political changes that began with the end of the Victorian era and accelerated with the birth of the Free State in 1922, when the walled garden became (briefly) the residence of the American ambassador before becoming, from 1929-1978, the home of the Papal Nuncio.

But if there is one overriding reason, it is that large walled Victorian gardens like that at Ashtown eventually became just too expensive and labour-

intensive to maintain. Instead they were slowly and quietly abandoned.

Like many others, Ashtowns walled kitchen garden would almost certainly have remained abandoned, had not the Office of Public Works, under the guidance of Chief Parks Superintendent Dr John McCullen, and Parks Superintendent of the Phoenix Park, Margaret Gormley, bravely decided in 2003 to embark on its complete restoration (at this point a team of FÁS workers had already carried out vital repairs to the walls). And so, rather like the mythical phoenix bird that perches at the very top of the Phoenix monument in nearby Chesterfield Avenue, Ashtowns walled Victorian garden began slowly to rise from the ashes of long decades of neglect – its rank overgrowth of weeds and brambles slowly stripped away, and its original paths, rectangular beds and vast herbaceous borders painstakingly re-established over a period of months by dint of a JCB, a mini-digger and very careful use of a laser level (for this work, OPW employee Brian McGlynne should take a particular bow).

Replanting finally began in spring of 2008 and has continued to this day, the result being an intricately designed, breathtakingly beautiful and richly productive kitchen garden that now attracts visitors from all over the world.

That a project of this scale has been carried out so successfully and with such apparent ease is to the enormous credit of the many, many different OPW staff who have worked on it, including the aforementioned Dr John McCullen and Margaret Gormley who so diligently researched and oversaw every aspect of the restoration work.

Great credit should also go to the tireless Declan Bermingham and the many trained craftspeople who have repaired its old iron gates, erected its fences, re-pointed its old brick and stone walls and carefully laid out and edged its neat gravel paths. For as Margaret Gormley points out, “Ashtown walled garden’s restoration was an opportunity to showcase the many different skills of all the OPW staff, because almost every part of this garden’s restoration was done in-house, a fact of which we’re very, very proud.” But its lengthy and skilful restoration aside, if ever there was a place that proves the old saying that any garden is really only as good as the gardeners that look after it, then it’s Ashtown.

Without the skill, knowledge and loving care of OPW gardeners Meeda Downey and Brian Quinn, as well as every one of their part-time or occasional helpers (particularly Paul Whyte), the simple fact is that this walled Victorian kitchen garden wouldn’t be anywhere near as beautiful or as productive as it is today.

That said, it should, and will, be even more beautiful when and if the final phase of its restoration- the reinstatement of the Jacob Owens vinery and the assorted garden buildings that once occupied the adjoining slip garden – is completed.

Having followed its restoration for so long, I hope very much that this happens and that it happens very soon.

Meanwhile, both my and Richard’s (the man behind the camera lens) sincere and grateful thanks to everyone at the OPW – especially the indefatigable, always patient and ever-accommodating Meeda and Brian – for all their generous help over the last two-and-a-half years. We’ll miss you.

For more on the history of Ashtown's walled garden, read An Illustrated History of the Phoenix Park, by Dr John A McCullen, which was published by Government Publications in 2009

The OPW’s Victorian kitchen garden is in the grounds of the Phoenix Park Visitor Centre, beside the Phoenix Park Café and Ashtown Castle. The gardens open daily from 10am to 4pm

Fionnuala Fallon is a garden designer and writer

ALLOTMENT AWARDS

Many congratulations to the winners of this year’s RDS Allotment Awards, which were announced on Tuesday, October 11th at a ceremony in the RDS. The overall winner of the Allotment Provider Award, which includes a cheque for €1,000 and an RDS Silver Medal, was Ards Allotments, Co Down, which is owned by Maurice and Judith Patton.

The Novice Gardener Award, which includes a cheque for €500 and an RDS Silver Medal, was jointly won by Jim Spain and Sean De Barra of Rathbeggan Lakes Allotments, while first place in the Experienced Gardener category (along with an RDS Silver Medal and a cheque for €500) was given to John Warren of Fingal Allotments.

Congratulations also to all the other award-recipients and runners-up, including Helena Kassie (Fingal Allotments), Deborah O’Loughlin and Catherine O’Shea (Pearse College Allotments, Dublin), Bernie Duggan and Etta Dalton of Piltown Allotments, Co Kilkenny, Helen Hume of Ards Allotments, Co Down, Zwena McCullough of Hydro Farm, Co Cork, George Kenny of Pearse College Allotments, Blessington Educate Together National School, Co Wicklow, and the Piltown Allotment Group, Co Kilkenny.