I love the nonconformist vegetation of Dublin city, from the opportunistic buddleias that plant themselves high up in chimneys, to the occasional, brave tomato that seeds in a warm pavement crack. But I have never seen anything like De Courcy Square in Glasnevin, where the central railed rectangle is in a class entirely of its own. Instead of the standard fare of city squares - smooth green grass, bedding plants and shrubs - this patch of ground is stuffed full of vegetables. Rows of onions (some tidily laid out to dry), large blocks of potatoes and cabbage, columns of broad beans and peas, lines of lettuce (cos, iceberg and butterhead): here they are, smack-bang in the middle of a quadrangle of neat red-brick houses. And although the grinding sound of city traffic is always present (the busy Finglas Road clatters by one entrance) a peculiar quietness pervades this vegetable square. Here, often the only movement comes from the occasional cabbage white butterfly flitting about in search of an unnetted leaf on which to lay an egg, or from a chatty troupe of sparrows dust-bathing in the fine soil, or from a scraping hoe battling against wayward weeds.
The food-filled third-of-an-acre is actually a parcel of three or four allotments, managed by Dublin Corporation. Paddy Slattery and his wife Ita are growers here, and he remembers there being plots in the square for over 40 years. "They're there for as long as I can remember. I'd heard they were there since the first World War, but I'm open to correction on that."
Paddy Slattery may well be right, because in order to increase wartime food supplies, Dublin Corporation set up a number of allotment schemes in 1917 - although it is not clear if De Courcy Square was among them. In that year a Land Cultivation Committee acquired 16 areas which were divided into 1,194 allotments of "one-eighth of a statute acre" each, according to records held in the Dublin City Archives. The next year another 10 areas, divided into 914 allotments, were made available.
But the Corpo were several years behind the Vacant Land Cultivation Society, chaired by the Revd Joseph McDonnell, a Jesuit priest. This charitable organisation obtained land throughout the city, giving "plots at cheap rents to casual workers to enable them to supplement their meagre earnings". By 1917 they had 487 allotments on the go in 13 locations including Sherry's Field, Cork Street; The Ranch, Inchicore; Bullfield, Glasnevin; Finglas Bridge and Beach Road, Sandymount.
I don't know what happened to the Vacant Land Cultivation Society, but over the years the number of Dublin Corporation allotments has waxed and waned. In 1925 there were only 334, but during the Emergency there were 7,413, of which 2,000 were acquired in 48 hours in 1941 by Emergency Powers order. Unemployed men - in wartime or peace - could take part in a special government scheme whereby they paid one shilling, instead of one pound, and received from the Department of Agriculture free seeds, manure, and a loan of implements. These concessions were not merely to relieve the hardship of being between jobs. A report presented to the Dublin City Council in 1946 relates impatiently: "It is well to make clear that the Government's declared intention in starting the scheme was to enable idle men to remain physically fit and so be enabled to undertake manual work when offered." The scheme did not provide for "old age pensioners, delicate people or persons with scanty means".
But back to the present day. Glasnevin's De Courcy Square is the last area of allotments in the Dublin Corporation jurisdiction. It's almost too much work for the few people who cultivate it, especially with this wet summer's fearsome weeds advancing at a rate faster than any man or woman can hoe. Nonetheless, the Slatterys, their neighbour Peter Egan, and the others - including the two ladies with the lovely gladioli and roses - are devoted to this square. "We all dig in," says Paddy.
Ringed with clipped privet shrubs, euonymus, hebe and variegated poplar - "some people don't like those," Paddy confides - and brightened by sheets of opium poppies, marigolds and willow herb, it exerts its own magic. It even has Slattery talking of poetry as he looks at a snowstorm of white Shasta daisies: "If Wordsworth could see those with their heads dancing, he could write a poem."
Diary dates: Friday August, 21st
Sunday 23rd, 3-day course in flower painting with Patricia Jorgensen at Altamont, Tullow, Co Carlow. Fee: £185 per person sharing, or £100 for non-residential participants (includes lunch). Enquiries: 0503-59128.
Friday September 25th Sunday 27th, Northern Ireland Heritage Gardens Committee conference at Malahide Castle, Co Dublin: "The Edwardian Garden". Speakers include Terence Reeves-Smyth, Belinda Jupp, John Anderson, Charles Nelson and other garden specialists. Fee: £95 sterling (includes teas, coffees, lunches and dinner). Enquiries to Belinda Jupp, NIGHC, PO Box 252, Belfast BT9 6GY. Telephone: 0801232-668817, fax: 0801232-666506.