BARBARA O'NEILL:THE LANDSCAPE architect Barbara O'Neill, who has died aged 80, left a rich legacy of work in Canada and Ireland.
This includes the park centre building at Glenveagh national park in Donegal, for which she won the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) president’s medal in 1987.
Other work includes landscaping at the Brú na Bóinne visitor centre, Co Meath, Ogham walks at Tullow, Co Carlow, and the Castletroy Hotel, Limerick, and the Cascades fountain in the Iveagh Gardens, Dublin.
In addition she worked on many landscape restoration projects, particularly along river banks and in the grounds of historic buildings.
She also was involved with many planting schemes adjacent to motorways, an early example being the Glanmire bypass, Co Cork.
Opposed to the introduction of plant species from abroad, she used cuttings from stocks on-site in order to preserve the existing mix of species.
Barbara O’Neill was born in Clarecastle, Co Clare, in 1930, one of six children of James O’Sullivan and his wife Maureen (née O’Loghlen). After living in various parts of the country, the family eventually settled in Monkstown, Co Dublin.
She attended the Ursuline convent, Waterford, and later studied architecture at University College Dublin, where she met her future husband Anthony O’Neill.
After completing their primary degrees, in 1954 they went to London to study for their masters. Barbara specialised in landscape architecture, while her husband opted for town planning.
In 1957 they emigrated to Montreal, where she set up a landscape office. She was responsible for many large gardens, commercial and residential developments along the St Lawrence river and public parks in Laval, a new city that was part of the greater Montreal metropolitan area.
O’Neill took a particular interest in play and sought to enhance the opportunities for children to explore space to which end she designed large labyrinths, specialised play areas and cycle paths.
Such was the extent of the couple’s contribution to urban planning in Montreal that the city named a street, O’Neill Drive, after them.
After she developed lupus, a systemic auto-immune disease, and because of the adverse effect of Montreal’s climate on the disease, the couple returned to Ireland with their five children in 1967. They lived in Castletown, Co Wexford, for two years and then moved to Monkstown, Co Dublin.
In addition to the architectural commissions she undertook, O’Neill engaged in various ancillary activities.
She was a founding member of the Quebec Landscape Institute and also a member of the ASLA.
A committee member of the Tree Council of Ireland, she assisted with the initial development of the Balrath woodland in Co Meath.
She was a founding member of the Irish Landscape Institute and a member of the judges’ panels for the National Garden of Ireland and Tidy Towns competitions.
In response to her ill-health, she helped to found the Irish Lupus Support Group, in an effort to promote public awareness of the disease which mostly affects women and is quite prevalent in Ireland.
She was active in organising national and European conferences in Dublin and played a key role in launching the group’s website.
O’Neill was one of the first woman jurors in Ireland and was proud to perform this civic responsibility.
Her husband Anthony, daughters Jennifer, Sadbh and Isolde and sons Shane and Eugene survive her.
Barbara O’Neill: born September 6th, 1930; died October 18th, 2010.