Roses and fuchsia are the two flowers that stand out most among Irish flora.
The rose is highly cultivated, nurtured, fertilized and carefully looked after. The sturdy fuchsia grows wild throughout the Emerald Isle, taking whatever the wind and weather want to throw at it and enduring all.
The two flowers could easily be symbols of the Irish character. Highly refined, artistic — the Irish speak in poetry, not prose, and they sing at the slightest opportunity. Never mind whether the singing is good. It’s showing up and doing that matters.
By the same token, the Irish are survivors. They endured hundreds of years of British rule, more benign in some places and times than others. It was, after all, Oliver Cromwell who, according to legend, banished the native Irish to the other side of the Shannon with the infamous command, “Go to Hell or to Connaught.” Meaning the native peoples couldn’t stay in their homes, for the English wanted the land.
The Irish love their gardens, and many of the pictures in this section come from estate or botanical gardens throughout the country.
Roses and fuchsia, the two bookends of Irish flora.
Wild violets growing in a stone wall and Queen Anne’s Lace are two common summer flowers in Ireland.Bog cotton is common in Ireland’s peat bogs. Though each bowl is scarcely the size of a pussy willow bud, ancient Irish used to gather bog cotton to make fabric.
The thistle and the rose seem more fitting for Great Britain, but both are common in Ireland as well.
Peonies and lilacs grow easily in Ireland.
Wild Irish roses and a wild flowering bush appear in rural and urban settings.
Honeysuckle and foxglove grow wild in Ireland. Foxglove, also known as the “husband killer” because it contains digitalis, was growing in the poison garden at Blarney Castle, one of the more interesting gardens in Ireland.Wild flowers grow in between the Burren stones.
Lady ferns, dahlias, and cabbage roses are common sights in Ireland.Tiny purple forget-me-nots and orange geraniums are common container plants in Ireland.
A small garden in Inistioge.
The hanging basket in downtown Kilkenny, left, is an example of the art form container gardens have become in Ireland. Right, clover crows outside Ross Castle in Co. Kerry.
The Gardens at Powerscourt
Powerscourt is a stately home nestled in the Wicklows. Its gardens date from 1844 and include a stone tower folly, a Japanese garden, and a walled rose garden.
A lotus in one of the garden ponds at Powerscourt.
Roses from the walled garden at Powerscourt.
Roses from the walled garden at Powerscourt.
Daisies offer relief from the formality of the Powerscourt gardens.
Debbie Reddin van Tuyll is an award winning journalist who has experience covering government, courts, law enforcement, and education. She has worked for both daily and weekly newspapers as a reporter, photographer, editor, and page designer. Van Tuyll has been teaching journalism for the last 30 years but has always remained active in the profession as an editor of Augusta Today (a city magazine published in the late 1990s and early 2000s) and a medical journal. She is the author of six books on the history of journalism with numbers seven and eight slated to appear in Spring 2021. She is the winner of two lifetime achievement awards in journalism history research and service.
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