The ‘Bots’ marks the seasons in our busy city

The tallest tree in the Botanic Gardens was declared dead recently. A Giant Redwood, it had a stature and presence surpassing that of fellow residents. Even the magnificent magnolias or wondrous water lilies couldn’t hold a candle to it.

A mere 200 years old, it could have had another 2,500 years ahead of it. It had been unwell and quite possibly unhappy for some time, though. Its branches, weakened and brittle, had been sheared off, posing as they did a safety hazard to staff and visitors in strong winds. And so it had just stood there, exposed and limbless, a shadow of its former self, its sole function that of a perch for passing seagulls. On Sunday walks, even I, lacking in the most rudimentary botanical knowledge, could see that it was not doing well.

The death notice came as a bit of a shock though. There were a flurry of texts from fellow strollers, with a link to an announcement on the RTÉ website. The tree had become something of a celebrity in the area. A sad, somewhat morose celebrity to be sure, but a celebrity nonetheless. It had been there for generations after all and had seen its neighbours come and go. In the past few years, it had found itself positioned opposite a new and impressive display of ferns – that most prehistoric of plants, around since the time of the dinosaurs and beyond.

The “Bots” holds an important place to those of us lucky enough to be living nearby. In a busy, bustling city, it’s a means of marking the seasons. There’s the post-Christmas appearance of the snowdrops and crocuses, the splash of yellow engendered by the daffodils, and then the progression to tulips and roses, dahlias and so much more.

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Not so long ago, I got talking to a visitor from the US, while wandering around one of the glasshouses with a friend. She could not believe that entry was free. “I’d pay €50 to come in here,” she said. She was only in Dublin for a few days and had persuaded her husband to spend two of those days in the gardens. As it turned out, she knew a thing or two about plants, being on the committee of some botanical gardens in California. “But nothing like this,” she said. “Absolutely nothing like this.”

And, of course, it’s not just us humans who appreciate the gardens. A while back, a small group were hanging around the gates, waiting for them to open – just a scattering of us locals and two ducks.

The ducks were larking about. Staring up at the gates, scuttling away from the gates, flapping about in a nearby flower bed.

When they finally opened, one waddled in and waited inside for her mate. He was still doing whatever it is ducks do in a flower bed and she vocalised what was pretty clearly a duck version of “Hey, I’m in!”

At which point, he took notice and duly joined her.

If time allows, a circuit of some or all of Glasnevin cemetery is the perfect complement to a visit to the Botanical Gardens. The gate between the two has been open for years now, so it’s possible to move, in a matter of seconds, from exposure to some of the most luminous forms of existence on the planet to a stark reminder of their inevitable demise.

One side life. The other death.

My office had its Christmas party in the cemetery a few years ago. A graveyard might not immediately come to mind as a venue for a festive get-together but this was in the throes of Covid. Our small group positioned itself around two large outdoor tables and dug into soup and sandwiches, tea and coffee, everyone with their coats pulled up tight.

Glasnevin Cemetery has its famous and not so famous graves, of course. The search for these graves necessitates the stepping over of grassy mounds and boundary markers, and for a while there, I found myself apologetically saluting whomever was positioned en route. “Ah, they don’t mind,” a friend said when she noticed what I was doing.

The resting place of poet Gerard Manley Hopkins took a while to locate. And for the first few visits I couldn’t for the life of me remember a line or phrase from one of this poems, learned decades ago now in convent classrooms. And yet the heartbreaking conclusion of Brendan Behan’s The Confirmation Suit emerged from those same depths when standing at the grave of the author and playwright.

I’m not sure what will happen to the remains of the Giant Redwood. Will they cut it down in the evening dusk? Will a stump remain? An infant of two centuries, bereft of a future, staring over at the ferns, with the ferns, bastions of all that life experience accumulated over millenniums, staring right back.

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