Its been a long time but today for the first time in many years I took a stroll through The Iveagh Gardens. These beautiful, dishevelled gardens, hidden south of St Stephens Green, between Earlsfort Terrace and Harcourt Street are usually empty, save for the handful of souls who know their secrets.
I first discovered them in College when you could Enter them from Newman House on the south side of St. Stephen’s Green. The most commonly used is I believe the entrance behind the National Concert Hall. The garden presents a very New York, Central Park effect, surrounded as they are, on all sides by what passes for tall buildings in Ireland.
There are no flowers, or flowerbeds (unlike the more garish, tarty Stephens Green) the walkways are practically unmetalled, with water pooling on the their surfaces after each fall of rain, and the prevading sensation is of an old english garden that has somehow gone to seed and run a little wild. Somebody has created a ridiculous stone ring of rigidly structured beds in one corner since my last visit, but thankfully none was in flower today to destroy the image of sweet, wet greenery, just after rain.
As the man says, Ace King, Check it out….
Copacetic 