Digging deep for a greener city

Dublin's rapid development has centred on houses and office blocks, but is any effort being made to promote communal green spaces in our capital, asks Jane Powers.

A couple of years ago, the tallest things in Ballymun were the tower blocks. Now, in their final days, they are dwarfed by long-necked cranes and surrounded by a seething landscape of building sites. Smart new houses rise from the piles of blocks, sand and cement, bringing order, a metre at a time, to the ferment of activity. Neat streets are taking shape where previously there were inhospitable, windswept fields.

This is probably one of the few places in Dublin where the residents are happy to sacrifice green space to housing. In return, the remaining green areas will be properly landscaped, and the parks will be transformed beyond recognition. Both Coultry Park and Balcurris Park, which are three to four hectares each, will be redeveloped, "at a cost of about 6 million apiece", says Dublin City Council (DCC) park superintendent Gerry Barry.

"The same ingredients that are in a traditional park will be there: playgrounds, congregation areas, bandstands, water features and so on," he says, "but we'll be using modern materials, and modern design." Poppintree Park will also be revamped - while retaining its sports role - with improved playing fields and changing rooms.

Yet the largest park development in Dublin is not at Ballymun, but on the "North Fringe", the area in Donaghmede which is to accommodate more than 7,000 new housing units soon. The competition to redesign the 22-hectare Father Collins Park brought entries from 11 countries. The winning team, announced in December, was the Argentinian firm of architects, Abelleyro and Romero. Funding for the project will be raised mainly through planning levies, and the budget will be a minimum of €12 million.

"It will be very contemporary, very modern - a very urban park," says Barry. "We have nothing like it in Dublin. We hope it works. Well, it will have to work," he adds, "as it is going to be at the heart of a new community of 20,000 people. That will be their main playground." It will serve not just the human population, but local wildlife also. "Biodiversity was a major part of the brief," says Barry, explaining that new habitats will be created, while preserving those that are already there. The use of native trees and water will support a healthy insect population, and attract birds and other creatures.

The importance of fostering biodiversity has also affected the general maintenance of DCC parks. There is minimal spraying of weedkiller now, very little fertiliser application and no pesticide use at all, except in the rose garden at St Anne's, says Barry.

"From the point of view of biodiversity, we would be pretty aware of what the Germans and the Dutch would be up to: cutting down on chemicals, and trying to educate people in a different way. If something isn't neat and tidy, for instance, it's not that we are too lazy: it may be left semi-natural for very good reasons." Donncha O Dúlaing, DCC's heritage officer, further outlines the council's plans with regard to biodiversity: new management plans for five key parks, a new method of managing graveyards and a biodiversity plan to be undertaken next year - which will produce a habitat map of the city that can be layered into the planning maps.

All of this should please John Ducie, vice president of An Taisce, who would like to see more managing for wildlife in the city. "For some species the city is more important than the rural habitat, because of the intensification of farming." While every park should have congenial habitats, other spaces such as corners of car parks, roof gardens and even window boxes can play their part. "But we shouldn't have to rely on local government to do it," he stresses.

"You, me, the community, everyone must get involved." Ducie cites the case of New York, where derelict spaces are turned into community gardens, giving a sense of ownership of the spaces to those who use them. While Dublin has its own share of derelict sites, Jim Keogan, DCC's deputy city planning officer, says there are no plans to develop them as green spaces. He also says that DCC no longer has any allotments. "There was no demand for them. If there had been, they would have been kept."

The Dublin City Development Board's document, A Greener City, however, states that a "priority action" is "to protect and increase quality and quantity of flora and fauna in the city through green space, parks . . . community gardens and allotments etc." Yet DCC's Tom Gorman (the contact for information about the Greener Dublin Initiative on the council's website) says that there is no possibility of making new allotments, however much people want them. "If the land isn't there, they can't have them." But perhaps we have enough green space in Dublin already? We have over 2,000 hectares of it, composed of 750 public green spaces. According to Jim Keogan, "The actual ratio of open space to population density compares very favourably to equivalent European cities."

Gerry Barry agrees, up to a point, "The population of the city fluctuates during the day, but the official figure is about half a million" - which seems to give a very good ratio. But, he clarifies: "We have a lot of open space which is probably poor enough quality." He demonstrates this by comparing the well-appointed, 30-acre Herbert Park in Ballsbridge, to other similar-sized acreages "particularly on the north side". Some of these, he regrets, "are not doing an awful lot. They don't contribute a lot to the local community."

Worth noting also is that a full 709 hectares of Dublin's green space (about a third) is provided by the Phoenix Park - the largest enclosed city park in Europe. A report to be published shortly by An Taisce (prepared by Michael Smith and Kevin Duff), entitled Greening the City, is critical of the current status of the park, "the most under-utilised resource in the city". The report claims that Phoenix Park is not readily accessible to the public, is divided by "rat-run roads", and "much of its space has no designated use but appears as remorseless prairie or sports pitch".

The report suggests that we should look to New York's Central Park as a model for the regeneration of Phoenix Park. There the central roadway has been transformed into a space for skaters, cyclists and joggers: "Phoenix Park could learn much from this." Or maybe not, if its users are anything like those in certain parts of Boston, another east coast American city.

The so-called "Big Dig" - the burying underground of Interstate 93, the city's central artery - has left an unfamiliar silence in the North End, where traffic used to thunder overhead. "Too quiet," complains one resident, according to the Boston Globe newspaper. "It's like a morgue here."

"Fuchsia, lavender, little fences, white stones, white roses," the list is executed in careful writing. Other lists itemise "Robins (flying ones), bench with our name on it . . ." and "red roses, white roses, yellow roses, pink roses, bird feeder . . ." The bird feeder is illustrated, as are two birds: one perching, the other coming in for a landing. Also depicted on the large pink-bordered chart are green apples, orange carrots, smiling suns, stripy bees, spotty butterflies, green trees and native plants such as yellow flag iris and bluebell.

This optimistic document represents the dreams and hopes of the fifth and sixth classes in Virgin Mary Girls' National School in Ballymun. It is the "Wish List for Our School Garden", which is, as yet, two patches of bare soil, about 1 metre by 10 metres each, abutting the school yard. In a few weeks, planting will begin.

"We have to wait until the weather gets better," says 12-year-old Rebecca Kiely.

In the meantime, there is plenty preparatory work to be done, such as digging conditioner into the soil.

"We're going to do a map of the garden, and we'll plant it the way it looks on the page," says Rebecca's classmate, Leighann Doyle.

Rebecca agrees, and adds, "It'll be better off than just bare grass."

Once planted, the girls' garden will be both ornamental and productive.

The vegetable patch will grow crops such as lettuce, scallions and potatoes that can be harvested before the school year ends; a senses area will have furry plants, aromatic herbs and rustling grasses, while the ornamental part will have roses. And a native plant section will attract those busy birds, stripy bees and spotty butterflies that decorated the wish-list chart.

The project is being managed by Lynn Scarff, Environmental School's Officer with Global Action Plan (GAP), which is funded by Ballymun Regeneration Limited. But the funding for the garden - for the topsoil, tools and plants - came from Vodafone's Nature Fund. Scarff says while the garden is just a tiny thing, it is "a very visual greening of the area. You can see it from all the flats."

Vodafone's Nature Fund is seeking similar projects to support, but hurry, Saturday is the deadline. Click on: www.vodafone.ie