Planting in public spaces is a thorny issue
URBAN AND ROADSIDE landscaping is a peculiar thing. It affects us even though we may be only dimly aware of it. For instance, garage forecourts with scraggly phormiums and their lumpen companions, the ho-hum hebes, put a subtle damper on my mood. On the other hand, not far from where I live, the gorse and blackthorn planted along the M11 – now in full yellow and white bloom – make the southerly escape route from Co Dublin most spirit-lifting.
Designing a plant scheme for a public space is almost an invisible job. Yet, although those plants may be melting into the background, they are the subject of more strictures than most of us would imagine. They must be able to resist fumes, vandals and cocked dog legs; and they must be easily maintained – which immediately rules out nearly all garden perennials, roses, climbers and many other favourite plants. Public plants often need to fit into a limited space, while positively shaping and framing it, and they must not have invasive roots or sap-leaking leaves (actually, it’s not the leaves that are dropping the sap, but the back-ends of the aphids that have just eaten it). And then, of course, that killjoy duo, health and safety, must be satisfied. It’s a wonder, really, that anyone can make something green and appealing on a difficult and limiting concrete canvas.
One such canvas is that at Dundrum Town Centre in Dublin 16 – a place I usually visit with a shopping-allergic husband, who just wants to get the hell out of there the second he arrives. So, up until a week or so ago, my forays to the outer edges of the building had been few and frazzled, and I had done no more than barely register the interesting body of water outside the main entrance, in the "Town Square" area. But a recent visit – sanshusband, but with one of the people responsible for the landscape design, Feargus McGarvey of Mitchell + Associates – is far more revelatory. The space is overseen by two venerable trees (how could I have missed them on previous visits?): a majestic purple-leaved beech, not yet wearing its foliage, and a fine blue cedar. These woody giants are the remnants of an earlier garden, that of the Mill House (now a restaurant).
"If you imagine this place without the beech or the cedar," says McGarvey, "you lose two important things. One is simply the visual softening of the urban landscape, and the other is the historical component." Dundrum, although now dominated by modern apartments and the shopping centre, was once a place of houses, gardens and pasture, with properties such as Airfield House and Dundrum Castle nearby. If you raise your eyes beyond the concentration of concrete, steel and glass, the beech and the cedar are echoed in the distance by stately trees from earlier centuries – a neat way of reaching back in time from this contemporary zone. Raise your eyes again (ignoring the clamour of shopping, food and people), and you will see three recently-planted trees, bare-branched, yet with surreal, mauve flowers. These are Paulownia tomentosa, and McGarvey is mad about them: "It is unusual to see them in Ireland, but they should be planted much more: the branch structure is open and beautiful, and the flowers are a bonus." The still-youthful specimens are planted in raised, oval beds, just the right height for sitting on, and clad in mosaic-work by artist Orla Kaminska, who also collaborated with Mitchell + Associates on the graceful serpentine seats at the Dún Laoghaire ferry terminal. Dundrum's egg-shaped planters were inspired by the drumlins of the midlands and, like miniature drumlins, they break up and slow down the movement of people to a more leisurely pace.
The centrepiece of this area is the old mill pond, now transformed with water spouts that dance to music every 15 minutes. The fountains are great fun, but a little Louis Quatorze for me. I would have preferred a tranquil sheet of water, which would have attracted ducks that might have nested among the pretty marsh marigolds and bulrushes on the margins. But ducks defecate – and that, as you have probably guessed, is a health and safety issue.
The millpond is fed by the Slang River, now culverted underneath the centre. On the far side of the buildings, you can glimpse it eddying between interesting concrete baffles, which help aerate the water for the fish farther down. The walls of the culvert are softened with Rubus tricolor, and a shrub layer of dogwood, hypericum and the rose 'Canary Bird' – one of the few roses tough enough for this kind of environment ( Rosa glaucais another). The planting area by the roadside here is confined, but McGarvey has found an oak ( Quercus robur f. fastigiata'Koster') slim enough for the job. "It's a bit classy, that tree!"
And so it is. So also is the mini woodland across the road where there is more oak, beech and lime, with a mid canopy layer of sumac ( Rhus typhina) and hazel, and a ground covering of periwinkle and more Rubus. These may be narrow strips of planting, but they are masterful – softening the edges of the hard surfaces, providing a home for wildlife, and acting as a marker of the earth's seasons.
jpowers@irishtimes.com