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Exhibition – Stories from the Gardens
September 20 @ 10.00am - October 31 @ 4.30pm
The National Botanic Gardens are delighted to launch Stories from the Gardens a new exhibition from Friday 20th September to Thursday 31st October 2024.
This project affords us a unique opportunity to highlight the rich social history and cultural heritage a site like the gardens builds up over time, reflecting the incredible transformation the country has undergone in the same period.
In the last one hundred years alone the gardens have experienced many changes and recording the visitor story and experience has been overlooked in many ways in favour of recording its botanical and horticultural significance. The questions we are interested in exploring now are why people come to the gardens and equally what keeps them coming back? We would like to discover what visitors like about the gardens and what memories it evokes in them.
People’s connections to the gardens can have many different facets, perhaps a family member worked here over the years. For some it is their daily walk for others their Weekly stroll on a Sunday afternoon. Families also tend to come to the gardens to mark important milestones in their lives, whether that be celebrating communions, confirmations and weddings or remembering those they have lost, providing a focal point for local communities in the area.
Many people are connected by study or employment at the gardens, some visit as part of a horticultural society or gardening group or just because they are keen gardeners or admirers of some of the seventeen thousand plant species growing in the gardens and visit throughout the year to observe their annual transformations.
Botanic Gardens are not just simply beautiful spaces, they are so much more to a wide range of people; from the ordinary person on the street who visits to enjoy the plant displays and collections, to those with an avid interest in plants, who regularly attend the extensive events programme of lectures, workshops, talks and tours as well as our special and very popular offerings at Halloween and Christmas with our Eco Christmas Market.
The Gardens are also an important centre of conservation and research – the National Herbarium houses a collection of 600,000 dried plant specimens, rare books and botanical art collections and library as well being the location of the new national seedbank database. All sorts of people from all walks of life converge on the gardens due to their common and varied interest in plants with horticulturalists, scientists, ecologists, environmental organisations, sharing the space with artists, writers, historians’ performers, students and teachers alike.
We have made a call out to visitors to find out why and how people relate to the gardens and have received submissions ranging from admiration of our plant collections and the beauty of the gardens, to important events that happened to ordinary visitors on significant historical dates, tales of children letting their imagination lead them to many an adventure on a hot summers day and stories of first and everlasting love which began in the gardens. The glasshouses are also huge draw for their architectural resonance and historical significance forming a major part of many peoples’ experience.
The exhibition will run over a 6 week period in the gallery and all are welcome to visit. It will feature our visitors’ stories in written format as well as recordings, both audio and visual, along with ephemera representing the gardens, the stories themselves and their specific era.
We will also still be accepting stories throughout the duration of the exhibition, through our online portal, or in person in the gallery.
There will also be a tour accompanying the exhibition… booking at https://www.eventbrite.ie/e/stories-from-the-gardens-tickets-1010498888377