Patrick Bowe looks at the history of Irish rock gardens, whose popularity helped democratise gardening as a domestic hobby
Ireland’s natural rock gardens on the Burren and in the Aran Islands, with their many attractive flowering plants, were the subject of increasing tourism towards the end of the 19th century. This may have prompted a surge in the creation of new artificial, yet naturistically landscaped, rock gardens as distinct components of gardens around the country (Fig 1). However, the enthusiasm for making a rock garden to simulate the settings of natural rockwork in which flowering mountain or alpine plants flourished started earlier in Ireland.
Artist Oliver Murphy’s interest in portraiture developed out of his deep fascination with faces, writes Róisín Kennedy
In IMMA’s exhibition of works by Camille Souter and Alberta Whittle, Sarah Kelleher finds a current of joy running through both artists’ practices
John Rainey appraises the varied sculptural practice of artist Blaine O’Donnell
