Cork Botanic Gardens
The Royal Cork Institution was set up in 1803 and received a Parliamentary grant of two thousand pounds per year. The Governors decided to establish a botanical garden, and in 1807 leased a 5.5-acre (22,000 m2) site at 'Lilliput', Ballypehane, Cork. In 1808 they employed Scotsman James Drummond (1787–1863) to lay out the gardens. In 1822 the garden was described (Power: Botanist's guide to the County of Cork, 1845) as having approximately six acres and a glasshouse in a walled enclosure of 1-acre (4,000 m2). Drummond was a noted field botanist during his time in Cork (and subsequently in Western Australia). The Government grant was withdrawn in 1830 and the Governors declined Drummond's offer to lease the gardens and opted to surrender the lease. The lands were then let to Fr. Mathew of Temperance fame for a cemetery which use still continues. The only current evidence of the gardens is a cedar tree.,
Read more about this topic: Historic Cork Gardens
Famous quotes containing the words cork and/or gardens:
“When Prince William [later King William IV] was at Cork in 1787, an old officer ... dined with him, and happened to say he had been forty years in the service. The Prince with a sneer asked what he had learnt in those forty years. The old gentleman justly offended, said, “Sir, I have learnt, when I am no longer fit to fight, to make as good a retreat as I can” —and walked out of the room.”
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)
“Within the memory of many of my townsmen the road near which my house stands resounded with the laugh and gossip of inhabitants, and the woods which border it were notched and dotted here and there with their little gardens and dwellings, though it was then much more shut in by the forest than now.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)