Search Results for 'Byrne'

Nothing beats New Year cheer, and Connacht delivered a bucket load in one 80 minute performance on Saturday. That it came in the RDS against Leinster is all the more special.

The church of St Nicholas of Myra was first built c1320, making it 700 years old this year. It is the largest medieval church in Ireland and there has been constant Christian worship there since it was built. The chancel with its three windows in the south wall dates from the beginning, the nave, and the transept date from about a century later. In 1477 Christopher Columbus is believed to have worshipped here. In 1484, the church was granted Collegiate jurisdiction by which it was to be governed by a warden and vicars who would be appointed by the mayor and burghers of the town.

Mayo saw off Tyrone with ease in Carrick-on-Shannon on Saturday afternoon to set up a winner takes all clash with Armagh next weekend for a place in the Ladies Gaelic football Association All Ireland Senior Football Championship semi-finals.

I’m feeling a lot of love for Sorbus at the moment – they are such a super little tree. Our native Sorbus aucuparia is also commonly known as the rowan or mountain ash, which confuses people a lot – this is the kind of confusion that the use of botanical names, as opposed to common ones, helps to avoid. Anyway. You’ll know Sorbus aucuparia by its pinnate leaves – small leaflets arranged either side of a common stalk – and its abundant bunches of scarlet berries, visible from mid to late summer onwards. It’s a small, dainty tree, and this, as well as its long season of interest – bunches of creamy blossom in spring and good autumn leaf colour – make it a good candidate for a small garden. It’s also good for exposed locations, being completely unfazed by poor soil and strong winds.

It’s getting to the time of year when berries abound on plants both wild and cultivated. This is when they can be enjoyed in the ornamental garden and hedgerow – visually, at least. A few weeks further on and a cold snap will see them stripped off by hungry birds, but just now, as the season turns and the leaves begin to do likewise, the jewel like clusters still adorn the branches.

When Aidan Dunleavy calmly clipped the ball over the head of the advancing Jack Jenson to put Manulla 3-0 up after 29 minutes - it looked like his side could win this game by five or six or even more.

MIRROR PAVILION, the 7-metre cubed mirrored structure, with an LED wall, created by the Irish artist John Gerrard, is being erected this week in the Claddagh.

Last week we looked at some of the garden design issues facing those lucky enough to have a garden close to the coast. This week I’d like to share with you some of my favourite plants for growing in these challenging locations. The great benefit to living and gardening close to the sea is that frost is very rare, so you will get away with a wider variety of tender plants without winter protection than you would further inland. The downside, of course, is that strong, salty winds will be almost constant unless your garden is very sheltered, so plants need to be chosen with this in mind.

A coastal garden is usually a challenge, and being based on the western edge of our beautiful island, a lot of my clients have gardens by the sea. The biggest challenge is usually the wind – not just its strength and frequency, but the salt it carries with it which can be so harmful to sensitive leaves and flowers. Being the west of Ireland, rainfall is high and soil by the sea often tends to be sandy, full of rocks and low in nutrients. But there are few amongst us who don’t love the sea – and that can often lead to the biggest challenge of all – how to create a sheltered garden without losing your view of the rolling waves.

Since lockdown was lifted I’ve been travelling along the highways and byways on my way to clients’ gardens, and the wildflowers along the roadside verges never fail to take my breath away. In a ‘normal’ year, they are as much a marker of the seasons as the leaves on the trees, from wild primroses in April, to cow parsley and foxgloves in May, and the hundreds of nodding heads of the dog daisies in June. How precious they seem this year, when travel restrictions kept us confined, apart from daily walks, to whatever we had growing in our own gardens! There are still more to look forward to as summer unfolds, especially here in the Burren lowlands, with sky-blue scabious, aromatic wild marjoram and many others still waiting to flower, before the multitude of golden grass seed heads takes over in late summer.