Irishtown Nature Park is where I walk my dog, Apollo. There are seats around the hill there and I find the one looking east to Dublin bay from the South Wall red lighthouse over to Dun Laoghaire to be the best location.

Before we go home, we sit and watch the ships come into the Liffey and the Stena HSS take off for Holyhead as the kestrels hover. It is such a good experience I take as much time at it as the morning allows even when it’s raining.

My favourite place is also the favourite place of hundreds of other walkers. It would amount to name-dropping if I mentioned some of the well-known people who walk, run, cycle and just sit there.

A survey of the numbers of walkers taken in 2002, found that around 800 people walk out there daily in reasonably mild weather, while up to 2000 walkers or more do the round trip on fine weekends and bank holidays.

The height above the sea creates the advantage of looking down on the main channel coming in from the cockle lake, and all kinds of creatures can be seen in this channel, seals, great northern divers, little egrets, curlew, godwit and of course the Brent geese and the three local herons.

Irishtown Nature Park is situated on the former city dump, now rather grandly called the Poolbeg Peninsula, with a backdrop to the north of the ESB Poolbeg power station and the new Waste Water Treatment plant.

You can find one of the main paths to it from Pigeon House Road and the other from the stile entrance point at Beach Road, in Sandymount. The park is about 20 acres (8 Hectares) and is a fine example of how a former landfill site could be transformed into an ecological park with a focus on habitat creation and nature conservation.

The project received a Ford Conservation Award in 1987. The emphasis was on the development of wild flower meadows and naturalised copses and plantations, using mainly native species to complement the existing heath land-type vegetation that has developed naturally on parts of the site.

Numerous graduate studies and postgraduate work in botany and mycology, the study of fungi, have had the fieldwork carried out on the Nature Park.

On the open grassland areas of the park orchids and St. John’s wort are to be found in July and August and the plants there attract a large range of uncommon coastal butterflies.

Nature conservation requires techniques quite different from that generally practised in urban parks. Topsoil is an essential ingredient for the growth of cultivated plants but weeds quickly establish and thrive. Currently Japanese knot weed, a garden and park menace is establishing vigorously on the North face of the park as well as at the Eastern end.

The progress of ecological development which culminates in forests takes a considerable number of years. The intention at Irishtown was to provide these varying habitats within as short a period as possible and this involved the planting of trees and sowing wild flowers throughout the site, the basic ingredients being nutrition and a satisfactory structure for the development of plant roots, especially for trees.

As reported in ‘NewsFour’ recently, in the fever created after the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, some locals were moved to install a small memorial stone to Chico Mendes at the very top of the hill in Irishtown Nature Park. A circle of trees planted then remains somewhat stunted.

The management of Nature Parks might be seen as simply ‘doing nothing’ but the Parks Department have to mow meadows at particular times and remove the cuttings. In contrast to other grassed areas in landscaped parks which are mowed, the grass cuttings aren’t removed. In carrying out these works at Irishtown Nature Park, the park keepers have been conscious of not disturbing the most important areas which are attractive both visually and ecologically, so the southern and eastern slopes are undisturbed with most of the planting in the centre of the site while it is on the northern and western boundaries that the greater part of tree planting was done.

I go to Irishtown nature Park frequently as I live in Sandymount. However, some users of the park refuse to take their cans and rubbish home with them after drinking parties which can be very annoying. However, the park is recognised by most local residents as a unique amenity where a bracing coastal walk can be enlivened by songbirds in full voice.
Opposite: John and Apollo.