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DBN and the Irish Hunger Memorial at Battery Park City
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Irish Hunger Memorial Garden
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Managing the Irish
Hunger Memorial at Battery Park City, New York.
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A view from the hotel across the road at
the memorial. 
The following is a step by step guide to the management of
Irish Native Wildflowers at the Battery Park City Authority - Irish Hunger
Memorial Garden
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Dear Staff at the Battery Irish Hunger Memorial,
The following is my on line
advice and updates of how I suggest you should manage the garden, In all cases
check with Landscape Artist/Designer Gail Wittwer-Laid whom Mr. Brian Tolle
has told me to confirm every detail with, on his behalf. Each update
will also be send to The Special Assistant to the President of Battery city
Park authority for the record.
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Tom and Eileen, Battery Park City Horticulture Staff,
caring for the Garden on the Memorial
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DBN request help with a search for
gardeners with gardens near Manhattan, who will host in their own garden a
genebank of all species found on the Irish Hunger
Memorial. the city authority has simply not got the space
for collections of plants to restock the memorial from. The selected
candidate would receive a free plant collection and be part of the
team, caring the
living memorial.
Once established the plants can be grown in
safety and used to replant the Memorial's garden when species die or need
replacing. The genebank gardeners can log on to Species
Data Pages to see how to grow each plant variety. Each species
grown in the Memorial Garden will have a special section attached to the
Species Datapage for the Memorial garden if the advice differs to that
offered to our Irish customers. Not all the species are currently
present on the data pages but will be hosted as required.
We should be contacting the Media/Press in USA
and Ireland to get support for the concept of the genebank.
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 Process, I
will continue growing Native Irish
Sourced Wildflowers in Ireland according to Gail Wittwer-Laird's species
list and collect seed or prepare plants for testing by Department of
Agriculture Ireland for Phytosanitary
tests. to export to USA.
The plants will be then sent directly to
the holders of the genebank in the USA, to be grown on until ready to
plant at the memorial. The Gardeners and Horticultural staff can then
collect the plants from the genebank and plant them into the garden.
Visit link Battery
City Irish Hunger Memorial Gene Bank Project. |
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Following our informal meetings on the
15/16/17 July 2002. I have hosted the following
web pages which are the first of many. The information will
address the questions and answers required by required by the Battery City
Parks Horticultural Staff and the Landscape designer Gail Wittwer-Laird.
The concept is that I will offer advice on line as per species and that
the species data pages
can be referred to for individual advice per each species as it requires
attention.
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Gail Wittwer-Laird and I have visited and
emailed each other, I am delighted to work with Gail who has created a half on an
acre of Ireland across the Atlantic. There are many problems
associated with planting and maintaining the garden.
Rarely do landscape designs bring people to
tears. It is an honour to work with Gail and Brian and I hope to be
able to continue to provide any recommendations, seed or plants required
to keep the memorial looking at its best.
'A public visitor to the garden,
bent down on his knees , kissed the auld' sod and cried, "I never
taught I would see home again" then he kissed the rock from Co
Mayo.'
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Brian Tolle has stated that he wishes that
the Irish hunger memorial continues to grow as a living landscape. I
have suggested that we use the memorial to help find some of the remaining
missing apple trees from the first national collection of apple trees in
Ireland. The latest national collection is due to the work of an
American lady, Mrs. Anita Hayes, of the Irish Seed Savers now living
in Ireland. Her work is based on a 1940's Irish apple collection and
most of the lost old Irish Apple tree varieties have been found. But
there were many more species never recorded in the original collection and
I hope to be able to help Anita Hayes save a few more. I hope you
can help as well. Click here for more
We appeal to the Irish-American
press to help get this campaign started. |
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