The National Botanic Gardens were the first place in Ireland where the potato blight was identified, in the 1840s – fitting for a garden set up in 1795 to study useful plants rather than pretty ones. Two centuries on it’s free to walk in, one reason it’s the country’s second most visited free attraction. The 19.5 hectares run along the floodplain of the River Tolka at Glasnevin, 3 km north-west of the city centre, and the reason to come is glass: Richard Turner’s Curvilinear Range and great Palm House, among the finest Victorian glasshouses anywhere.
If you only have an hour, spend it in the glasshouses. Everything else – the rose garden, the rockery, the arboretum – is a bonus.
History
The Dublin Society (later the Royal Dublin Society) was granted the land by the Irish Parliament in 1795, and set its first directors, Walter Wade and John Underwood, to studying agricultural, medicinal and dye plants. They planted the double row of yews still known as Addison’s Walk. The site passed into State care in 1877 as the Royal Botanic Gardens, and took its present name after the Free State was founded in 1922.
The architecture is largely the work of one man. The Dublin ironmaster Richard Turner built the Curvilinear Range (1843) and the great Palm House (1862); both have since been restored and both won Europa Nostra awards for the work. The gardens also hold a grimmer place in Irish history as the first location in the country where Phytophthora infestans, the blight behind the Great Famine, was identified.
The glasshouses
The glasshouses are the centrepiece, and the reason the place works as a wet-day option: warm, roofed and open year-round.
- Great Palm House – 65 feet of Victorian iron and glass over tropical palms, orchids and dense subtropical planting. The obvious first stop.
- Curvilinear Range – Turner’s linked, curved bays of temperate and alpine species. The ironwork is as much the point as the plants.
Some of the smaller houses close periodically for restoration, so if there’s one you’ve come specifically to see, check the website before you travel.
The outdoor gardens
Beyond the glass, the grounds break into distinct areas: a rose garden built around a sundial, a rockery that’s been here since the late 1880s, a herbaceous border, a bog garden of Irish peatland plants, and an arboretum of mature specimen trees. The sensory garden, opened in 2003, is planted for touch, sound and smell, and is the easiest corner for visitors with limited sight or mobility. The bandstand dates from 1894.
Tours, the tearoom and the herbarium
Guided tours run daily at 11.30am and 3pm; they cost €5 on weekdays and are free on Sundays (noon and 2.30pm), meeting at the sign in front of the Palm House. Group bookings are €2 a head. If you’d rather go at your own pace, the free Guidigo app has three self-guided routes – garden history, river ecology and the glasshouses.
Inside the visitor centre are Anna O’Leary’s Twelve Portraits of botanists, from Linnaeus and Mendel to Darwin and Sir Frederick Moore, and the National Herbarium’s collection of dried specimens, still worked on for taxonomic research. The gardens hold more than 300 endangered species, six of them extinct in the wild. The Garden Tearoom beside the centre does tea, coffee, cakes and hot lunches with a view over the lawns.
Getting there and practical bits
- By bus – routes 4, 9, 83 and 155 stop on Botanic Road, a short walk from the gate.
- By DART – Drumcondra station is about a 20-minute walk.
- By car – on-site parking is limited: €1 an hour for the first two hours, then €2. It fills quickly, so come early or come by bus.
- By bike – there’s a rack in the car park, but cycling isn’t allowed on the garden paths.
The visitor centre has a café, shop, lecture theatre, exhibition gallery, toilets, free Wi-Fi, baby-changing and wheelchair-accessible toilets, and a lift to the upper level of the Palm House. A new walkway links the gardens straight into Glasnevin Cemetery next door.
Opening hours
| Season | Weekdays | Weekends & Public Holidays |
|---|---|---|
| Summer (Mar–Oct) | 09:00–17:00 | 10:00–18:00 |
| Winter (Nov–Feb) | 10:00–16:30 | 10:00–16:30 |
| Closed | Christmas Day |
Nearby
Glasnevin Cemetery is now a few minutes’ walk through the connecting gate: the burial ground of O’Connell, Parnell and Collins, with the O’Connell Round Tower visible from the gardens. Phoenix Park, one of Europe’s largest city parks, is a short hop west.
The best-value visit is on a Sunday, when the guided tour is free. The next best is a cold, grey day, when the Palm House stays tropical while the rest of Dublin doesn’t.