The Holm Oak Avenue

Lord Ardilaun planted a windbreak in the 1870s that is still doing its job a century and a half later. Sixty seven holm oaks, evergreen and Mediterranean, line the main avenue and old estate boundaries of St Anne's Park, chosen because Dublin Bay's cold easterly winds off Bull Island would otherwise strip anything deciduous bare for half the year. Arthur Guinness, first Baron Ardilaun, inherited the estate in 1868 and spent much of his fortune turning it into a private demesne with formal gardens and grand tree-lined approaches, only for Dublin Corporation to buy the whole estate from his family in 1939 and open it to everyone. The oaks never got the memo that they were meant to shelter a private house: they shelter dog walkers, parkrunners and a Saturday market instead. Unlike most street trees, a holm oak keeps its dark, leathery leaves through the Irish winter, so the avenue looks essentially the same in January as it does in July, a rare piece of consistency in a park that changes with every season around it.