National Botanic Gardens
Victorian glasshouses and gardens where the Great Famine potato blight was first identified.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to the National Botanic Gardens opens on August 20, 1845, when curator David Moore found blackened, rotting potato leaves in a bed here, the first record of a disease nobody in Ireland had yet named. You'll hear how Moore rejected the common explanation of bad weather and instead knelt among the plants to trace the true cause, and about the gardens' founding in 1795 on land that once belonged to a poet. Look up at the curved iron and glass of the Palm House, built by the Dublin ironmaster behind Kew's own palm house in London.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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