Audit to light path for protecting Annes Grove biodiversity

Minister of State with responsibility for the Office of Public Works (OPW), Patrick O’Donovan, has highlighted the organisation’s ongoing work at Annes Grove Gardens during Biodiversity Week.

The OPW has been working over the past year to enhance biodiversity management through the development of site-specific audits at ten locations around the country.

Annes Grove Gardens was among the sites at which the audits were conducted; the audits will inform biodiversity priorities at the sites for the coming years.

In terms of biodiversity, the estate is notable for the River Awbeg which flows from North to South through the grounds and is protected under the Blackwater River (Cork/Waterford) SAC, and two proposed Natural Heritage Areas (pNHAs) border the site to the north Awbeg Valley (below Doneraile) pNHA and to the south Awbeg Valley (Castletownroche) pNHA.

Enhancement measures in the report outline ways in which the local habitats and fauna can be protected and enhanced while also continuing the use of the site as a historical house and gardens, a public amenity, and a working farm. These include:

study and measures to protect fish in the River Awbeg (to be carried out and advised by IFI)
management of floodplain meadow including occasional earlier cut to increase plant diversity and decrease domination of Meadowsweet and protect the grassland from invasive species

Minister O’Donovan said:

“Safeguarding biodiversity is vital for maintaining ecological stability, supporting human wellbeing and combating climate change. Furthermore it is an ethical responsibility of ours to protect biodiversity to ensure the preservation of the natural world for future generations. The compilation of these audits will provide an excellent insight into the status of biodiversity at some of the most iconic sites in the care of the Office of Public Works. These audits comprise a thorough and comprehensive body of work and demonstrate the commitment of the OPW in promoting and enhancing biodiversity at our heritage sites. They will complement and further inform the excellent work in protecting biodiversity that has been ongoing for many years at sites all around the country.”

The audits are an initiative of the OPW’s Biodiversity Action Strategy which was launched last year.

In its Biodiversity Action Strategy, the OPW has identified 48 specific actions across five themes that it will undertake to embed biodiversity into all areas of its working brief.

The OPW is one of a number of government bodies working to support the delivery of the National Biodiversity Strategy.

Please contact the Press Office at pressoffice@opw.ie if you have further queries or would like to request an interview with a spokesperson.

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Notes

Annes Grove is a 190-acre historic estate with 30 acres of renowned gardens located near Castletownroche, Co. Cork.

The estate is situated above the River Awbeg in a landscape of woodland, river and glen reminiscent of poet Edmund Spenser’s epic poem The Fairie Queen, written in nearby Kilcolman Castle. The oldest part of the gardens is the Walled Garden, originally laid out in the eighteenth century, while the Woodlands Garden holds some of the earliest rhododendrons introduced to Ireland. They found their way to North Cork when Richard Arthur Grove Annesley, who inherited the estate in 1892, became a sponsor in the early twentieth century of plant-hunting expeditions in East and South East Asia. It was he, too, who took advantage of the limestone cliffs providing Mediterranean conditions as well as the pockets of neutral and acid soil to create an exotic, sub-tropical Riverside Garden amid a jungle of bamboos, gunnera, skunk cabbage and Himalayan primulas.

Annes Grove was known as Ballyhimock when building began here in the early seventeenth century and belonged to the Grove family. When the heiress Mary Grove married Francis Charles Annesley, later 1st Earl Annesley, in 1766, the estate’s name became ‘Annes Grove’ and remained in the Annesley family until it was donated to the State by Jane and Patrick Grove Annesley in late 2015, with a special handover ceremony held in Dublin Castle with then OPW Minister Simon Harris in January 2016.

Plan your visit to Annes Grove at heritageireland.ie/placestovisit.

The list of Biodiversity Week events being hosted across the country at OPW sites can be found at www.heritageireland.ie.