On May 10, 10:25 am, "Westprog" wrote:
jl wrote:

...

Manufacturing, farming, and the
monies being made out of harvesting the peat bogs were main causes.
(Alas Bord Na Mona, so much for greed). Blaming the British,
(English) is merely being paranoid and specious. Britain had more
than enough forests of her own to build all the ships she wished!!
As far as I'm aware Britain got most of it's marine supplies from the
Baltic countries - that trade certainly is mentioned quite frequently
in various history books.

I wonder if anyone wrote a poem or song about Irish trees being cut down.
That would be interesting.


There's definitely a sort of 'horticultural aesthetic' prevailing in
Ireland which doesn't seem to accomodate trees much.
By and large, the norm for most people in the countryside is to have
no trees at all in your garden or near your house.
It's almost as if there's a desire for your house to be as clearly
seen as possible when you look at the landscape. Like the house is
used as a very visible statement, and you want people to get a clear,
treeless view of it. Same for the garden, so often there's very few
shrubs or trees, and it's all just grass.
That's very different from England and many other countries, where
people often either plant or preserve trees to create privacy and want
trees in their immediate garden and nearby land anyway. In so many
cases Ireland people seem to choose just to have nothing in their
garden except grass, right from the garden wall to the house.
Even my Irish neighbours in London have gone for the same thing,
ripped everything out and put down grass from fence to fence, plus put
in quite a lot of paving.
They do have just a few plants right up against the fence, but I don't
think a tree was ever likely to be included in the plans.
They don't even have kids, so don't need the space for them to play
football etc. They just like it that way. Fair enough of course, but
I'm just making a note a different aesthetic way of looking at gardens
which I find quite interesting. It's almost as if the mostly treeless
landscape has found a way into people's idea of what is normal, or
what they want to see from their window.