ABSTRACT
In seventeenth and early eighteenth-century Ireland street trees were planted to change the country’s landscape and political identity. Street trees were quicker and easier to plant than buildings were to build. Their axial layout and single-species composition distinguished them rapidly from any surrounding native landscapes. Street trees were also particularly useful for converting military urban spaces, such as bastion walks, or defensive town walls, to more secular uses. The many walled Irish towns (such as Derry/Londonderry) that overlook Irishtowns, or Bogsides, from the confines of an elegant, elevated town wall allée, reveal the political power of an upright sycamore tree.
As with many landscape gestures, trees are useful in colonial or contested environments because they can colour such spaces positively in the aftermath of war. This paper will explore the role of trees in the Ulster plantation, the uses of street trees in re-purposed military landscapes and the continued use of plant material in framing difficult, commemorative and concealed agendas.
