The RHSI is founded with the purpose of encouraging the love and sharing the knowledge of gardening in all its forms, while fostering environmental awareness and building a sense of community. The inaugural meeting takes place at the Rose Tavern, Donnybrook, Dublin, as the Horticultural Society of Ireland with Francis Caulfeild, 2nd Earl of Charlemont, as its patron and Francis Hetherington as its chairman. The new society holds its first flower show on Easter Monday 1817, and flower and fruit show on August 18, 1817. After a number of shows in the intervening years, the society declines, and is re-established with a new committee in 1830. By 1848, the Society becomes known as the Royal Horticultural Society of Ireland.
The RHSI’s membership is made up of both professional and amateur gardeners from all walks of life who are united by a shared passion for gardens, plants, and growing. The members enjoy access to expert insights through the Society’s printed journal, monthly talks, regular bulletins, and visits to over 60 affiliated Partner Gardens across Ireland and abroad.
The RHSI acts as a central hub, proudly affiliated with horticultural, gardening and floral art societies and clubs across Ireland. These connections help support a nationwide exchange of knowledge, experience, and enthusiasm. From heritage landscapes to urban balconies, the RHSI celebrates the richness of gardening across Ireland. The RHSI remains committed to supporting those who grow, teach, study, and care for plants—helping to ensure that gardening continues to thrive for generations to come.
The RHSI celebrated its 200 anniversary in 2016.
In November 2023, the RHSI announces an extraordinary general meeting to consider changing its name by dropping “Royal” from the title.
For more information about the Royal Horticultural Society of Ireland, visit their website at https://rhsi.ie.
Pim is born in Dublin on September 21, 1909, to a Quaker father and English mother. She is a twin, but her brother dies. She is sent to the French School in Bray, County Wicklow, before being sent to Lausanne, Switzerland to finishing school. She then goes on to Girton College, Cambridge to study modern languages, intending to graduate with a degree in French and Italian. Her mother’s ill health and ultimate death in 1940, causes her to return to Ireland to look after her and she remains there taking care of her father, who dies in 1958, and an older incapacitated brother, Tom.
But these are good years for Pim with time to write, and during the 1950s and early 1960s she writes no fewer than seven novels, mostly crime fiction in a lighthearted style. During this time, she is a member of Irish PEN. She is also an avid amateur horticulturalist and writes for the magazine My Garden. Her more serious undertaking is a biography of the Irish plant collector Augustine Henry, The Wood and the Trees: A Biography of Augustine Henry (Macdonald, London). Her brother Tom dies in an accident in 1964 leaving Pim with no further responsibilities. This allows her to spend significant time researching through Henry’s papers. The book is published in 1966.
When Pim has completed the biography, she focuses on philanthropy. She dedicates her time to the Friends Historical Society and is particularly interested in helping out in the traveller community. She supports a young group of children and their grandfather. They bring her considerable joy. The Royal Horticultural Society of Ireland awards her the Society’s Medal of Honour and makes her an honorary life member for her services to the study of horticulture.
In Pim’s later years increasing deafness makes socialising difficult for her, but she still keeps up with the world of books, the theatre and painting. She reads The Irish Times from cover to cover every day, and her reading includes the Bible, Marcel Proust (in French) and the stories of Roddy Doyle.
Pim’s deafness finally forces her to move into sheltered housing in Dublin where she dies on December 16, 1995.
From a Unitarian background, Praeger is raised in Holywood and attends the school of the Reverend McAlister and then the nearby Sullivan Upper School.
Praeger works in the National Library of Ireland in Dublin from 1893 to 1923. He co-founds and edits The Irish Naturalist, and writes papers on the flora and other aspects of the natural history of Ireland. He organises the Lambay Survey in 1905-06 and, from 1909 to 1915, the wider Clare Island Survey. He is an engineer by qualification, a librarian by profession and a naturalist by inclination.
Praeger is instrumental in developing advanced methodologies in Irish botany by inviting Knud Jessen, the acclaimed Danish expert in Glacial and Post-Glacial flora, to undertake research and teaching in Ireland. This leads to the establishment of ‘paleoecology‘ as a distinct field of study in Ireland.
A vice-county system is adopted by Praeger dividing Ireland into forty vice-counties based on the counties. However, the boundaries between them does not always correspond to the administrative boundaries and there are doubts as to the correct interpretation of them.
Praeger dies on May 5, 1953 and is buried in Deans Grange Cemetery, Dublin, together with his wife Hedwig. His younger sister Rosamond Praeger is a sculptor and botanical artist.
(Pictured: Portrait of Robert Lloyd Praeger by Sarah Cecilia Harrison, National Museums Northern Ireland)
A supporter of Benjamin Disraeli‘s one-nation conservatism, Guinness’s politics are typical of “constructive unionism,” the belief that the union between Ireland and Britain should be more beneficial to the people of Ireland after centuries of difficulties. In 1872 he is a sponsor of the “Irish Exhibition” at Earlsfort Terrace in Dublin, which is arranged to promote Irish trade. Correcting a mistake about the exhibition in the Freeman’s Journal leads to a death threat from a religious extremist, which he does not report to the police. In the 1890s he supports the Irish Unionist Alliance.
After withdrawing from the Guinness company in 1876, when he sells his half-share to his brother Edward for £600,000, Guinness is in 1880 raised to the peerage as Baron Ardilaun, of Ashford in County Galway. His home there is at Ashford Castle on Lough Corrib, and his title derives from the GaelicArd Oileáin, a ‘high island’ on the lake.
Between 1852 and 1859, Guinness’s father acquires several large Connacht estates that are up for sale. With these purchases, he becomes landlord to 670 tenants. With his father’s death in 1868, Guinness continues in his father’s footsteps, purchasing vast swaths of Galway. When his acquisitions are combined with those of his father, total acreage for the Ashford estate is 33,298 acres, with Guinness owning most of County Galway between Maam (Maum) Bridge and Lough Mask.
Like many in the Guinness family, Guinness is a generous philanthropist, devoting himself to a number of public causes, including the restoration of Marsh’s Library in Dublin and the extension of the city’s Coombe Lying-in Hospital. In buying and keeping intact the estate around Muckross House in 1899, he assists the movement to preserve the lake and mountain landscape around Killarney, now a major tourist destination.
In his best-known achievement, Guinness purchases, landscapes, and donates to the capital, the central public park of St. Stephen’s Green, where his statue commissioned by the city can be seen opposite the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. To do so he sponsors a private bill that is passed as the Saint Stephen’s Green (Dublin) Act 1877, and after the landscaping it is formally opened to the public on July 27, 1880. It has been maintained since then by the Commissioners of Public Works in Ireland, now the Office of Public Works.
Guinness dies on January 20, 1915 at his home at St. Anne’s, Raheny, and is buried at All Saints Church, Raheny, whose construction he had sponsored. Those present at the funeral include representatives of the Royal Dublin Society, of which he is president for many years, the Royal Horticultural Society of Ireland, the Irish Unionist Alliance, and the Primrose League. His barony becomes extinct at his death, but the baronetcy devolves upon his nephew Algernon.
seamus dubhghaill 