Secret Gardens of the World - The Wildflowers of California
13.04.2011
UCC Library is currently hosting an exhibition marking O’Hara’s 40 years of exploring remote habitats around the world as a botanical sculptor, painter, photographer and conservationist. Travelling from his home and studio in Currabinny, County Cork, O’Hara has championed the cause of plant and insect conservation, believing that we must protect the lower end of the food chain if we are to have any hope of retaining the great diversity of flora and fauna upon which the higher forms of life – including ourselves – will depend. There is a world shortage of bioscientists of many disciplines, especially botany: O’Hara hopes that this exhibition will encourage students to consider courses that can lead to the discovery of new foods, fuels and medicines from the plants and microbes that surround us.

The exhibition continues until June 28th 2011.

the The focus of this show is on the Wild Flowers of California, and the collection of thirty watercolours that are part of an on-going commission from the renowned Santa Barbara Botanic Garden, which is dedicated to the conservation, management and propagation of California’s native plant species. Some of these flowers were originally discovered and named after botanists like Irishman Dr Thomas Coulter, who spent years exploring the flora of the arid deserts of California and Arizona in the late 1820’s. The Matilija poppy (Romneya coulteri), a huge, white, scented poppy that O’Hara studied in the same habitat where Coulter discovered it, is grown today at Fota in County Cork.

To celebrate the fact that Fota House is the first property to be taken into the care of the Irish Heritage Trust – something that was only possible because University College Cork had purchased the whole island estate of Fota in 1975 – Patrick O’Hara is donating artist’s proof prints of each of his California Wildflower Watercolours to the Trust, to be used to decorate rooms in Fota House as the restoration proceeds. He hopes that this will help continue Fota’s tradition of interest in international botany, horticulture and arboriculture.

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