Cover image for Dublin Inquirer print edition #104

With this illustration, I really wanted to get across the point that we can – and should – welcome nature into the city.

We can’t keep saying that nature belongs only in parks or the countryside. Native trees and meadows can help alleviate flooding, clean our air, provide food for urban-adapted wildlife and insects, and bring vibrant color into the city as autumn deepens.

In this illustration, I’ve incorporated rowan, hawthorn, and dog rose – their ripened haws, hips, and pomes adding color to a grey November street. I’ve also imagined ivy growing on the Spire; it’s in flower now, serving as a late-season food source for pollinators.

In my reimagining of O’Connell Street, I’ve placed a late-autumn meadow right at its heart. These annual meadows can sustain insects and birds year-round, even as they die back – a crucial part of their role in the ecosystem. As we march blindly into a climate crisis, the least we can do is listen to experts and make friends with nature, embracing its messiness, fallen leaves, and tangled branches.

We can’t keep asking farmers and rural communities to bear all the change; we must change too, and let nature into our city. Imagine if meadows and native trees connected Phoenix Park to Bull Island Nature Reserve and stretched out to Meath, the Wicklow Mountains, and the Dublin Mountains. That’s no less true in a city.

To quote E.O. Wilson, and his book Half-Earth, “The biosphere does not belong to us; we belong to it. The organisms that surround us in such beautiful profusion are the product of 3.8 billion years of evolution by natural selection.”

You can see more of my work at Enagh Farrell enaghfarrell.com or on my Instagram.