Convent Gardens

Convent gardens were an integral part of daily and religious life. The Presentation Order was an enclosed order for much of its history. This meant that the convent garden was the only outdoor spaces the nuns were permitted to use. The gardens were laid out with pathways for exercise and meditation, but also used to grow flowers for the altars and vegetables for the kitchens. 

Top right image: Plan of the garden at Presentation Convent, Tralee
Above: Although the two paintings of convent gardens don’t depict the gardens of Presentation Convents the gardens of the Presentation Sisters would have been very similar.

Account books from the early years of the convents show that the nuns employed paid gardeners to tend the grounds, plant trees, lay gravel paths, grow flowers and maintain the high stone walls surrounding the convent and garden. Some of the convents had sufficient land around them to operate a small farm with livestock and crops.  

Above: Although the two paintings of convent gardens don’t depict the gardens of Presentation Convents the gardens of the Presentation Sisters would have been very similar.
Above: Convent Garden, Wexford, 2023

Brother Serenus, a Cistercian from Mount Mellary in Co. Waterford, laid out the convent garden attached to the Clonmel convent to thank the Sisters who provided food and bed clothes when the Cistercians moved to their monastery in 1833.

Above: Flowers in bloom in the garden of North Presentation Convent, 2023
Above: Convent Garden, Thurles

“The sister given charge of the garden ‘will see that the garden is provided with all the seeds and roots necessary to render it both productive of vegetables, and ornamental in the way of flowers.”

‘Directory for the Religious of the Presentation Order’