Peter Donegan reveals community-led urban park designs in Ireland

Peter Donegan’s designs for Ireland’s newest urban park have been officially launched

A reimagined urban park located in Lusk in Dublin is offcialy open to public

Landscape

Read More: Lusk Peter Donegan urban park

26 February 2026

Peter Donegan has recently unveiled the designs for a new urban park located in Lusk, North Dublin, Ireland.

The overgrown laneway once used by the British Army to access Remount Farm, where horses were trained and prepared for service across the British Empire, has been reimagined by award winning landscape architect.

Donegan was commissioned as the creative mind to give rebirth to the space and alongside design assistant – Elif Öztürk, bringing significant design expertise to the community led initiative.

The designs logic was to create a landmark and a source of pride for the people of Lusk. An alluring street side view that would ‘catch your eye’ eloquently, throughout the seasons and remain a beautiful invitation and welcome to all.

“The inspiration came a little from wanting to do (again) my very best for the beautiful people of a town in North Dublin. A park, not mine, but theirs, and albeit urban, that one could almost brag about. A flagship of an oddball space just now, but eloquently and wondrously beautiful of the future,” Donegan said.

On the 21st February 2026 the designs for Lusk’s first urban park were officially unveiled to the community at a public meeting in Lusk Cultural Centre.

Initially, visitors are greeted with a swathe of mixed evergreen planting, scented, native and flowering allowing the rusted corten gates to pop, slightly yet fade, whilst also providing a sense of inner privacy for visitors and locals, whilst the dappled colour tones and muted stone meets locally sourced wood, drawing a calmed sense of place, where one might sit for a while, and converse.

To the rear nestled proudly within the landscape and sited just behind the raised growing beds, the meeting room provides backdrop to the final bespoke designed canopy and introduces a magnificent back view over the entire park, all the while, enveloped by an entirely different family of plants.

The middle areas soft pink and corten structures and natural paving is lovingly hugged by select roses, a nod to local grower – Gys Petrus “Laddie” de Jong (rest in peace, 1932–2025), a champion rose breeder and local personality. This drawing the eye from the roadside though the park, subtly distracting from the shortest point of Ireland’s newest and narrowest park, a space for community to meet.

A competition will be launched among the towns art students to design a permanent piece for the new Lusk Urban Park. With a grant from Lusk Tidy Towns the installation will celebrate their 45 years and honour the extraordinary work of the original committee whose efforts helped to shape the town.

Peter Donegan is one of the most celebrated garden designers in Ireland and internationally, recognised for his innovative and community-centred work. He is a multi-award-winning landscape architect named among the top 100 UK garden designers. Donegan has won medals in Australia and France at Château de Péronne, home to Europe’s largest war museum. Most recently, he won the European International Landscape Design Award for his design of Mercy College’s Garden in Sligo – the first ever Irish school garden to receive such recognition. Following this success, he will go on to represent Europe at the World Landscape Architecture Awards.