No, it’s not on behalf of the Irish famine victims, though you would be forgiven for thinking so. After all, four million people, half the population of Ireland at the time,died in those dark years when English landlords turned starving men, women and children away from their well fed doors and evicted families who had worked the land they were living on for generations before the English even thought of exploiting the best land the country had to offer.
Nor is it in honor of those who died fighting for Irish freedom in one or the other of those ill fated battles throughout the years. There are, indeed, memorials to the Martyrs scattered across the south and west of Ireland, where independence is a trait well valued.
No. This garden was planted on behalf of the 343 firefighters who died in the line of duty when the twin towers fell in New York City on 9/11 in 2001.
Kathleen Murphy was a nurse who grew up on the Southeast coast of Ireland, near Kinsale. She spent the last 30 years of her life working as a senior staff nurse at Lennox Hill Hospital in New York City. 
She lost friends and loved ones that day, and she treated survivors who would never be the same.
The experience so affected her that, even though she was not a rich woman, she planted one sapling for every person who died on this bit of her land called Ringfinnan, overlooking Kinsale harbor, plus one for Father Michael Judge, who was Chaplain of the New York Firefighters Association, and a close personal friend.
It is a lonely place and the experience of looking across the acreage at row after row of trees honoring the lives of courageous men and women is quite moving.
It is also sobering to see how many of the names are Irish in origin. 
Kathleen Murphy choosing to build a Garden of Remembrance in Ireland for the lost firefighters of 9/11 began to make sense.
Her garden has become a shrine for families of the deceased who come here to visit, leave photos or memorabilia, and pray for their lost beloved ones.
Many of the trees wear tags bearing the name of the person they were planted in honor of. Those are the lucky ones. Their bodies were identified in the carnage. 
There are many more trees carrying no identification because the bodies of those missing were never found, creating a strange legal and emotional vortex for their survivors. 
There is a master list of all of the known and presumed dead at the garden, however. In some cases, family members have hung their own identification on an untagged tree, giving specificity to the memory of someone dear to them.
343 women and men, who died senselessly in an event which will be marked by its’ 15th anniversary this year.
Blessings to them all.