The trees were planted inside a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, which is a type of enclosed farmstead built during the early medieval period, roughly between 500 and 1000 AD. Tens of thousands of these circular enclosures survive across Ireland, but many have been so altered by later land use that their original form is difficult to read. Here, the planting has preserved the interior space while quietly obscuring it.

The enclosure is modest in scale, with a diameter of twenty-four metres, defined by a low earthen bank standing just thirty centimetres above the surrounding ground. It sits on the edge of a steep north-east-facing slope that drops down towards the Delehinagh River, a position typical of ringfort construction, where a natural fall in the land added a degree of defensive advantage and drainage to what was essentially a protected farmstead. The bank itself, worn down by centuries of weathering and agricultural activity, would once have stood considerably higher, likely topped with a timber palisade or dense thorn hedge.