The garden was not lost to flood or fire but simply buried beneath centuries of urban accumulation, surviving as a ghost in the ground until archaeologists came looking for it in 1976.

The garden's existence was first noted by Maurice Craig in 1969, who drew on two of the most significant cartographic records of eighteenth-century Dublin to make his case. Charles Brooking's map of 1728 and John Rocque's more detailed survey of 1756, both invaluable documents for anyone trying to reconstruct how the city once looked, each show the garden in their respective depictions of the area. When archaeologist P. David Sweetman led excavations in 1976 specifically to test whether Rocque's map could be trusted at this level of detail, the ground answered clearly. Cobbled paths consistent with a formal or designed garden layout came to light, accompanied by late eighteenth-century pottery and a scatter of clay pipes, the kind of everyday material that accumulates wherever people spent time outdoors over a number of years. The finds placed activity at the site across roughly the latter half of the 1700s, suggesting the garden was in use well after Rocque recorded it.

Because the site sits within the wider urban landscape of Dublin South City rather than at a freely accessible rural location, there is no straightforward way to visit what lies beneath. The cobbled paths and associated finds are a matter of the archaeological record rather than anything visible at the surface. For those interested in pursuing the evidence further, Sweetman's 1976 report remains the primary published source, and Rocque's 1756 map, which was the catalyst for the excavation, is widely reproduced and can be consulted in facsimile through Dublin libraries and online archives. Comparing the cartographic depiction with present-day street layouts gives a reasonable sense of how dramatically the area has changed, and how much of what the mapmakers recorded has since been absorbed invisibly into the city.