How a Tipperary community garden is bringing people together
A community garden in Tipperary is helping to grow relationships as well as produce, offering locals a chance to learn something new, make new friends or to get back in touch with nature.
The Carrick-on-Suir Community Garden is located on the grounds of the town’s library, and is supported by Tipperary County Council, the Carrick-on-Suir Men’s Shed, the Lions Club, and members of the garden’s own committee.
The Irish Independent spoke to Ray Daly, Pat Callaghan, Terry Flynn, Tom Coleman, Michael Miklas and Saffron Wells, some of the members of the committee about the garden, which officially got going earlier this year.
Leigh Dowling, librarian at Carrick-on-Suir library explained that the garden brings people together with a common goal.
"As the library, we’re just the facilitators for the volunteers ... it’s the lads that have had all the input into it over the last couple of years,” he said.
"It’s the groups, it’s the likes of the Lions Club who have donated money to the garden, the Men’s Shed then took that money and bought timber and built all the raised beds, and everybody’s involved in putting up the greenhouse,” Mr Dowling added.
The previous librarian in Carrick was also instrumental in getting the garden established at the library, which is one of only two libraries in Ireland that has a community garden attached to it.
Ray Daly, a member of the community garden group and the Lions Club said that when he joined the community garden, there were people in the group who he had never met before.
"There were three people at the table here who were strangers to me, but I got to know them since, and the other three of us around the table, we knew each other, and everybody’s after bringing something to the table,” he said.
“We were a bit shy about actually forming a group, but to have the direction from the librarians was great, and then once we got out to working on the garden, I think people came into their own with regard to the skills they brought,” Mr Daly added.
This year, crops in the garden were planted a bit too late, but the group has big plans for the coming year.
"From a gardening point of view, it was a bit late,” Mr Daly said.
“The first crops weren’t planted until May, but on the other hand, when you look back on the whole year, I think it was a major success,” he added.
The community garden has a greenhouse, fruit trees, and raised beds, growing crops like garlic, strawberries, squash, cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers, lettuce, as well as herbs like rosemary and parsley. The garden also has a wildflower section, which it plans to expand next year.
Pat Callaghan said that while the garden was in its early stages this year, the group hopes to develop it further in the coming years.
"It’s in its infancy, but we hope to develop it further, but there’s a good lot that happened this year,” he said.
The centrepiece of the community garden is the greenhouse, which was donated by the Suir Valley Community Based Drugs Initiative. Service users from the initiative can also go and use the garden to help with their rehabilitation.
"They had a greenhouse that they hadn’t used, and we erected it on the site here,” Mr Callaghan said.
Some of the produce that was grown in the community garden was donated to the library so that visitors could take items home with them, while other items were used by the members of the group themselves.
"We normally meet on a Friday, but we’re on a rotation for watering in the greenhouse in particular, so if you were in doing watering and there was something ripe, you could take it away, and Leigh would have taken stuff in that was ripe that wouldn’t be as good on the Friday,” Mr Daly explained.
Saffron Wells, the group’s resident horticulturist, said that the garden is a good way of raising awareness about how accessible growing your own food is.
"I think it’s very important to try and increase the awareness of the garden and it’s a really important demonstration to people about growing your own food and getting people connected with the land and where their food comes from,” she said.
"What we have is quite small but it’s showing people what you can do in a small space,” she added.
The community garden group have been getting the local schools involved too, showing the children and teenagers in the area where food comes from.
“Next year after the spring, it’ll be a great opportunity to bring the primary schools in, there’s three primary schools very close to here,” Mr Callaghan said.
"We have had great interest from the Green Schools,” Leigh said. “So I’ve been in contact with one of the teachers there for next year about bringing the schools in,” he added.
The garden is open to anyone in the community who wishes to get involved, while there is space for more raised beds for anyone who wants to plant their own things there.
“There has been people who’d come in, while I’d be working I’d see people coming in and out and I’ve talked to people out there,” Leigh said.
"I talked to one girl out there who said ‘yeah, I come in once or twice a week as I’m passing’,” he said.
"There are plans for extra beds, so if somebody wanted to take a bed or half a bed, they can use it,” Mr Callaghan added.
"It’s a social thing too, it’s not just gardening, it’s just meeting up for people as well,” he said.
Michael Miklas, one of the groups members said that the garden is a good way to get to know people.
"Besides the growing of the plants, it’s growing the interrelationships, because we all come from different ways of life,” he said.
The group also harvests rainwater from the roof of the library to water the plants with, as well as having a compost pile for all the waste it generates.
There are also two memorial trees outside the Carrick-on-Suir library, one representing Darkness into Light and those who have lost loved ones to suicide, and another to Suir Valley Drugs Initiative.
“We have a good cross section of people from different groups and we’d like to get more people in from the community,” Mr Callaghan said.
"It is definitely a social aspect as well,” Saffron said.
"To be able to talk about shared interests like gardening and nature,” she added.
The community garden is making good use of land that would otherwise be left unused, the group added.
"The fundamental thing here was that there was public open ground that very few buildings have, and they got the idea of making good use of it,” Mr Callaghan said.
"It’s very open so people passing by are always looking in to see what’s going on,” he added.
Everyone involved the garden has a role to play, Leigh said, adding that the project wouldn’t have been a success without community involvement.
"It doesn’t happen without the effort in that everybody has played a part in it. You can see all the raised beds, we have nine of them in total at the moment, and the plants that have been donated by Michael and Saffron,” he said.
The Carrick-on-Suir community garden is open to everyone in the community, with the group meeting at the library on Friday mornings.