Michael Kelly's seed for an idea has blossomed into €1.45m food initiative

Not quite on the scale of the biblical Road to Damascus moment, Michael Kelly’s supermarket epiphany nonetheless sowed the seed for an idea that has blossomed into a €1.45m food initiative.

Confronted by a garlic bulb from China on the veggie rack, the Meath man was struck by the daftness of importing foodstuff easily produced here and decided there and then to grow his own.

“And so originally GIY (Grow It Yourself) was me and a group of like-minded people interested in growing our own food and eating it,” Michael said.

The notion of GIY turned out to have such wide appeal that yesterday, Grow HQ, the €1.45m GIY National Food Education Centre, set on three acres in the heart of Waterford City, formally opened its doors to those interested not just in growing, but cooking and eating their own produce — although not in the Ballymaloe sense of churning out professional chefs.

Incorporating an urban grow school, cookery school, café, farm shop, and food gardens, and employing 16 people, the headquarters of the GIY movement intends to offer 15 learning courses for adults and children over the next year, covering all aspects of growing and cooking food, nutrition, and sustainable living.

Once a month, it will host a “grow, cook, eat” day where visitors will transition from garden to kitchen, enjoying a home-cooked lunch along the way.

Workshops will range from €15 to €65 for a day-long experience.

The Grow HQ building, part of which is “growing” itself by way of a grass roof, houses a 65-seat café, a cookery demo room, and training room.

Michael said they could have chosen a “leafy lane in the countryside” as the location for the new HQ but that the city was a better option if they “wanted to inspire people on any kind of scale”.

Clearly, people have been inspired, given €1.45m was raised in a relatively short space of time through “everything from cake sales to philanthropic funding to crowdfunding”, says Michael.

Michael, who chucked in an IT job in Dublin to follow his dream in Waterford, said they hope to attract 250,000 visitors over the next five years as well re-skilling 17,000 people to grow and cook their own food. An urban foraging trail is also planned for development at the site in 2017.

Grow HQ will be open daily from 8am to 5pm. For more see growhq.org