Community gardening: Growing together

Community gardens have probably been around as long as humans have been growing food, but nonetheless they are a still a relatively recent development in Ireland.

Most people are familiar with allotment schemes where a piece of land, sometimes public but often private, is divided into plots which individuals rent in order to grow their own fruit and vegetables.

A community garden, however, differs from an allotment in the sense that it is a piece of land gardened by a group of people for the benefit of the group and the wider community.

Community gardens are generally community-managed projects that have been developed in response to a lack of green space, making them most common in urban settings. Most are sited on what was previously unused local authority land and provide an immensely valuable resource to neighbourhoods by transforming contested or underused spaces into an oasis of lush growth, edible delights while providing an invaluable connection with nature in concrete surrounds.

Community gardening initiatives have an important, long-term role to play in food security and in Ireland, they have been popping up steadily over the last decade, with interest really accelerating in the last few years as more and more people become concerned about the quality of food being sold in supermarkets and interested in the many benefits that growing food brings.

Apart from being a place to grow organic food, community gardens provide open space and healing centres for people with mental and physical disabilities, as well as opportunities for recreation, exercise, therapy and education. Community gardens represent one of the best ways to make fresh, healthy food available and affordable to low-income earning individuals and families and they can continue to do this for years, at very little cost.

Shanakill/Rahoonane Community Organic Garden in Tralee, Co Kerry, is Ireland’s longest-running Community Garden, (as far as I know), and this year they are celebrating their 10th anniversary, with celebratory events listed on this page. The garden was set up in March 2003 in a local authority housing estate in Tralee and over the years has developed into an oasis of growth and green, with trees, flowers, a wildlife pond, vegetable and fruit beds and a large polytunnel that acts as classroom space for the formal and informal training in organic horticulture that has run in the garden since the start. The garden is used by community groups, families and individuals from the local and wider community, and has been the inspiration for community gardens around the country.

A new further development in 2010 featured the opening of allotments in conjunction with Tralee Town Council, and these have enabled individuals and families living in Shanakill to take on their own plot and really begin growing their own. Shanakill is only one example of the many thriving community gardens around Ireland. To find out more and to access support and information in general on community gardening in Ireland, check out http:// communitygardennetwork.ning.com/.

This website gives you lots of information on setting up a community garden in your own area.