Garden gathering grows up after 5 years

After nearly a year of ‘Gatherings’ up, down, and around the country, it’s hard to believe the original Gathering is only a week away.

This will be the fifth annual GIY Ireland Gathering and, as appropriately described last year by Mark Diacono of the infamous River Cottage, it is something akin to a ‘Glastonbury for Growers’.

This two-day festival, part of the Waterford Harvest Festival, makes learning about every aspect of home-grown food accessible and includes talks, debates, demos, workshops, Q&A sessions, and more. Whether a novice, expert, or just exploring where your food comes from, this is the place to get inspired and informed.

It is the perfect platform for indulging your vegetable-growing passion at the end of a glorious growing season and meeting fellow enthusiasts from around the country.

The theme of the GIY Gathering 2013 is ‘food empathy’ which encompasses a deeper understanding of food, where it comes from, how it is produced, and the time and effort required. Food empathy nourishes an understanding of seasonality and the lifecycle of ‘growth-decay-growth’, which is so central to all life on this planet.

This theme embodies the work of GIY, a movement made up of interconnected people and community food-growing groups. GIY is committed to empowering people to grow their own food and experience the change that happens in their lives when they do this.

Obvious changes include more exercise, fresh air, better and safer food, and more. A subtle deeper change, which is perhaps a little harder to quantify, is that of food empathy.

GIY believes that by promoting food empathy, real seismic change can happen, which, in turn, will have real impact on the food chain, human health, and the health of the planet. Growing your own food certainly creates a deeper understanding of food, where it comes from, how it is produced, and the time and effort involved.

Acquiring food empathy has a positive impact in all sorts of unexpected places — food empathetic people eat healthier, recycle more, and waste less. When they engage with the food chain, they make different buying decisions, purchasing more seasonal, local and organic food. So, the simple act of growing some food, and acquiring food empathy, can make both people and the planet happy, healthy, and more sustainable.

Significantly, food empathy is not necessarily connected to how much a person grows — a person growing some salad leaves on a balcony is as important as the self-sufficient smallholder. Food empathy doesn’t care that your carrots were stubby or your spuds were small — it’s just enormously impressed that you tried to grow something at all. GIY endeavours are focused on encouraging a vast number of people to give growing a try and giving them the support they need to do it successfully.

By doing so, they are helping to create an army of people who have food empathy and who together can, quite literally, change the world.

This year’s GIY Gathering marks five years of community, shared knowledge, and a dedication to growing. GIY has come a long way in five years — from the original meeting of less than 100 ‘GIYers’ in Waterford City Library, it has grown into an international movement of over 50,000 people in Ireland, the UK, and Australia.

Yet again, this year’s Gathering has a truly international feel, bringing together some of the world’s leading vegetable gardening experts, advocates, writers, and gurus of food growing from Ireland and the UK for two days of inspiring and practical debate, discussion, talks, and workshops.

Speakers include Foodopoly author Wenonah Hauter, ‘no-dig’ guru Charles Dowding; River Cottagers’ Mark Diacono and Steve Lamb; BBC presenter Alys Fowler; Guardian food writer Tom Maggoch; author Joy Larkcom; Darina Allen; RTÉ growing gurus Ella McSweeney, Fiann O’Nuallain, and Kitty Scully; food writers and critics John and Sally McKenna; and urban rooftop gardeners Andrew Douglas and Paddy Kearney.

Dates: Saturday, September 14: 10am-5:30pm Sunday, September 15: 10:30am-3.30pm Venue: Tower Hotel, Waterford City Weekend Cost: €30. Saturday only: €20. Sunday only: €15 To book tickets or for more information, check out http://exa.mn/t4.