Garden Digest: Events to help you to enjoy your green spaces

Here are some ideas on what to do in the room outside right now

• Social and Therapeutic Horticulture educational and experiential day takes place on Saturday, September 24, at Festina Lente Old Connaught Avenue, Bray A98 F702, from 9.30am-5pm. The event is to learn more about the physical, psychosocial and mental well-being benefits of Social and Therapeutic Horticulture (STH) The day will start with an overview of the trends in the growth and development of STH, followed by a presentation by well-known STH practitioners from across Ireland. The Association of Social and Therapeutic Horticulture Facilitators Ireland (ASTHFI) will give an overview of their work to date and there will be an open panel discussion. The afternoon will allow participants to engage in a variety of different STH sessions for 45-60 minutes each. Tickets are €55 including lunch and numbers are limited. See eventbrite.ie.
• ‘The life of Charles Frederick Ball (1879-1915), botanist and horticulturist’, a talk by Seamus O’Brien and Brian Willan, takes place at the Lecture Theatre, National Botanic Gardens, Glasnevin, on September 28, from 3-4.30pm. This will tell the story of CF Ball’s early years in Loughborough in Leicestershire, his apprenticeship and training at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, his arrival in Dublin in 1906 and his subsequent work at the Botanic Gardens, and his time as editor of the journal Irish Gardening from 1912. CF Ball married Alice Lane, the youngest daughter of a well to do Anglo-Irish Dublin family. When war broke out he enlisted in the Royal Dublin Fusiliers and was then sent out to Gallipoli to take part in the Suvla Bay landing. He was killed on 13 September, 1915. Seamus O’Brien is head gardener of the National Botanic Gardens, Kilmacurragh. Brian Willan is a former publisher, a grandson of Alice Balle.

• Got an item you’d like to see in Garden Notes? Email [e-mail]

CLIMATE & SUSTAINABILITY HUB