We, a family of six, live in the Irish countryside and enjoy forest gardening, growing vegetables, renovating and adding more spaces to our home. This blog follows our endeavours as we always strive to live by the reduce, reuse and recycle motto.
Broken tiles, glass jars and bottles, old car tyres and straw are just some of the materials we find useful and will write about here.
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thegreenerdream 
What an amazing garden! I liked your photograph of ‘London Pride’ and am including it in my blog with a link and comment to yours. I look forward to seeing and hearing more about your progress. I am gardening under different circumstances but really like your ideas. I hope you will visit.
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Many thanks for your kind words! I went straight to visit your blogs. Lovely photographs and very interesting places to look at. Thank you for sharing our photograph of the London pride. It has really taken off this year.
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Hi myself and some friends wish to use the wall you made and installed in supervalu to write messages of support to syrian community – we’re going to head out there at 2pm today – please get in touch we’re looking to reach out to this community and would like to write messages on your wall – – please let us know if you mind
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Hello David. Many thanks for getting in touch. The wall was only in Supervalu for one day and filled up with messages then. Now it is installed in the Hotel where the Syrians will be staying. I’m sorry that there is no more space left for writing on it . If you wish to volunteer or help out in any way you can contact the “Welcome to Roscommon” movement of Facebook for more information. ❤
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Hi,
I’m a small scale farmer in the Northwest. I raise rare breed sheep and goats. I noticed you were involved with the Syrian refugee community in Ballaghadereen.
I’m looking to do something good, worthwhile and inclusive si my produce. I had been thinking, perhaps, of some sort of food event partnering with the Syrian community in Ballaghadereen, where I would provide some of my livestock. Perhaps as an end of Ramadan celebration.
I may have small scale sponsorship for ingredients and food from a private donor.
Really, I just wanted to contact the community, make an offer, and see what they might like to do, and what resources they might like to do it.
I can arrange for the meat to be halal.
If you have any suggestions about who to contact, or how to make connections, or if it’s even a good idea, I’d really appreciate any insight you have.
My name is keith, and if you put that in front of hawthornhillfarm.com you’ll have my email.
Im enjoying your site and posts too. Keep up the great work.
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Hi Keith. Great to hear from you. I think your idea for a food event with the Syrian community sounds good. The person to contact is Paula Flannely who is the events organiser at the EROC in Ballaghaderreen. We are involved in the Ballaghaderreen Community Garden and we have some of the residents of the EROC coming along to garden and share a cup of tea with us each week. On Sunday next, the 17th of June the grand opening will take place so if you are around the area do pop in sometime between 2 and 4 pm. We are located close to the Supervalu car park. We could discuss your idea further then. If you can’t make it on Sunday I can email you on some contact details for Paula Flannelly. I’m so glad you like the blog too. Many thanks. Maria
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Hi Maria,
thanks for the reply. We had been planning to head up to the opening, but we got sidetracked last minute.
I’d hugely appreciate Paula’s contact details.
I think you met my partner Caroline at a group in Ballaghadereen earlier in the year. I’d been looking forward to meeting up. Some other time.
Keith
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Hi Keith. We had a great day in the community garden yesterday. Lots of interest and people popping in for a chat. You can always call around to the garden some other time when you are in Ballaghaderreen. I will send Paula’s email to you in an email. I enjoyed your post about the wildest drive way in Connaught. We have a very wild garden as well full of what most people consider weeds.
Maybe you can call around on our open weekend 14th and 15th of July. All the best, Maria
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Hey guys,
Thanks for the inspiring ideas. I will try to build a bottle wall in our garden. So I have two questions and I hope, you could answer them:
1. Do you use normal cement like you also use to build walls out of stones? Isn’t it to heavy for the glass bottles at the bottom?
2. How much time will it need to dry after building it outside? It should be warm and not rainy, right?
Have fun with your projects. Thanks a lot!
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Hi Stephie,
Thanks for your kind words. Yes we did use normal cement. The round shape of the bottles and jars is very strong in it self and we also used wooden dividers for sections in the wall. There is also the fact that the walls we made were only thin and have insulation in between so the weight is not a problem. There are about five different posts with tips on how to build this type of wall on the blog and if you put bottle wall in the search box you can hopefully find them. 😀 It should definitely be above freezing when working with cement and preferably warmer than that and rain is best avoided. It should state on the bag of cement about drying times etc. You could also research other materials like cob etc if you prefer. Good luck and do share photos in the comments if you like. Would be great to see. 🌼
Maria
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