Recycled Eco Buildings and Wildlife Friendly Food Forest Garden. Mosaics and Glass Bottle Walls.
It has been almost a year since we last wrote about the Community Garden that we are part of in our local town, Ballaghaderreen. A lot has happened in that time and we would like to share some of the highlights with you here.
Making leaf mould last autumn.
It is Monday morning and we are contemplating the wonderful weekend we have just experienced. We opened our garden again this year in aid of Amnesty International Ireland. The word that mostly comes to mind regarding this year’s event is love.
It is getting close to the time of year when we usually open our garden to the public. For the last two years we have enjoyed having many visitors and collecting money for Amnesty International Ireland. This year we were considering not opening the garden as we have to do a lot of building work while the weather is warm. But over the last few months there has been a lot of interest and questions about it and we decided to open the garden anyway.
We have had a very busy, but incredibly rewarding weekend. On Friday we went along when three of our teenagers took the bus to Dublin with a friend to take part in the School Climate Strike. It was an incredible feeling to stand in the middle of the energetic, roaring, chanting crowd of the future. We have to admit to a lump in the throat and misty eyes as the eleven thousand students marched through the streets demanding an end to greed and profit being put above survival of the planet on the political agenda. This movement was started last year by Greta Thunberg, a remarkable young woman from Sweden who is now nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Please listen to her TED talk if you have a moment.
As we now have past the winter solstice, it is time to look back, remember and be thankful for all that the year brought.
Our Open Garden weekend for Amnesty is over for this year. The sun that has been shining relentlessly on us for many weeks, decided not to make an appearance. Instead we got blustery; wet conditions much like last year. Our marquees were threatening to blow away and we had to bring out the six inch nails and the large roll of duct tape to make a few emergency repairs.
It is the eve of our open garden weekend and there are still lots of things to tend to. There are floors to sweep, furniture to move, the café area to organize further and many other last minute preparations.
Despite this we decided to walk around the garden for a while and take a few photos for sharing with you all here. We are so fortunate to have a place of our own; a garden full of food plants and beautiful flowers to delight us and all the wildlife that we share it with. It makes us feel tremendous gratitude.
Many millions of people around the world are not so fortunate. They have had to flee their homes and sometimes even their countries and it is because of this we decided to open our garden and home again this year in Support of Amnesty International Ireland and their #Iwelcome Refugees campaign.
We think it is important to support this campaign and we were owerwhelmed by the generosity of our visitors last year.
If you live locally we would be delighted to see you! You can read more about the event here.
Following on from last year’s very successful event we have decided to open our garden for two days this summer. On Saturday the 14th and Sunday the 15th of July, from noon to 5pm, you are welcome to stroll through our garden, peek inside our eco-buildings and enjoy some refreshments in our pop up Amnestea café. We are situated close to Ballaghaderreen, in the northwest part of County Roscommon. The weekend is in aid of Amnesty International Ireland and all proceeds will go towards their work.
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