6 Months Of Community Gardening In Dublin

dublin | environment | news report Friday December 16, 2005 17:36 by Paul Baynes

An account of the first 6 months of the Dolphin's Barn Community Garden

A shorter article on this theme was published in Ireland From Below magazine - this is an expanded and original (unpublished) account.

It is said that human civilisation began with agriculture. It was when men and women first began to grow and tend crops that lifestyles changed from a nomadic to a sedentary model. Humanity only began to settle down and give up the wandering life once they began to feed themselves by keeping animals, and by tilling the soil. However, in today’s world, this close relationship with what we eat has diminished. Most people in the Western world now take their food for granted. Many people do not regularly cook a meal from a set of raw materials. The increasing popularity of the ‘ready meal’ and of fast food has meant that people’s eating habits have changed drastically in modern times. Changes in agricultural practices have increased the ability of a smaller number of people involved in food production to feed a larger urban and non-agricultural population. All of this amounts to a situation where we have largely lost our connection with our food.

This is a problem for many reasons. The nutritional value of this modern diet has decreased as people are more likely to eat processed food, and food that is less likely to be fresh or in season. We do not know where our food has come from, how far it has travelled, the conditions of employment of those who produced it, and whether it was treated with pesticides or genetically modified. This is a specifically urban problem, but is there an urban solution?

The community garden
One idea to try to deal with these issues is that of the urban community garden. There are already community gardens in Ireland - in Belfast and Cork city - and, inspired by these, a workshop was held at the beginning of April to discuss the idea of setting up a community garden for Dublin. The workshop took place on the third and final day of the 9th Grassroots Gathering, which brought together activists from all kinds of campaigns and community struggles from throughout the country. The workshop was facilitated by Duncan Crowley. Duncan had selected an ideal location for the garden, in Dolphin’s Barn on the south side of Dublin city. The site was on the bank of the Grand Canal, hemmed in by a warehouse and a row of houses. It was about 6,000 square metres in size, and completely overgrown, and was disused apart from being home to a few billboards. The nearby canal would be a convenient source of water through the next 6 months of gardening, and the soil turned out to be very rich. On the OS map, the site is listed as allotments, so it is likely that the land was used for gardening in the past.

And so it happened that twenty or so of us sat around in a circle to discuss the possibilities of this rough patch of land. We were lucky enough to be able to draw on the expertise of people who were involved in the Cork and Belfast community gardens. In Cork, a group of artists, gardeners and community workers have set up the Cork Mandala of Community Gardens. They have worked with more than 8 communities throughout the city and helped them create gardens as part of the celebrations for Cork Capital of Culture 2005. Elinor and John have worked on these gardens, and they passed around photos of their work, and taught us the importance of getting the local community involved. They held talks in schools, and planted trees and flowers with the schoolchildren. They were also able to get local parents to take part in these projects, and did regular gardening involving the travelling community with the Mahon community centre. Tom and Darren from Belfast gave a good account of the process which developed their garden from a patch of waste land into a thriving garden, which has already doubled as a social space for informal gatherings. Their experience showed how the project can take on a life of its own, so that you can return to the garden and find that some work has been done and the garden has developed since your last visit, but you are unsure who has been there and when. This would mirror the Dolphin’s Barn garden’s development over the next few months.

Early days in the Dolphin garden
Duncan put together a list of contacts who were based in Dublin and might be willing to help to make this vision a reality. We agreed to meet again soon to break ground for the first time. We decided to link up with a week long ‘tree walk’, during which trees were planted throughout Dublin. Like the garden, the tree walk was about making contact with the local community. The tree walkers planted trees in the Saint Lawrence O’Toole and Synge St. schools, the Sheriff St. women’s centre, the Maple House homeless shelter, and the Tibetan Buddhist centre in Inchicore. And so, with the help of the tree walkers, just over a week after the initial workshop, the community garden was opened and the first trees planted on April 12th.

It was a dull and rainy night, and the would-be gardeners were divided up in ones and twos. We were wondering if anyone else was going to show up. But we refused to be put off by the weather, and when we all eventually managed to link up, the night turned out to be an invigorating experience. Although we seemed to be knee deep in wet grass, we planted three hazel trees in a row, and two willow trees on the bank of the Grand Canal. There was plenty of messing and laughter and even a little singing, and by the end of the evening we felt we had started something worthwhile. We did not suspect just how strong our group would grow, and how successful we would turn out to be.

After this initial planting we called to Richard’s house nearby for a cup of tea, and each shared our dreams for what the garden could become. The group ranged from people with an extensive knowledge of gardening and ecology to people with only the vaguest idea that a community garden would be a positive addition to the city. Over the course of the next few weeks, we began to have regular gatherings at the garden. On the second rainy evening, a patch of land was cleared, and a row of potatoes planted. After this, we extended this patch of land day by day and week by week, until we had a series of rows planted with scallions, onions, celery, garlic, fuchsia, nasturtiums, forget-me-not seeds, parsley, rosemary, and thyme. We set up a system where we would dig up the earth and take out stones and roots, and we built a series of rows of earth where we planted our various herbs, flowers, and vegetables. In between these rows we put down cardboard, old carpet, and planks of wood, to block out sunlight and so discourage the growth of weeds. This process is called mulching.

The garden develops
At the outset, although we had big dreams, we were not quite sure if we could generate enough interest to sustain the idea. But as time went by, it became clear that the group was strengthening. We would agree evenings to meet up at the garden, and for the first two months or so, there was a new gardener at every gathering. It gave us hope for the future to see that the group was not reliant on one person or small group of people. Even now, 6 months later, new people are still joining the project.

The group is interesting in that it does not have any formal structure. Of course, there are some people who are more interested and committed than others. But there is no leadership or decision-making committee. Any new gardener has full access to the decision making process. The group communicates largely by way of an email list, with occasional meetings. Everything is discussed and agreed in an informal way, and suggestions and input are welcome from any quarter. The garden is also something that you can come along and help out with on a once-off basis, or, if you prefer, you can visit and then leave it behind you for months at a time. The gatherings at the garden are social occasions as much as work days. We often bring food to share. It is pleasant just to be outside doing some physical activity with some like minded people.

It was around June that we first began to harvest food from the garden. At one stage, there was more food than there was people to take it away with them. We produced so much that it looked like we would have trouble giving it away. The first food that we took from the garden was some scallions. Then we started to harvest the potatoes, and then the lettuce, and soon, every time we visited the garden we would be able to take some food with us to use in a meal. We ate cauliflower, some small tomatoes, beans, kale, three types of lettuce, and some huge courgettes, all from the garden, and we even managed to grow a few small green peppers. The potatoes were particularly popular, and we resolved to plant several rows next year. A few of us started calling down to the nearby house of the Catholic Workers after gardening to share some of our food. At the Seomra Spraoi Arts night at the end of September, the crowd was fed by the group ‘Food Not Bombs’ using squash, courgettes and herbs harvested from the Dolphin’s Barn community garden. It was clear that the garden was fulfilling its purpose.

Community
One of the central ideas behind the garden was to contact the local community, and give them a chance to get involved. After a slow start, we made good progress in contacting the local community and inviting their input. We sent letters and leaflets to local houses, letting them know what we were doing and giving contact details for a few of the gardeners. We set up an email address so that members of the public could contact us. We got in touch with the Rialto Community Network through a local community worker, Tony McCarty. A few of us teamed up with Willie Morrogh from the city council to create a garden for the homework club in the flats at Dolphin House, nearby the community garden. We also made use of the local library to publicise the garden in the locality. For about 6 weeks from the 13th of July, we set up an exhibition in the public library at Dolphin’s Barn, which is just across the canal from the garden. This exhibition included photographs of the garden, contact details for the group, a selection of relevant library books, quotes about sustainability, gardening, and a connection with the soil, and several copies of a small, artistic booklet about the garden. We also held an information evening in the library, which was attended by several local people. This gave them an opportunity to ask any questions they may have about the project. All of this contact with the people of the locality gave the impression of a definite feeling of goodwill towards the project. Now, many of those involved are people who live in Dolphin’s Barn.

The garden and the bigger picture
The community garden is an attempt to establish an area of food production within a city. Growing food in urban areas reduces the need for industrialised production, packaging and transportation of food. Harvesting your meals from the community garden reduces to zero the ‘food miles’ attached to what you eat. It is customary to see foods from all over the globe today in your local supermarket. But the distance food travels is directly damaging to the environment due to carbon emissions. This distance also adversely affects how the food is grown and treated on its journey. Food from far away is more likely to have been subjected to the three ‘P’s: processing, packaging and pesticides. In addition to the food miles is the present trend of the edge-of-town supermarket, only accessible by car. As more and more local shops are put out of business, this contributes to the modern phenomenon of the ‘food desert’ within a city - an area in which there is no source of food to be found. The community garden is an attempt to address this.

There are several reasons why any move towards a more ethical way of living should begin with our food. Much of our food is produced in the so-called developing world. Although food production worldwide is increasing, for many of the world’s citizens, the ability to buy food is decreasing. And so, mountains of grain rot in the same countries where people are going hungry. More and more, the agrochemical industry is replacing mixed crop strains with uniform hybrids of rice, wheat and maize. These strains tend to use three times as much water as their predecessors. Their reduced genetic diversity leaves plants more vulnerable to pests, water shortages, and soil erosion and contamination. This cash cropping monoculture is steadily replacing traditional techniques that protected the soil. And what are they producing? Sugar, for the sweet Western tooth. Tea and coffee, for Western drinkers. Tobacco, for Western smokers. Cotton, for Western jeans. Cut flowers, for Western vases. Peanuts, for Western parties. And feed, for Western livestock. The community garden is a small attempt to focus on local production.

Chemical pesticides like DDT have been used so much that it is estimated that the body fat of every person on the planet contains traces of DDT. Although its use is banned in most industrialised countries, its overall use is still increasing. These types of pesticides may kill off the pests which threaten your plants, but they are far more effective on their natural enemies, the predators. Because there are far more of the pests, it is easier for them to adapt, whereas the predators are more at risk, because the farther up the food chain the chemicals pass, the more concentrated they become. This is why the community garden is pesticide free.

The garden also creates another green space for the city. As blocks of apartments are built on every conceivable tract of land, the simple use of an existing green space is positive in itself. Everybody is involved for their own reasons - I can only speak for myself. But it certainly seems that there is no shortage of reasons to get involved.

Conclusion
The Dolphin’s Barn community garden was 6 months old in October. It has clearly been a success. After a little bit of effort we saw fast results. There were enough people involved that the responsibility was spread between us, and the project never felt like an impossible struggle. The way the group was organised and the efforts to contact the local community have meant that everybody feels involved. The idea is a simple one, and appeals to all manner of different people. Through straightforward action and engagement, it is possible to improve your environment and local community. And we plan to keep improving, through next year and into the future.

We are not going to change the way we have organised ourselves up to now, but we have put together a more definite plan for how best to develop the garden. In the early days the garden grew in something of a haphazard way. People would turn up, eager to help, but wouldn’t really know how best to proceed. At that stage we were unsure about how best to lay out the garden. We did not know what problems we would face, how many people were going to get involved, or how long the project would last. We had no reference point for what was possible. Many of us had no idea about gardening. But now we have learned. We have seen what can be achieved, and we know that we have several sets of hands ready to dig, weed, and water. We are still flexible, and there is plenty of room for a diverse ideas and approaches. But we now have put a plan in place for next season.

To prepare the ground for the planting in the spring, we held a work day in the garden a few months ago, on September 25th. Over twenty people gathered together: there were old gardeners and new. We were joined again by Darren from the Belfast garden, for the first time since the initial workshop. We mixed in earth from community gardens in Belfast and Glasgow. We ate together and we worked together. And by the end of the day, we had cleared our garden of the last of the summer’s crop and divided it into three areas, each intended for a different class of vegetables for the purposes of crop rotation. We dug each bed and raised it up with topsoil, and planted each bed with green manure. This is seed which will keep the soil rich with the nutrients which have built up over the last 6 months. In the springtime, we will dig this back into the soil to make it even richer. We also covered over a new area of grass with several layers of cardboard to use as mulch. This will clear the area for next spring, when we aim to plant this whole new section with potatoes. Potatoes are good to plant in new soil, as they are very good for breaking up the earth. We also plan to set up an ornamental area and a social space for the garden. We also want to set up kloshes - these are kind of miniature glass houses to magnify the sunlight - build a bird table, clean up the canal, sow buckwheat, paint murals, hold information days in schools in co-operation with ECO-UNESCO, plant lots more food, and anything else that anybody wants to suggest…

And that is the story of the first 6 months of the Dolphin’s Barn community garden. But it is only a beginning. Community gardens have already opened up in other parts of the city: there are gardens in Phibsborogh and in Stoneybatter, and the Sitric community composting scheme in Dublin 7. The Dolphin’s Barn garden is a young garden, but we will help it grow over the coming years and months. The garden remains an example of how a simple idea can improve the world. Through positive action and a clear purpose it is possible to make a difference.

For more information, or to get involved, contact :
dolphinsbarngarden@gmail.com