A garden is a grand teacher. It teaches patience and careful watchfulness; 

it teaches industry and thrift; above all it teaches entire trust.

Gertrude Jeckyll

EDUCATION AND COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT

We try to be as involved as possible in local education initiatives and community engagement. 

Santry Community Garden is proud to be a resource for learning in the local community. Most recently, one of our Committee Members, Timo, and a Founding Member, Brian, were invited to give a talk about the garden to students pursuing the Teagasc Certificate in Horticulture, at the National Botanic Gardens, in Glasnevin. The students were interested to learn all about the garden and how we apply principles of sustainability to our practice in the the garden. We are grateful to Teagasc for the invitation present our work.  

We have welcomed groups from the Educational and Training Board (ETB) Ballymun Adult Education Centre who have spent time in the garden as part of their course work.  Courses that included the garden in their curriculum were the QQI Horticulture and ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages), as well as Community Education Photography and Cookery. We really enjoy welcoming the students to the garden and facilitating their learning in this way. We are always willing to facilitate these kinds of educational initiatives, so please do email us with your interest. 

We often have groups visit us and some of our knowledgeable members take them on a tour of the garden to show them what we do. We have successfully hosted tours for Northside Partnership, Cabra Adult Education Centre, Maynooth University, and local school groups, to name but a few. We also host corporate tours of the garden. Company employees who engage in their company's volunteering/environmental programmes have come to visit us. 

In addition to these, we  host other small events such as a 'Seed Swap', Basket Weaving, or short lessons/workshops on Tree Grafting - the ancient art of joining the shoot from one plant to the root of another. This means that the different qualities of each plant are joined together as one. The flowering/fruit qualities of the shoot are joined to a resilient rootstock, so that the new plant will successfully grow and develop into a resilient flower/fruit plant. For more information on Tree Grafting, Teagasc - the Irish Food and Development Authority, have an interesting and detailed webpage to help you learn more.  We have also held workshops on a variety of topics such as Bird/Bat Box Building, and more.  These are just a few of the activities that we run in the garden. 

If you would like to arrange a tour of our garden, please email us: santrycommunitygarden@gmail.com