The glory of gardening: hands in the dirt, head in the sun, heart with nature.
To nurture a garden is to feed not just the body, but the soul.
Alfred Austin
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Our Gardening
A brief overview
We have a huge garden to garden! Our gardening practices are guided by our seasons, our values, organic gardening principles, and our members' vast and deep knowledge. We are so good at what we do, we've even won awards! We are proud holders of several 'The Green Flag' awards. We are honored to have our hard work acknowledged in this way.
We are always planting new plants and crops in the garden, and working on current and new initiatives and projects, such as our wormery and new netted area in the vegetable garden. Our herb garden needed some work in mid-2025, so we dug out older bushes and planted new rosemary and lavender borders. We acquired an old 'new' tool shed in 2025, so that was built onsite by some of our amazing members. Planting in our front garden was extensive in 2025. At a later date, we'll provide an update of what we planted. We also planted some 'green manure' in an empty plot in our kitchen garden last year. Green manure are plants such as mustard, buckwheat, and clover, that are planted on bare soil to prevent soil degradation after crops have been harvested. Not only does green manure keep weeds at bay and control pests in an empty plot of soil, it also feeds the soil, thus enriching it before we plant crops in it again. In 2024, we completely redeveloped the Members' R&R area, and re-covered our small polytunnel with new plastic covering. These area only some of the really interesting things we do in our garden!
Our gardens
Believe it or not, we have three gardens to work! Here is a brief outline of each one.
Kitchen/Vegetable Garden
Kitchen/Vegetable Garden
Our Kitchen/Vegetable Garden has several plots where we plant our crops, it also includes our Wildlife Area, Herb Garden, two Polytunnels, Cold frames, Propagators, Members' recreational area, Sheds and Compost Bays. Each year we rotate our vegetable crops across our different plots to allow the soil in each plot to replenish. Some of the walls are bordered with apple, pear, and greengage trees, and we have some raspberry plants too! We also have a raised bed area which gave us a wonderful bounty of strawberries last summer! And our large polytunnel is full of tomato plants every summer too.
Heritage Orchard
Heritage Orchard
When the orchard was being established by members in 2010, they tried to adhere to the original plan dating back to the 1800s in the old victorian orchard. The orchard is full of numerous apple and pear trees - including 68 heritage varieties, a quince tree, cherry and almond trees, in addition to a lovely selection of soft fruit plants such as: raspberries, loganberries, and gooseberries. We also have a fig tree and a hop plant.
In 2013, the community started a project to graft the national collection of different varieties of heritage apple trees which was featured in The Irish Times (02/03/2013). The project was funded through a successful tree sponsorship scheme. Today the orchard is one of four orchards in Ireland with a complete collection consisting of more than 65 heritage varieties.
We had a Tree Sponsorship Scheme in operation for many years in the orchard. People could sponsor a tree and have the name of a loved one, who had recently passed, engraved onto a metal tag which was then fixed to the tree's supporting post. If you take a walk through our orchard you will see all the trees with their memorial tags.
Our Heritage Orchard is also home to our Apiary. We have a small terrific team of members who are trained bee-keepers and look after our bees. Thank you, Tony, Finbarr, and Rory.
The Front Garden
The Front Garden
This is our biggest plot in the garden. Our huge front garden has a pond and a cherry blossom lined pathway. The entire plot is bordered with an enormous selection of plants, flowers, and shrubs. We also have a lovely alpine rockery area with a beautiful selection of alpine plants. On either side of the main pathway, we have four plots in the middle of the lawns that we have planted with pollinator-friendly flower bulbs. In 2022, we planted sixty-thousand bulbs in these four sections! And every now and again, a family of hedgehogs calls our front garden home! See our biodeiverity page to learn more about them.
We've put together a small slideshow below to show you a little more about our garden. We hope you enjoy it!
Our Soil is Healthy
How lucky are we to have a member who is a soil scientist?! In 2024, we had some soil and root samples from the Kitchen Garden analysed in the lab. Following multi-level analysis, it was determined that we have healthy soil. A healthy community of arthropods (insects) exist in our soil, and there was no evidence of nematodes or viruses. No wonder our harvests are so good!
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