Back with a Bang!
The Garanbawn Children's Planting Project was a huge hit last year with almost 40 children from the Garanbawn estate in Murroe, Co. Limerick registering to take part. Thanks to funding from the 2013 'Get Ireland Growing' campaign and some careful scavenging, we were able to set up about 7 raised beds on a green in the estate which served as the focal point for our planting activities. The children grew potatoes, lettuce, mint, onions, leeks, shallots, sugar snap peas and mange touts as well as sunflowers and other summer blooms. They built a scarecrow, painted 'gnome houses' for the estate flower beds and learned how to differentiate between the 'good' worms and the 'bad' worms. They ate raw peas, mint, lettuce and carrots with relish and even managed to persuade some of their parents to plant a few vegetables at home. They were the subject of an article in one of the Limerick papers and 3 of our young gardeners were subsequently invited for interview on Limerick 95FM's County Show - a challenge that was greeted with a surprising amount of enthusiasm (listen to the interview here). While the children expressed the desire to move on to TV interviews next, these sadly failed to materialise. Maybe they'll get their chance in 2015!
Thanks to further funding from the 2014 'Get Ireland Growing' campaign, the KBC 'Bright Ideas' fund and Local Agenda 21 funding, we have been able to run our gardening project again this year and upgrade our resources. The rickety raised beds which just about lasted to harvest season last year have been replaced with much sturdier beds made from sleepers. A local supplier gave us a great deal on some fabulous compost, which is teeming with worms, so we're expecting a great yield this year! The recent bout of good weather gave us a number of opportunities to schedule planting sessions and so far the children have planted peas, mange touts, carrots, onions, lettuce and potatoes plus some summer bulbs into the raised beds. We registered to take part in the GIY & Innocent Smoothies 'Sow & Grow' campaign and were lucky enough to get sent out grow packs last month. Each child that turned up recently has been given either a pot with a courgette seed or pumpkin seed to mind at home for the next month. They also planted cress seeds into a collection of oyster shells that 2 of our gardeners had gathered during the Easter holidays. Cress is always gratifiying because the results are so quick and easy to get. We'll probably schedule another cress-planting session in the coming weeks as a number of the children appear to have eaten theirs already.
This year we plan to focus more on the topics of sustainability and biodiversity in our planting endeavours. We're hoping to build a wormery, install a rainwater harvesting tank and learn about composting. Once the bulbs we planted are in full bloom, we'll look a bit at pollinators and the importane of bees for gardens. We also hope to link with the nearby primary school this year and arrange for some of the classes to come and visit our garden and learn about how easy it is to grow tasty vegetables. And of course we'll be building a scarecrow and painting our gnome houses again as these were such a big hit last year. All in all, there is no shortage of plans and ideas - or enthusiasm from the children for that matter. Each session we've held so far has had between 20 and 30 children attending, ranging in age from 18 months to 12 years and a number of parents have also begun to play a more active part. Even if every single thing we plant goes on to be gobbled up by snails I still count this as a success!
