This garden has made a habitatthe kind of natural place where something likes to live for nature so that biodiversityanimals and nature has increased in this space so close to the city of Cork. But at the same time it is clear that Mandie, Marie, and everyone else in the project sees how important it is to include as many people and groups. “It was a challenge at the start to convince people that the garden wasn’t going to be vandalised and that if it was, then we would just fix the issue not highlight it in the community not to be negative about any vandalism. It was important to include the kids and teenagers that hung around the park ask them to help out so they felt involved too.” – Mandie.

Where is this?

Clashduv Park, Togher, Cork City

Who started it?

Sinead Murphy the social Prescriber for Togher/Ballyphehane had the idea just at the end of covid and contacted Green Spaces for Health who got the ball rolling with the council, then got lots of local volunteers to come on board to start the garden.

Some quick facts about the project
  • Cork city council gave the land for this community garden in the corner of a public park in 2021 (you can see this in the video linked to below)
  • Maria Young (Cork Food Policy Council and Green Spaces For Health) is the co-ordinator at Togher Community Garden among other gardens in Cork city
  • Volunteers, aged 6 to 82,  from all parts of Cork city and the world work in the garden. Access is open to all.
  • There is even a ‘smoothie bike’ that uses pedal power to blitz fruit and vegetables!
Highlights Click toggle ⊕ to see these

Highlights for the team were “watching the pond evolve and seeing our first frog arrive, watching friendships grow from garden meet ups, and our very first harvest of summer 2022”.

  • The garden is all about connecting and including people
  • One of the actions was doing an 8 week course on gardening and biodiversity with early school leavers
  • Mandie, who is a chef gave a 4 week course for children on healthy cooking. The children harvested, prepared, cooked and ate food from the garden.
  • She wrote a children’s cookbook with design and illustrations by Luna Fox and the support of Green Spaces for Health and Cork City Council based on the course.
  • They’ve had a 4 week biodiversity and nature for adults and also run a children’s summer course
  • Their volunteers include people from L’Arche community,
  • They hold multicultural events  with people from of at least 14 different nationalties with celebrations of music, dancing and food made by the volunteers.
  • After Covid, the local Council realised the benefits that come from community gardens, and so they are more supportive and likely to give public space for setting up gardens like this.
  • 18 large raised beds were built by a local Men’s Shed. They also put in a large polytunnel complete with water collection system where they grow fruit, nuts, vegetables and flowers. They also planted 400 native Irish trees.
  • All the work is done by hand and no chemicals are used. They make and use their own compost.
  • Volunteers dug out a pond and planted a living willow dome. They hope this space will be used for storytelling and children’s workshops.
  • They also collect their own seeds with the extra seeds donated to Hollyhill seed library.
  • They have been given many awards for their excellent work: Environmental Forum Community & Voluntary award 2024,  Lord Mayor’s Community award 2023, Pride in Our Community 2022 & 2023, Pride of Cork City 2023, Roll of Honour -Lifelong Learning Cork 2022
Why this matters

“Eating around our table at the end of a gardening day is a very important part of community gardening, sharing food and starting conversation with people from all walks of life, countries, religions and creeds sharing the same passion for nature, no heavy conversations/ I try not have politics or religion spoke about around the table, everyone has their own opinions in life but you leave them at the entrance of the garden before our day starts, you want it to be so inclusive for everyone not to feel any kind of negativity and just feel surrounded by the sounds of birds, laughter and being in nature for a couple of hours. Make everyone feel as important as the next.”

Mandie

 

It is great that the garden has made a habitatthe kind of natural place where something likes to live for nature so that biodiversityanimals and nature has increased in this space so close to the city of Cork. But at the same time it is clear that Mandie, Marie, and everyone else in the project sees how important it is to include as many people and groups. They keep in close contact with everyone living around the garden and bring them in as much as possible: there are no fences around it, so it’s literally open to all! Sustainability is about nature and community – you can’t have one without the other.

SDG Alignment & Keywords Click toggle ⊕ to see these
  • SDG 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities,
  • SDG 12: Responsible Consumption and Production,
  • SDG 13: Climate Action,
  • SDG 14: Life below water,
  • SDG 15: Life on Land,
  • SDG 17: Partnership for the Goals

Keywords: Natural Environment Protection, Volunteer Engagement, Advocacy and planning, Biodiversity, Circular Economy, Cork.

Find Out More about the project

Links open in other websites

Contact: toghercommunitygarden@gmail.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Toghercommunitygarden

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/toghercommunitygarden/

Togher Video

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZianAaDAyE

 Cork Healthy Cities

Mandie and Luna’s Cookbook

The Activists Take-Away

A successful project brings together different stakeholderspeople that will be affected (good or bad) by a project. In the case of Togher this included the Council, an expert group, and the local people. Mandie, Mary and the other garden volunteers made sure to let people know what was involved and how they could join in. And then they made sure that the gardens were open to all.

To see how you can do this, in this podcast with Seán Carolan you can find out how the people in community projects use the best communications practices to make sure they build strong alliances within their community.

Sustainable development, and participative democracy.

by Mulranny Community Futures

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Resources from Climate Connected that you can use to do follow this example in your area

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