Because of the covid pandemic our allotment was neglected and became overgrown with weeds.
Thankfully we are now able to spend time at the allotment.
On Tuesday 9 Nov 2020, we did a big clear out – see our before and after images.
We were very lucky with good weather that day.
Soon we will be adding a new table & chairs as well as new raised beds and new bark.
We are looking forward to having our allotment back to normal.
This year we entered our Allotment which is located in St. Anne’s Park into the City Neighborhood Awards.
The Dublin City Neighborhoods Competition is an annual competition for communities, schools and businesses in the city organised by Dublin City Council. It is an Area based competition with categories judged initially on an Area basis. The best entrants from each of the 5 City Council administrative Areas are selected to go forward to a citywide competition.
The award ceremony was held in Parnell’s GAA Club this month and we were delighted to come home with a ‘Merit Award’ in the Community Garden category. (Woo-Hoo!)
This award is proudly displayed proudly in our Clubhouse!
We would like to say a special thank you to Dublin City Council and The City Neighborhoods judges and Parnell’s GAA Club for hosting the event.
For more information on this competition you can visit: http://www.dublincity.ie/main-menu-your-council-your-area-north-central-area/city-neighbourhoods-competition
Last weekend St. Anne’s Park held their annual rose festival and our Allotments opened their doors to the public.
Every year we give our an allotment a theme for the occasion and this year we gave our plot an Alice in Wonderland makeover complete with mad hatter topsy turvy flower pots, a tea party tree and Alice herself jumping down the rabbit hole!
“Have I gone mad? I’m afraid so, You’re entirely bonkers, but I’ll tell you a secret…All the best people are!”
Be sure to catch us in St. Anne’s Park on Wednesday the 8th of May to support the Green Ribbon Campaign!
During our event”Untangle Your Thoughts” We will be giving out little bags of possitivity…There is one for everyone in the audience!
Last Thursday marked the start of our brand new Horticulture programme funded by CDETB. We where granted 40 hours which we are very excited about! We were introduced to our instructor Des who really impressed us with his knowledge on horticulture and gardening.
We made plans for the coming weeks and didn’t hang around…we got stuck right in! We started by relaying our strawberry beds, We then pruned our fruit bushes and learned how to take cuttings to be able to replant other bushes in the future.
We are looking forward to the next class!
Every year during the St. Anne’s Rose festival the allotments open their gates to the public. We are really proud of our allotment and put in a lot of work throughout the year so we were delighted to get a chance to show it off!
This year we planned to make a structure from flower pots but this idea grew legs…pardon the pun and became the tin man!
We then decided to go all out and give our allotment a “Wizard of Oz” theme for this years festival! We were so happy with the results and would like to thank everyone who gave a helping hand!
A gang of us took a trip down to our beautiful and did i mention award winning allotment yesterday 😉 We had lots to do, we weeded the beds, relayed bark, added entrance stepping stones and pruned the animal shaped hedges in whiskey corner…some of the chickens were in bad need of a hair cut!
Our crops are thriving and we cannot wait to harvest and more so taste them…we have strawberries, lettuce, potato, carrots, chives, an abundance of different herbs, rhubarb, scallions and some beautiful bedding plants to add some colour to our plot.
We are really proud of our allotment and would like to thank everyone who pitched in yesterday! Many hands certainly did make light work!
Our Allotment
Whiskey Corner
Well Folks…Due to the bad weather we haven’t got down to our allotment as much as we would have liked over the past couple of months but we have big plans now that the good weather decided to make an appearance.
We will be planting a lot of salad vegetables this year so they can be used in Suaimhneas for lunches. We also hope to grow pumpkins for Halloween and have planted some sunflowers so hopefully they’ll take off! We also have planned some really cool art projects including a man made out of flower pots…watch this space!
Last year was a great year for us winning first prize in the best turned around allotment category. Hopefully this year we will bring home another award!
Last week we had the pleasure of showing Jibrael Younis (previously worked in Genesis Clubhouse) around our allotment!
By Chris D
For this years annual St. Anne’s park rose festival, we were asked to take part in a video production by Near TV profiling the walled allotments and it’s gardeners. We were asked to speak about the allotment, what it means to us and how it started out…We were also joined by other gardeners from the allotment community. The stars of the show are Suaimhneas members ‘Aideen’ and ‘John’ who spoke beautifully and passionately about what the allotment facilities mean to them. We really hope you enjoy the video as much as we did!
http://neartv.ie/more-than-a-rose-festival-walled-allotments-and-ballet-fusion/
This programme was produced with the support of Dublin City Council and funded through the
BAI Sound and Vision Scheme.
Meet Fred, the newest member of Suaimhneas!
We made Fred from bits and bobs we had lying around the Allotment and raided our Halloween costume wardrobe to dress Fred.
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