Convergence 2016 ~ Highlights from CG Ireland

Creating Sustainable Communities

Organised by Cultivate, last month Convergence events took place around the country with sustainable living topics being discussed from Kerry to Galway, Limerick to Tipperary that covered everything from food to education, art to the economy.

The Donegal Community Garden Network began the conversation about Food in the north of the country with Food on the Fringe. You can view snippets of that very inspiring and successful day below:

Creating Sustainable Cities and Communities

In Dublin various speakers representing cyclists, planning, energy and the environment talked about how Sustainable Cities and Communities could be created. With her community gardening hat firmly in place, Dee Sewell of Greenside Up talked about some key areas in relation to Food. Dee gave examples and outlined barriers to achieving Sustainable Development Goal 11, some of which were identified at a social enterprise event held in Waterford the previous week.

By request the transcript of Dee’s speech is below:

Ladies and Gentlemen, Fellow Guests and Speakers:

Food. Without food, we wouldn’t survive, yet food is more than something that sustains us, it’s wrapped up in the very essence of our cultural fabric. In many societies finding, preparing, and eating food is what drives people out of bed yet for others, food has become secondary, something just to grab and go.

Most of us here know that the current way we produce food isn’t sustainable. It harms the planet and in many cases, isn’t fair or ethical but there are other problems too.

In our society, where time has become so valuable, saving money, and speeding up how quickly we do things appears to have become more important than our health and wellbeing, something that food plays a significant part in. Communities are fragmented as people have moved away from the land. Life is supposed to be easier with technology and mechanisation, yet mental health problems and social isolation are real causes for concern, possibly due to our disconnection with nature.

Have you heard reports of the studies that show that getting our hands into the soil boosts serotonin levels – one of our happy hormones? Research also indicates that bacteria in soil may help to trigger immune cells that can help to lift depression.

There’s been a recent emphasis on tackling obesity and in 2015 a Healthy Ireland Survey was published that found 74% of adults in Ireland eat less than 5 portions of fruit and vegetables a day. An American study found that growing food changes the way people eat, encouraging them to eat more vegetables and seek healthier food choices.

Some might argue that we don’t need to know about real food any longer, that’s what progression is, but physically and mentally moving away from the land, disconnecting with it and the food that grows within it, I feel is possibly one of the most damaging things we’ve allowed to happen in our modern world.

Yet, ladies and gentlemen, there is something we can do and we have the capacity to make things right, but we need to make changes to our food culture using a bottom up approach.

To give you an example, for the past seven years, I have been teaching adults the basics of how to grow their own food, but with an emphasis on creating and working in social community gardens. During that time, we’ve identified many benefits to the communities and the people working in them and have come across one inspiring story after another.

For those of you who don’t know, a community garden is a space where people come together, often in unused, overgrown pieces of land, to transform it, to grow fruit, vegetables, and flowers. The people involved share all the work and they share the produce. The key there is in the sharing of work and food and the reconnection to community.

To prepare for today, I asked a group how they thought the community garden helped in creating a safe, inclusive, sustainable place to live. Their responses were many and varied, though one comment encapsulated them all from a lady in her forties, who lives in a town centre and is a young grandmother:

“I didn’t know anything at all about gardening and had never seen food growing in the ground or tasted most of it until I came here, this garden is the only place I meet people other than online or in my family circle”…

The problems we face

Community Gardens Ireland are aware of over 160 social growing places dotted around the country, I know there are more; their popularity is rising but they are lacking support, both financially and professionally. Community gardens could be in every unloved and overgrown scrap of land everywhere!

There’s work potential within them and they could become places of outdoor environmental education too. That said, I appreciate that not everyone wants to get into a garden, it doesn’t appeal to all and like it or not, many of us do struggle to find time.

There are several alternatives to accessing food that are socially and locally orientated, bringing us closer to food in its natural state – local food co-ops and box schemes, community supported agriculture, farmers and country markets, community cafes and farm gate shops.

Funding is a considerable barrier but so too is the lack of awareness. Community and Social enterprises working towards societal change need support. Community and social entrepreneurs are barely recognised as such and there isn’t even a category for us in Revenue. If you’re a sole trader in the social or education sphere, then forget it. “Drop the word social and you might get somewhere” we’re told. We’re on a constant uphill battle. It’s difficult to support an enterprise that’s not immediately measurable.

A recent international survey found that of 45 European countries, Ireland were placed 43^rd in environments that support social enterprises and in Europe, where 10% of all businesses are listed as social, in Ireland that’s just 1%.

Social enterprises need to be understood for our differences – that we’re not about making shareholders wealthy, we’re about making the world a better place for every being that lives in it. We need the Business world and Schools at all levels to learn about us and work with us.

Importantly, essentially, food needs to be put back on the education curriculum, for young people in all levels of education and for adults in their local communities. How to grow food, how to cook food, how to share food and how to respect food and the soil it grows within.

I feel community gardens have a big role to play in that.

Thank you ladies and gentlemen for your time.

Do you agree with Dee’s thoughts? It’s difficult to capture all the challenges we face in relation to food in just five minutes. Do you feel as passionately about the importance food makes to community like the Donegal speakers? Can we really make a difference? We’d love to hear your comments below.

5 Ways Community Gardens Can Help Pollinators

The National Biodiversity Data Centre in Waterford have been working hard to build a framework of guidelines for local communities, gardens, farmers, local councils, business and transport networks that will help us all make best practice decisions, benefiting pollinators in Ireland and helping to restore declining numbers. As a result, they have begun publishing Action Plans aimed at the different sectors.

In July, they released a colourful and informative set of actions for Gardens and Community Gardens that you can read in full here.

While there are many things we can do to encourage and protect pollinators in our gardens, some action points will be easier to adopt than others and some community gardens will follow the guidelines faster than others. There’s no doubt that ingrained mind sets will be challenged and there will be resistance to some of the suggestions. We might find it easy to add the recommended plants to community gardens or build bug hotels for pollinators but when it comes to chemical use:

“We don’t have the time or the manpower to weed without spraying”, “we like tidy gardens without weeds”, “what else can we do to get rid of the greenfly or spider mite if we don’t spray?” or “I’ve always sprayed my tomatoes to prevent fungus and fertilised my lawn, why would I stop now?”

We have a massive challenge ahead of us. Pollinators are declining at an alarming rate and whilst many people are aware that the bees are in trouble, asking gardeners to give up their pesticides in favour of organic methods is another matter. Often it’s a simple case of people not knowing how to make the changes or what the alternatives are, in which case we’ve suggestions below on how to address that.

In the meantime, if you’d like to help pollinators survive and see their numbers grow once more, here’s a non-exhaustive list of 5 things you can begin to do now in your community garden or allotment that will help. All of the recommendations from the National Biodiversity Data Centre are as a result of solid research. We hope that between us we can help to save the bees!

No 1. Become a ‘community garden of excellence’

We don’t mean become a ‘perfect’ garden, more a place that people can go to for advice on how to garden for pollinators. The National Biodiversity Data Centre have published LOTS of tips and advice in their best practice guide. Become familiar with it and help promote it to gardeners everywhere. Offer workshops (see below), print out materials, put up signage, become a GOLDEN garden. Basically do anything you can think of that will help to educate yourselves and others about pollinators.

To achieve GOLD garden status community gardens will have to meet certain criteria which include the following criteria:

Provide Food

Have at least five different types of pollinator friendly plants for EACH SEASON. Planting suggestions can be found on the RHS website or in the table below.

Pollinators need flowers that produce lots of nectar and pollen to survive for energy and protein and just like we experience ‘hunger gaps’ in our vegetable gardens, pollinators suffer the same in the wild. Planting flowers for them out of season will help but actively choosing pollinator friendly plants over those that aren’t will make a difference too.

Bulbs are a great way of introducing pollinator friendly spring flowers. In the autumn plant Snowdrops, Crocus, Allium, Grape Hyacinth and the Bishop series of single flowered Dahlia.

Choose single instead of double variety plants which don’t contain any nectar or pollen.

5 Things Community Gardens Can Do Now to Help Pollinators — Bumblebee on Inula Flower

Perennial plants are generally better sources of pollen and nectar than annuals. Traditional bedding plants like Geraniums, Begonias, Busy Lizzy and Petunias have virtually no pollen and nectar. Try planting other annuals such as Poached Egg Plant, Cosmos, Alyssum, Floss Flower and Night Scented Stocks instead. Trailing Verbena, Bellflowers, Wallflowers and Aubrietia will grow in window boxes year after year as will herbs such as Chives, Lavender, Rosemary, Sage, Marjoram and Thyme.

Still not sure? Keep an eye out in ornamental flower gardens and garden centres for the plants that the bees are visiting and choose those.

Allow some of your Brassica plants to flower and plant green manures after you harvest crops. These are fantastic not only for the garden soil but are a great source of food for pollinators. Buckwheat and Phacelia are particular favourites.

Provide Shelter:

Create nesting habitats for solitary bees – for both cavity nesting AND mining bees.

Solitary mining bees need areas of bare ground to be able to burrow into the soil and create nests. Scrape away some grass in flat, sunny spots to create these areas. Scrape back vegetation that grows on south or east facing slopes for mining bees that prefer to nest in those conditions.

Take a look here for information on how to creating wild pollinator nesting habitats.

A small number of Irish solitary bees like to nest in cavities. If you’re growing raspberries, leave some of the old canes unpruned for them, buy or make a solitary bee hotel or drill south or east facing holes 10mm deep, 4-8mm in diameter at least 1.5-2m high for them.

Bumblebees often nest in the long grass at the base of flowering hedgerows. If you’ve space, consider planting Hazel, Willow, Blackthorn and Hawthorn. Once they’re growing, cut on a three-year rotation (outside of the bird breeding season), avoid cutting all the hedges in the same year so that some are always flowering and let the grass grow long at the base of the hedges – don’t spray with herbicides. If the area needs to be cut, do so between September and March to avoid disturbing nests.

Protect existing sources of food and shelter for pollinators

When there are lots of people working in a community garden, particularly if it’s a small garden, it can be tempting to tidy it up to perfection but we are being encouraged to think differently. Leave patches of weedy plants and if you’ve space, plant wildflower areas, flowering hedgerows and add small dry stone walls that will provide shelter for pollinators. Brambles, clover, thistles, ivy, nettles and dandelions are important food sources for all types of pollinators.

Offer Safety:

Biodiversity Ireland recommend that we completely eliminate the use of ALL pesticides in our gardens

Pesticides include insecticides, fungicides and herbicides. ALL of these can be harmful to pollinators, either directly or by damaging the plants and habitats they depend on.

Use alternative barriers for pests such as netting or physically remove them. Choose pest resistant varieties of seeds and plant in the correct season for the plants to avoid attracting pests.

Don’t use treated plants or seeds (read the small print). Some will have been treated with systemic insecticides call neonicotinoids that research suggests is harmful to pollinators.

Don’t use herbicides on laws or on verges as these often contain plants or areas that are important for pollinators to feed and nest in.

Plant to encourage pollinators that feed on garden pests. Hoverflies feed on aphids so plant flowers that will attract hoverflies close to others that attract aphids.

No. 2 Pass on the information

Share this article with your fellow community gardeners or allotment holders. Mention the pollinator plan at committee meetings or during the tea break and have a conversation about it. Create and publish guidelines for your community garden that encourage an ethos of chemical free gardening around the entire space and not just in the growing beds. Start questioning the use of chemicals outside of your community garden at playgrounds, sports pitches, in your own gardens and balconies as well as garden verges.

No. 3 Arrange Workshops

If you’re not sure how to garden organically, ask a horticulturist to visit and deliver a workshop about it. Your local Education Training Board will have a list of tutors and may be able to fund someone, or ask everyone to contribute a small fee towards the cost of a tutor. Contact CG Ireland if you’re not sure where to find someone in your area and we’ll do our best to help you.

No. 4 Learn to identify pollinators in your garden and help to monitor them

Once you’re growing plants in your gardens that attract pollinators, learn to identify them. The Pollinator Plan website has lots of resources that will help with identification and you can get even more involved by becoming part of the All-Ireland Bumblebee Monitoring Scheme, a citizen science initiative managed by the National Biodiversity Data Centre.

No. 5 Sign Up for Our Newsletter

We recently published our core values that include “encouraging all member community gardens to follow organic principles and protect biodiversity, promoting good environmental practice and awareness”. Over the coming months we hope to help you do that by offering advice, links to best practices, workshop opportunities and more. Sign up for our newsletter and keep up to date with our activities.

Let us know how you’re getting on, if you have any difficulties or successes and we’ll share them where we can on social media.

With thanks to Dee Sewell of Greenside Up for writing this article. Dee is a qualified organic horticulture tutor based in Carlow/Kilkenny and Chair of CG Ireland.

Press Release – CGN Announces Name Change

The Community Garden Network becomes Community Gardens Ireland

Dee Sewell, Chairperson of the Community Garden Network announced at a recent garden party in the Arus na Uachtaráinna that was held to acknowledge individuals and organisations working to achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, that the organisation would officially be undergoing a name change to Community Gardens Ireland, abbreviated to CG Ireland with effect from 1st July 2016.

Dee explained that the new name better reflects the evolving focus of the organisation and its future direction and the chosen name was the most popular of several suggested, publicly shared for consideration and agreed among the team members.

“We are very excited about the name change and the direction our voluntary organisation is now heading. It has helped us focus on our national identity and the growing popularity of social community gardens in Ireland and Northern Ireland. As a result the coordinating team has spent the last few months working on our strategic framework which we are also happy to unveil on the Welcome page of our website.

Our vision is that social community garden spaces are created in every village, town and city in Ireland and Northern Ireland, creating opportunities to empower local communities and provide outdoor environmental places of education where people of all ages, genders, nationalities and socio-economic backgrounds can learn about gardening, food growing and sovereignty, the environment, biodiversity, climate change, sustainability, community resilience, as well as about the positive mental implications and physical health benefits of being outside in nature and being sociable around food.

Our mission is to work with all other government and non-government agencies across the island supporting and establishing community gardens, individually and jointly promoting nature and the environment, sustainability, food education and food health as well as the social benefits of community gardening to encourage positive social change and inclusion in all its forms.

We recognise that community gardens have a valuable part to play in helping communities across Ireland learn about food, nature and the environment. CG Ireland will therefore:

actively collaborate with other organisations to encourage positive social change;

advocate inclusion in all its forms as well as environmental, food, health and dietary awareness;

encourage all members of community gardens to follow organic principles and protect biodiversity, promoting good environmental practice and awareness.”

About Community Gardens Ireland

CG Ireland was created in the Autumn of 2010 as community gardens began to grow in popularity and it became apparent that there was a need for an independent national organisation that links and shares knowledge and information collected by all individuals, groups and agencies across the island.

Apart from the online support offered connecting gardens via a forum and website, newsletters and social media, get together and workshops are held in different towns and village two or three times a year where all community gardeners from across the island are invited and welcome. Community Gardeners have so far met in thirteen locations, from as far afield as Derry and Belfast, Galway, Cork, Dublin, Waterford and Leitrim and apart from the benefits of community gardeners meeting and networking, community gardeners and facilitators have learnt about topics from conflict management to seeds and seed saving.

CG Ireland have identified and begun mapping over 140 public community gardens in Ireland and are encouraging the creation of county community garden networks that will link in to CG Ireland, allowing them to offer a lot more support to them as funding allows.

CG Ireland have presented two postcard gardens at Bloom Garden and Food Festival and coordinated a pop-up community garden in Global Green at 2015 Electric Picnic. They are currently coordinating and designing another pop up garden for this year’s music and arts festival.

CG Ireland will be holding an AGM at Carraig Dulra in Wicklow on Sunday, 2nd October 2016 and workshops on Saturday, 1st October 2016. Sign up for the newsletter for more information.

Creating County Community Garden Networks Across Ireland

Creating community garden networks in Ireland — Community gardeners networking in Ballymun

Two or three times a year people involved with social community gardens from around the country meet up to network, chat and learn from one another. The get-togethers are free, anyone interested in social community gardening is welcome and we often share a potluck lunch; no better way to relax and form friendships than sharing food.

Following a survey of community garden needs a couple of years ago, we now include a workshop element which so far has covered topics ranging from seed saving, plant division and conflict management. Last year in County Kilkenny the topic was Funding and it became apparent that creating County community garden networks that feed into the national one (cgn.ie) would not only help local volunteers by spreading the workload, they would also be of great benefit to local communities, attracting funds, giving them access to local environmental and social inclusion groups, as well as offering more opportunities for education and support.

Creating Local Community Garden Networks

Connecting communities across Ireland — Sharing food and tea in An Gairdin Beo, County Carlow

A few weeks ago Suzie Cahn of Carriag Dulra organised a very popular informal get together of Wicklow social food growers and the following week, Dee Sewell of Greenside Up organised another workshop when she invited community gardens in Carlow to meet for a few days; the day was more successful than she envisaged and Dee shares below the outcome.

The Carlow Community Garden Network

Thanks to Local Agenda 21 funding, on a cool Saturday in April several volunteers from community gardens in the county came together in the two acre community garden being created in Carlow Town, An Gairdin Beo and met one another for the first time. They heard about each others projects, listened to three speakers who talked about social inclusion and social farming, food sovereignty, food co-ops and community supported agriculture schemes, as well as the network of Dublin Community Growers and the service An Taisce offers to community gardens. After sharing food the representatives sat and brainstormed several topics ranging from funding, marketing, events and volunteers.

The outcome of the Carlow event was that each community garden agreed to talk to their respective groups with the idea of planning and hosting an event each during the coming year. They would then invite all the other county community gardeners to it, as well as invite local schools, tidy towns groups and anyone else in their areas they think might benefit.

To ensure a wide range of topics that include outdoor environmental education as well as growing food and flowers, some of the suggested events included organising a biodiversity walk, BBQ, horticultural training, film nights, harvest festival, cookery demonstration, food waste and composting talk and demonstration, pallet seat making, meitheals, food preserving talks, bird and bat talks, bug hotel building, integration and social inclusion events, outdoor shelter building and plastic greenhouse builds.

A Facebook group was set up and an email list created with a coordinator from each garden agreeing to pass information both to the gardens and to the national network of community gardens (CGN).

Creating communities around Ireland — Carlow Community Garden Network, Image Courtesy Robert Moss, An Taisce Green Communities

If this ‘bottom up’ approach works, the impact that the County networks could have on local communities could be tremendous. Instead of a local event attracting just a handful of people, they will have the potential to include many more, with members of all the gardens helping to publicise one another’s events and visit one another.

As the activities become more popular, by default they will attract new people into the community gardens as locals become curious. Funding and tutoring opportunities will grow as the numbers begin to swell and interest peaks, with more people becoming interested in local food, wildlife and environmental projects making public and community participation more meaningful.

Going Forward

Joanne Lindsay Butler from OURganic Gardens will be hosting a similar event in Donegal on Thursday, 19th May from 2.30pm to 4pm thanks to funding from Changemakers which will hopefully result in another network being created.

If you would like to get involved and create a County social community garden networking event, please contact Dee for a workshop template and a list of the steps she took, as well as pick up some tips and ideas about running your event.

The next networking get-together and workshop will be taking place in Belfast on 14th May and the emphasis is around Peace and Diversity in community gardens. If you’re interested you can register for free here.

Dee Sewell is a community garden tutor as well as a voluntary coordinator of the CGN. Dee has worked with 14 community gardening projects in Carlow, Kilkenny and Laois, talked at music and garden festivals and events and published several articles about community gardening in Ireland.

Every Can Counts!

How to Make Money for Your Community Garden

At a recent Community Garden Network meeting in Ballymun we were introduced to Karen Mahon from the Every Can Counts Campaign who shared some compelling arguments why we should all be recycling our aluminium drink cans, and how doing so could earn money for our community gardens.

As a result Alupro Ireland have agreed to work with any community gardens within the Community Garden Network (CGN), interested in collecting cans for recycling.

If you’re trying to raise funds for your projects, have noticed how many drink cans are thrown in the rubbish bin in your workplace, or are concerned about your carbon footprint and how you can help to reduce it, read on, but first some facts and figures that explain why this campaign is so important.

Background

Only 35% of Irish people admit to regularly recycling their used drinks cans in work whilst 73% recycle them regularly at home
Irish Can recycling rate circa 50%, mostly collected through kerbside and bring collection systems
Aluminium Drinks cans recycled can be back on the shelves in 60 days, they are infinitely recyclable
Recycling a used aluminium drinks can saves 95% of energy it takes to make one from original raw materials
Every Can Counts is targeting on the go consumption circa 33% of drinks cans consumed outside of the home, hoping to improve our recycling behaviour

Every Can Counts is an exciting awareness campaign aimed at increasing the number of recycled drinks cans out of the home, it is funded by Alupro Ireland’s founding partners the European Aluminium Association (EAA) in partnership with the Beverage Can Makers Europe (BCME). Every Can Counts is now successfully operating in nine EU countries including the UK, France, Austria, Spain and Ireland. The Every Can Counts programme targets behavioural change.

Every Can Counts

Approximately 500 million drinks cans are placed onto the Irish market every year, the majority of which are made from aluminium. Aluminium is an endlessly recyclable material taking just 60 days to be recycled and back on sale as a drinks can again, so it makes sense to recycle it, whenever and wherever possible. The drinks can producers and recyclers are committed to make Every Can Count towards a sustainable future!

You can, can you?

Approximately 33% of drinks cans are consumed ‘on the go’ or away from home and it is clear that many are potentially lost to existing recycling collections systems, as what we do at home is not continued in the workplace and while ‘on the go’. Recent research undertaken by Repak revealed a huge gap between the recycling rate of drinks cans in the home and the workplace, suggesting that people sidestep their responsibility to recycle when outside the home. Over 73% of people claim to recycle used drinks cans at home regularly, while this falls to just 35% in the workplace and ‘on the go’.

Every Can Counts in the Workplace

Every Can Counts provides branded materials; Branded bins, clear plastic bags and an information pack as well as other ECC branded materials, many of them free, to help kick-start any drinks can recycling campaign that companies, universities or community groups would like to run.

To participate in the program users simply register their interest on-line at www.everycancounts.ie and they will be contacted by an Alupro Ireland representative. Every Can Counts aims to support people to help get their programme started and with the aid of ‘recycling champions’ within companies, on campuses and in community groups, we aim to drive ECC forward together.

It is interesting to see just how much energy people could be saving by recycling their drinks cans; if for example an office of 50 people, drinking 5 cans per month, recycled each can over a year, this would total a massive 3000 cans which would, save enough energy to:

Run a TV for 350 days
Run a desktop PC for 338 days
Power an 11w lightbulb for 2600 days or;
Keep an office fan going for 100 days

Karen Mahon, Director of Alupro Ireland said:

“‘Every Can Counts can contribute to lasting behavioural change by providing a branded can collection infrastructure reinforced by a strong communications programme. Every Can Counts is flexible and works well with existing recycling facilities or as a standalone programme. As every drinks can is infinitely recyclable without loss of quality, capturing cans used in workplaces and at ‘on the go’ locations such as at college and events can make a considerable contribution towards the environmental goals of the businesses and organisations involved.”

Every Can Counts in Community Gardens

Every Can Counts began working with community gardens in the Dublin region – with the Dublin Community Growers (DCG) in 2013, supporting the DGC at Bloom, the Rose Festival and the Harvest Festival- culminating with the opening of the Growing Closer project in NCAD in 2015. In 2014, we moved on from the incredible work done by Tony Lowth (DCG) and NCAD SU, at NCAD to working with the community growers across Dublin interested in collecting cans on their sites, most notably Serenity Gardens.

The cans have a value and are endlessly recyclable – it makes sense to keep them in the value chain and recycle them, whilst at the same time providing a benefit to the garden.

Using the cans as a commodity, community gardens have a valuable resource. If cans are collected in large amounts in a safe designated site, with the Local Authority approval and do not provide a nuisance or menace to the public – they may be traded for cash or in the case of community gardens they may prefer swapping their collected cans for compost.

This idea fundamentally underpins the circular economy ideology and keeps the resource in continual flow. Alupro Ireland would like to see as many gardens getting involved with Every Can Counts and welcomes the joint initiative with CGN, with the potential to make substantial contribution to local communities, both environmentally and economically – by making Every Can Count!

For more information, contact Every Can Counts directly. You can download a poster here with some facts and figures that may help to convince your friends and colleagues, or a getting started poster by clicking the image below.

Best of luck and keep us posted how you get on! For more information and news about community gardens and associated initiatives in Ireland and Northern Ireland, sign up for our blog.

Photo Credits: Every Can Counts

Launch of the All-Ireland Pollinator Plan

The Community Garden Network are pleased to be one of the 68 organisations involved in helping community gardeners become pollinator friendly as the new All-Ireland Pollinator Plan is launched by the Biodiversity Centre today.

All-Ireland Pollinator Plan

We’ve agreed to share a plan of action with community gardens that will help to tackle pollinator decline and make Ireland a place where pollinators can survive and thrive.

The All-Ireland Pollinator Plan 2015-2020 makes Ireland one of the first countries in Europe with a strategy to address pollinator decline and protect pollination services. The initiative has generated huge support and has culminated in agreement to deliver 81 actions to make Ireland more pollinator friendly.

The Plan identifies actions that can be taken on farmland, public land and private land. These include creating pollinator highways along our transport routes, making our public parks pollinator friendly and encouraging the public to see their gardens as potential pit-stops for our busy bees.

Raising Awareness

It is also about raising awareness on pollinators and how to protect them. With the support of organisations like An Taisce Green-Schools it aims to ensure that everyone from schoolchildren to farmers, gardeners, local authorities and businesses know what pollinators need and which simple cost-effective actions they can take to help. The Plan will also support Ireland’s bee keepers in keeping our honeybees healthy.

“Unfortunately, Irish pollinators are in decline, with one third of our 98 bee species threatened with extinction,” said Dr Úna FitzPatrick from the National Biodiversity Data Centre, who chaired the Plan steering group.

Dr Jane Stout, Associate Professor in Botany at Trinity College Dublin, who co-chaired the group, added:

“If we want pollinators to be available to pollinate our crops and wild plants for future generations we need to manage the landscape in a more sustainable way and create a joined-up network of diverse and flower rich habitats as well as reduce our use of chemical insecticides. This doesn’t just mean in the countryside, but in our towns and villages as well.”

Protecting Livelihoods

The Pollinator Plan is not just about protecting bees but also about protecting the livelihood of farmers and growers who rely on their ‘free’ pollinator service, which allows consumers to buy Irish fruit and vegetables at an affordable price. This service is worth over £7 million per annum for apples in Northern Ireland, and €3.9 million for oilseed rape in the Republic of Ireland.

Additionally, about three-quarters of our wild plants also require insect pollinators, so without pollinators the Irish landscape would be a very different and less beautiful place. Their value to tourism and branding our produce abroad is enormous but has never been assessed in a monetary sense.

Responsibility for delivering the 81 actions has been shared out between the supporting organisations, which include the Department of Agriculture, Food & the Marine, Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, Teagasc, Bord Bía, Northern Ireland Environment Agency, Heritage Council, Fáilte Ireland, An Taisce Green Schools, Federation of Irish Beekeepers’ Associations, Iarnród Éireann, National Trust, RSPB, Tidy Towns, Transport NI, Ulster Farmers’ Union, Ulster Wildlife and Waterways Ireland.

The Pollinator Plan

The full Pollinator Plan can be downloaded at bidiversityireland.ie and by the spring of 2016 the site will be fully developed to provide all necessary information and facilitate implementation.

To keep up-to-date, please sign up for the Community Garden Network newsletter and we will email suggestions on how community gardens can help save the pollinators.