A huge thank you to all the community groups all over the country who took part in the first ever National Allotments and Community Gardens Week 14th – 21st October 2023! It was an incredibly busy week and we were overjoyed to see so many community-led initiatives be highlighted over the week.

Here are some highlights:

1. There were over 30 community-led events taking place all over the country during the week! More details on the events that took place are here.
2. We formally launched National Allotments and Community Gardens Week with the Lord Mayor of Cork, Kieran McCarthy at The Glen Community Garden.
3. Our Autumn Gathering took place on the same day on the 14th of October in The Glen Community Garden, we had food from My Goodness, and we visited Togher Community Garden. The day was exceptional and thank you to all the cork gardens for the day!
4. Our 2023 theme for National Allotments and Community Gardens week was #GrowingWithNature and we loved to see so many gardens post images and videos of their growing spaces over the week – thank you again!
5. We launched 8 videos of gardens all over Ireland to showcase these amazing spaces:
   • An Gairdín Beo in Carlow Town
   • Merlin Woods Community Garden in Galway City
   • Blackpool Social Gardening Group, Cork City
   • Togher Community Garden, Cork City
   • Mud Island Community Garden, Dublin City
   • Taplin’s Fields, Dublin City
   • Cloughmills Community Action Team, Ballymena
   • Salthill Community Garden, Galway City
6. Quickcrop.ie have offered a 10% discount code for all community gardeners in Ireland! This is a code valid until September 2024 and is offered to all gardens or allotments that are signed up to our map. To find out more details on this, check out the post here.
7. We loved seeing and watching so many gardens highlighted in local media and in the national media. Special shout out to Reilly’s Community Garden for their time on RTÉ’s Today Show on Thursday – if you didn’t see it, you can catch up here!
8. A new Private Member’s Bill was launched by Marc Ó Cathasaigh TD on Wednesday which proposed recognising and making it easier to set up community gardens for the first time. More details here!

This is just a flavour of what happened during National Allotments and Community Gardens Week 2023! We hope to run this again in 2024 and in future years.

Finally, as volunteers we have run this week with no funding at all. We would welcome any donations or sponsorship to help run this event in future years, along with being able to pay for our operating costs such as our website fees, bank fees, zoom membership etc.

If you enjoyed #NationalAllotmentsWeek #NationalCommunityGardensWeek, please let us know by emailing us at info@cgireland.org and also consider donating here.

Thank you – from all the volunteers at Community Gardens Ireland