On Saturday 25th April, Community Gardens Ireland (CGI) held our yearly online gathering of community growers. This is a huge event each year with over 150 people registering for this year’s event.

Our co-chairperson Molly Garvey opened the event and welcomed all attendees, went through the plan for the day, and encouraged all present to ask questions, and get involved in the upcoming break out groups today.

Next, co-chairperson Dónal McCormack highlighted the main topics that CGI have been working on, such as a new law for community growing, 100 years of community growing in Ireland 2026, and CGI leading the conversation nationally on community growing through discussions at events like Bloom, Nature Restoration Plan reviews, national community gardening and allotments week, and other similar events.

The event then turned to our speakers on the day, who kindly gave up their time to tell their stories about sustainability, community growing, and food sovereignty.

Clare man Michael Gleeson was the first speaker. Michael is an Organic Farmer, Rural and Community Development Consultant based near Killarney and Part-time Social Enterprise Officer with Limerick City Partnership, where he facilitates a network of over 30 Social Enterprises. Limerick Growing Communities is an initiative focused on promoting and supporting the 15 or so Community Gardens in Limerick City. https://www.limerick.ie/council/newsroom/news/limerick-growing-communities-exploring-opportunities-for-community-gardening 

Molly Garvey then introduced our key note speaker for 2026’s gathering, former President of Ireland, Mary Robinson. Mary Robinson is a co-founder of Project Dandelion, which is a women-led global campaign for climate justice, Adjunct Professor for Climate Justice at Trinity College Dublin, and a member of The Elders. She served as President of Ireland from 1990-1997 and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights from 1997- 2002. 

Mary spoke about Project Dandelion, and the need for “radical connection, leading to radical communication, leading to radical collaboration”. Given the issues in the world in 2026, the need for all of us to work together and collaborate on common challenges is more important than ever.

The role of dandelions was highlighted, given they are medicinal plants, fully edible, and spread their seeds easily, helps pollinators and is present on every continent.

The importance of local food production and the vulnerability of food supply was highlighted by Mary at the meeting, along with work Mary has recently completed to date with discussions with local authority climate action teams discussing the need for more community gardens and allotments.

The universal declaration of human rights, about our duties to community, and how we develop our full potential by helping others is something Mary wants to build on that idea of meitheal, and build it into local food production.

https://www.projectdandelion.com/ 
https://maryrobinsoncentre.ie/conference-2026/

The meeting thanked Mary for her time at the gathering, and looked forward to opportunities to discuss further methods to increase the level of community gardens and allotments throughout the island of Ireland.

Our next speaker was Brenda Gough is a community gardener from West Belfast. Brenda is the chairperson of The Three Sisters Community Garden, a member of Reclaim The Commons volunteer network and sits on Belfast’s Community Growing Forum. Also, a member of Reclaim The Agenda Women’s Rights Organisation, she’s active in campaigning for building an urban growing infrastructure and addressing food poverty. https://www.facebook.com/ThreeSistersGroupBelfast/ 

Our final speaker was Sandrine Bertin is Cork City Council’s Food Policy Development Officer, supporting the work of Cork Food Policy Council. She is coordinating a test site incubator in Douglas to identify and record the many challenges faced by aspiring urban food growers, while developing solutions to grow more food in the City. https://corkhealthycities.com/cork-food-policy-council/ 

A huge thank you to all our speakers at our yearly gathering – we appreciate the time commitment from all of you!

Following this, the attendees split into breakout rooms to discuss issues on Garden DIY (water, beds, design); Garden Budget & fundraising; Garden Governance: Lease, insurance, garden rules, committee MoU; and Garden community engagement.

The groups then came back to discuss these issues and share the learnings from each other.

The gathering then finished with Molly Garvey summarising the events from the morning, thanking all for attending, and all were encouraged to remain on the call for the AGM of Community Gardens Ireland.

This has been supported by the EU’s Cohesion Policy Funds and the Government of Ireland, and Community Foundation Ireland.

For more details on the above or to get in contact, please email info@cgireland.org