Donal Hickey: Urban allotments and community gardens growing in popularity
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The influence of celebrity presenters of gardening programmes on television, such as Diarmuid Gavin and Monty Don, may have something to do with the growth of garden centres and green-fingered activity generally.
But, surely, there’s more than one reason — not least an increased enthusiasm for environmentally-friendly activity amid concerns for the future of planet Earth.
As National Allotments and Community Gardens Week is upon us, ending on Saturday October 19, people all over Ireland are being invited to share the positive impact of allotments and community gardens. The theme this year is healthy soil.
Community Gardens Ireland (CGI) hopes that allotments, community gardens, school gardens, tidy towns and local growers will get involved and celebrate how important community growing spaces are to local soil health.
“Communities could organise a public tour of their community garden, or allotments, and post their story online about how their community growing space started," said CGI chairman, Donal McCormack.
As well as a plethora of TV programmes, many newspapers, including the Irish Examiner, devote generous amounts of space to gardening, all of which is important. However, researcher Mary Benson, who has studied the expansion of allotments in the Greater Dublin area, believes there is much more to it than that.
She lists environmental and sustainability issues, economic downturns, demand for green, alternative leisure and community spaces, and a response to concerns about unhealthy diets.
Many people get tremendous satisfaction from growing their own organic fruit and vegetables and the demand for allotments in urban areas has been rising in recent years.
Such demand peaked during two world wars in the first half of the 20th century, due to food scarcity. There were 40,000 allotments in Ireland during the 1940s. However, numbers declined rapidly in post-war years as demand for land for industry, commerce and housing grew in and around cities.
Now in the so-called 'Green Era', more people are looking for allotments and local authorities are expected to provide the necessary land. Cork City Council, for example, has more than 50 plots for rent at the market garden, in Churchfield.
Significantly, the new Planning and Development Bill obliges local authorities to reserve land for allotments and community gardens — the first time community gardens have been defined in our legislation.
The impact of the Tidy Towns competition ought not to be underestimated, with marks awarded for public spaces, tree-planting, flowers and garden activity generally.
And of course we have the prettification of many towns and villages. Take former winner Killarney, County Kerry, which has been undertaking a highly effective planting programme for decades, adding hugely to the attractiveness of the busy tourist town.