The Food Garden Project, a joint initiative by the Simon Community and RehabCare, is reaping results, writes ROSITA BOLAND
‘YOU CAN stuff them with mince, mushroom and garlic and maybe some chilli. You cook it in tinfoil, and the juice gets into the meat. God, it’s lovely with spuds. You’d have enough for three or four people if you had one big enough.”
Frankie is talking about marrows. He is specifically talking about the marrows he is hoping to grow in his patch of garden at the Simon House in Dundalk, Co Louth. Since January, the half-acre site at the back of the Simon House in Seatown has been slowly transforming from an overgrown patch of rubble to what will be a large vegetable garden.
This particular community food initiative, the Food Garden Project, is one of seven recent recipients of new funding from Safefood, a North-South agency. The garden is tended by 12 volunteers, six each from the Simon Community and RehabCare, overseen by Anne Hynes.
Frankie is one of the Simon participants, and he is so enthusiastic about the possibility of growing marrows and describing how they can be cooked, that several people in the room admit to feeling sudden hunger pangs. We’re sitting in the Simon House on one of the days volunteers come to work in the garden. Prior to receiving €75,000 funding from Safefood, which is spread out over three years, the garden project could only run three hours a week.
“The three-year funding element to the project is hugely important,” states Deirdre Quinn, the community services manager with RehabCare. “You can’t reflect the success of a project as well with only one year. And also, some of our RehabCare participants would work at a slower pace.”
“It also means that we can experiment with the growing,” explains Hynes. “We can try different things, and see what grows well together, and see how long things take to grow, by following the seasons. And it’s all about learning from each other.”
The key idea behind the seven community food initiatives is to promote better access and availability of healthy food to the socially marginalised.
It is an all-island initiative, with the aim of making each project self-supporting and sustainable by the time the funding ends, and of tackling the issue of food poverty. Surveys, such as one conducted by the Food Safety Authority of Ireland last year, show that the marginalised are prone to eating less nutritious food, and suffer more health problems as a result.
At Dundalk, the idea is that those who volunteer to work in the food garden will learn how to grow vegetables and, later, how to cook simple meals using them, with the help of in-house cookery demonstrations.
Much of the work at Dundalk to date has been to do with preparing the ground. Flagstones and gravel have been laid down as paths. Trees have been cut back to let in more light. Rubble has been cleared. Ivy has been cut down. There are now five large raised beds and an additional plot, part of which is destined for Frankie’s marrows.
The funding enabled Simon to put a watering system in the greenhouse it bought with a National Lottery grant some years ago. Funding has also paid for an attractive little cabin in the middle of the garden, which will function both as a shelter from the rain and as a place where volunteers can learn more about horticulture and nutrition.
Most of the programme is practical, but about 10 per cent of it, according to Hynes, is educational. Volunteers, for example, are taken to garden centres to learn more about the seeds they will be choosing to sow.
ONE BED ALREADY has winter onions in it, their green stalks jauntily poking up from the soil. “We’ll put spuds down before Paddy’s Day,” declares Jimmy Hanlon, a RehabCare participant. Hanlon wants to grow potatoes, cabbage, turnips, parsnips and carrots. He joined the project because “it tells you where your food comes from, and what’s safe to eat”.
Participants get to take vegetables home, and they’ll all also have a herb box.
“I have a herb box going all year,” says Simon, who is a member of the Simon Community. “Thyme, rosemary, parsley.”
Any excess produce from the garden will be sold at Dundalk Farmers’ Market, where it will have the additional effect of reminding the public what marginalised groups in society can achieve.
Hynes works with two groups of six people twice a week, which means there is now work being done in the garden 20 hours a week. There are unquantifible benefits in having two groups of people from the fringes of society meeting each other regularly.
One participant from Simon who had a poor history of showing up to events has not yet missed a single class. He has made friends within the RehabCare group, people he would never have mixed with prior to the project.
“Coming here is better than sitting around all day doing nothing,” Hanlon says bluntly.
“For most of us who have long-term illness or have been unemployed long-term, it’s a wonderful facility to be able to come here,” says Simon.
Cliodhna Foley-Nolan is the director of human health and nutrition at Safefood, the organisation that selected the applicants for funding. It received more than 130 applications from the island of Ireland. What criteria did it use?
“We were looking for well-thought-out applications that were practical and had a high level of sustainability,” she says. “In the long term, it’s about communities helping themselves.”
Foley-Nolan points out that less advantaged people often skimp on buying food, sometimes choosing to spend that money on cigarettes instead. “It’s a short-term approach to eating.”
To date, there has been very little work done in Ireland in the area of food poverty. An additional benefit of the scheme is that, as part of the evaluation process, facilitators from each of the seven selected projects will meet three times a year to share information about their development and to discuss what is working well within the communities or not. There is a separate funding strand for this.
In Dundalk, Frankie has big ideas, all inspired by his participation in the food garden to date.
“Maybe we could get allotments, and get together to build a garden shed,” he suggests, thinking of the future. Meanwhile, he’s planning his dinner of stuffed marrow; marrow that he will have grown himself by the end of the year.
GROWTH: COMMUNITY FOOD INITIATIVES AND WHAT THEY HOPE TO DO
KASI COMMUNITY GARDEN
Killarney
Killarney Asylum Seekers Initiative (KASI) is developing a community garden in Killarney. It will provide a social space to help facilitate interaction between participants and local communities. Training will also be provided in gardening, healthy eating on a budget and nutrition.
SEED TO PLATE PROJECT
Limerick
A joint initiative between PAUL Partnership, St Munchin’s Family Resource Centre and Southill Area Centre. Two gardeners in each community will be employed to develop gardens further. The aim is that the knowledge gained at the community gardens will be transferred to participants’ own homes and lifestyles. Southill has a newly opened community cafe and the food grown in the garden will be showcased and cooked in the centre and cafe.
FOOD FOCUS COMMUNITY FOOD INITIATIVE
Cork
Food Focus is a plan to develop a network of community-based structures dedicated to addressing the risk and instances of food poverty in the Knocknaheeny area.
EAST BELFAST HEALTHY EATING EDUCATION PROGRAMME
Belfast
Aimed at providing healthy, nutritious food for residents and ex-residents of a homeless shelter. Information and advice sessions will also be provided for local residents, senior citizens and users of family and community programmes, giving advice and support on how to prepare and cook healthy meals on a low income.
FOOTPRINTS WOMEN’S CENTRE, BUILDING A TRANSITION COMMUNITY
Belfast
This project will oversee the development and planting of the grounds at Footprints Women’s Centre and offer food-growing training to local residents, who will be encouraged to volunteer in the garden. The project will grow fruit and vegetables to be be used within the Footprints catering services. Any surplus will be used in schools in the neighbourhood.
THE BOGSIDE AND BRANDYWELL HEALTH FORUM, FOOD FOR LIFE
Derry
The Bogside and Brandywell Health Forum will develop, organise and deliver a range of healthy eating programmes, including demonstrations and practical cooking activities as well as education-based activities and information.
