Garden festival growing strong

FOLLOWING the huge success of the first standalone Clare Garden Festival at Ennis Showgrounds on Sunday last, organisers are keen to plant seeds for next year’s event. In fact, Clare Garden Festival’s success exceeded expectation, with around 1,500 people from all over Ireland in attendance.

 

“Close on 70 stalls from specialist nurseries and garden centres to craft and artisan food stalls were set up,” said festival founder and organiser, Carmen Cronin.

“I was delighted to see so many friends and gardeners that I had met over the last two years travelling all over Ireland spreading the word about growing your own and equally it was wonderful to see even more people that I had never met before.

“I was hugely delighted with the amount of positive feedback we received, but of course there is always room for improvement and new ideas.”

Feedback collected on the day and received through email and facebook was overwhelmingly positive with statements including ‘Fabulous talks’, ‘Great selection of good value naturally grown plants’, ‘A great day – it was gardeners’ paradise’, ‘Very well organised; well done to Carmen and her team’.

The expert garden talks proved hugely popular with a line-up of four gardeners. Klaus Laitenberger gave a great overview of unusual, interesting and neglected root crops including the yacon tuber, which has a wonderful pear flavour that the audience was able to taste.

This was followed by a talk by head gardener of Blarney Castle Gardens, Adam Whitbourn on flowering bulbs.
Ciarán Burke, owner of The Garden School from Mayo, made gardening fun by involving the audience.

A huge highlight and very popular with the audience were Jim Cronin’s talks on polytunnels with an excursion from the stage to the tunnel set-up by Larkin Polytunnels.

His later talk entitled Taking the Fright out of Blight. was closely linked to the festival slogan ‘Going back to your roots’, which had been chosen in particular in the year of the Gathering.

The talk was introduced by Micheal O’Connell, a member of the committee organising the National Famine Commemoration on May 12, who gave a gripping insight into the Famine in Clare linked to failing potato crops.

“Working closely with the County Clare Agricultural Show Committee and thanks to volunteers joining us on the day, we were able to put on a great day of talks and entertainment for gardeners, novices and the whole family,” said Carmen Cronin.

“Myself and Bernard Hanrahan, chairman of the show society, are already planning to work together again to create the next Clare Garden Festival in 2014 with the last Sunday in April earmarked for the event.”

The festival featured stalls by non-commercial and charitable organisations including Irish Seed Savers Association, GIY Ireland, CELT, Burrenbeo, Banner Beekeepers, and Clare County Council along with the Master Composters.

“The new Clare Garden Festival was a great opportunity for us to spread important environmental messages to people about preventing food waste, composting and promoting reuse,” said environmental awareness officer with Clare County Council, Joan Tarmey.

She continued, “I was delighted to see the very large and engaged crowd. There is a real appetite for this festival to establish itself.”

Further details are available from www.facebook.com/claregardenfestival or visit www.claregardenfestival.com.