Support blooming for green-fingered calendar

A Kinvara woman received a boost this year as her Irish Kitchen Garden Calendar achieved the support of gardens and gardening organisations nationwide.
Experienced horticulturalist Lynn O’Keeffe-Lascar gives practical expert advice as part of the gardening guide and calendar on a background of stunning photographs taken at some of Ireland’s most beautiful gardens.
In 2009 Lynn, an outreach horticulturalist with a not-for-profit organisation, Kinvara Sustainable Development, started a project called The Irish Kitchen Garden Calendar from her home in Kinvara. The calendar included her own photographs from different gardens and her monthly tips on gardening. The aim of the calendar is to showcase Ireland’s wonderful gardens and to give Irish gardeners month-by-month advice.
Lynn’s commitment to the project and her engaging enthusiasm brought the project through its first two years and now in its third year, she has achieved a breakthrough with national gardens and gardening organisations from all corners of the country supporting the project.
“The Organic Centre is delighted to support Lynn’s Irish Kitchen Garden Calendar,” said Hans Wieland, training and marketing manager at The Organic Centre, Rossinver, Leitrim.
“It is a great calendar that offers very useful tips and information to everyone, who wants to grow some of their own food. It is wonderful to see fellow gardeners taking projects like this into their own hands. Gardening is more than just looking at your own backyard and learning what can best be done by visiting other gardens, talking to people about them or taking a training course at places like our centre. The calendar gives great inspiration by featuring a different garden each month,” he continued.
Two of Ireland’s national gardens, Glenveagh National Park in Donegal and the National Botanic Gardens in Dublin, are featured in the calendar. Irish Seed Savers Association in Clare, The Organic Centre, Gortabrack Farm in Kerry and Grow-It-Yourself from Waterford are all supporting the calendar.
Other gardens and garden centres included are Future Forests and The Secret Garden in Cork and from Galway Woodville Walled Garden, Kylemore Abbey and the Doorus Orchard Project.
“I am absolutely thrilled with the interest and support the Irish Kitchen Garden Calendar is getting from gardening organisations around the country,” said Lynn.
“Our conditions for gardening here in Ireland are very different even to our immediate neighbours and my advice in the calendar aims to support Irish gardeners and those who’d like to learn on a month-by-month basis with little chunks of information. I am a keen gardener myself but I also recognise the importance of relaxation and a visit to a garden can be very refreshing and inspiring.”
Lynn has managed to stay true to the original idea for the calendar providing an enjoyable and useful gardening guide with information on national gardens.
Each month of the Irish Kitchen Garden Calendar includes information on what to do outside in the garden, undercover in tunnels and glasshouses, and which fruits and vegetables can be harvested that month. In addition, Lynn gives seasonal tips from seed sowing to crop protection, ventilation, gardeners’ relaxation as well as jamming and preserving.
While Lynn has already filled some of the dates on the calendar with events like Bloom in the Phoenix Park, there is plenty of room for the gardener themselves to fit in all the day-to-day reminders and record some of the their own tips for the following year.
The last two pages of the handy A4 calendar that can be folded out to A3 size are full of useful contact numbers for Irish gardening websites, Irish seed companies, tool suppliers, Irish gardens open to the public, courses in gardening and gardening clubs.
Many people in South Galway will know Lynn from her involvement in Kinvara Sustainable Living where she teaches courses in vegetable and fruit growing, polytunnel management, and poultry keeping. Together with Anna Jeffrey Gibson, their goal is to encourage and support practical small-scale food production in the community, to enable people to grow food for themselves and improve their quality of life. Lynn is also heavily involved in a local community garden, Doorus Orchard Project that she set up in 2005.
The Irish Kitchen Garden Calendar is available now in many local book shops and garden centres as well as from the National Botanic Gardens Gift shop, Fruit Hill Farm, the GIY Online shop, the Hunt Museum in Limerick, the Irish Seed Savers, the Organic Centre, Ballymaloe Cookery School, the Organic Supermarket in Dublin and also online from www.kinvarasustainableliving.com.