Good life as Better Men create inner city garden

A group of unemployed men have discovered the delights of growing fruit and veg – and teaching children about it. ROSE DOYLEreports

‘WE KNEW nothing about horticulture or agriculture or caterpillars or butterflies or grubs,” Better Man group member Mick Denver tells me. “We do now. We made this and it’s beautiful. Next year it’ll be superb.” You don’t for a minute doubt him. The men’s garden is indeed a thing of beauty – not to mention innovation, organic purity, a credit to those who grew it and an example to the rest of us.

The Newcomen Court garden, through an arch by the Let’s Eat café, is bounded by houses. On a damp day, the drizzle notwithstanding, it was joy unbridled to walk between the raised beds of Tuscany Black and Purple kale, between beetroot, onions and courgettes, horseradish and basil, several kinds of berries and any amount of cabbages.

This was once a wasteland with a demolished building awaiting redevelopment. Now, along with the garden, there is a potting shed, office, glass house, water tanks, and a future for the men who made it happen and hope that similar gardens will be grown on sites across the city.

The chances are good: the City Council is supportive of the scheme and has (so far) made six parcels of city centre land available to residents.

That the garden happened at all is thanks to support from the local Larkin Centre for the unemployed, to the late Pat Murphy , one of the centre’s founder members, and to the centre’s Anne Flannery, co-ordinator of the project.

It began when the Larkin Centre, in conference with the community, set up a Men’s Health and Well Being programme which was the catalyst for the Better Man Group. “We decided to keep going as the Better Man Group after we finished our 10 weeks on the programme,” Mick Denver says. “Pat Murphy had always wanted a garden for men. In the hospice, the week before he died, he said we should get a plot of land. We got this, almost on the doorstep of the house he lived in!

“We came in here last November, in the snow, and got started,” Denver says. “We had an amazing crop of mangetout and courgettes. Most of us had never eaten either of those; now we’ve a finer appreciation of the fruits of gardening, and of food and cooking.”

Before coming together as a group, some of the men had been deeply depressed. Some had taken to drink and drugs. The garden has been a help too, Denver says, in dealing with the high number of suicides in the area.

We take a tour of the garden. “We work on organic principles, recycle everything, harvest rainwater in 1,200-litre tanks. The boxes are lined with election posters – politicians serving their country you could say.”

They’ve just completed a couple of brand new, green-and-white- tiled toilets. We pass parsnips, herbs, spinach, rooster potatoes, baby pear, cherry and apple trees and tomatoes under glass donated by Alan Costello of Costcutter.

“We could do with funding,” Denver says. “We’ll harvest the seeds and try to keep going but we really need funding. We’ve got electric fittings but no electricity so if anyone wants to donate a turbine or solar panels . . .”

They’re generous with their fruit and veg and I leave with a bag full of Chilean Black beetroot, curly kale and much more. The car is filled with the smell of energy and goodwill all the way home.

Dublin City Council makes land available to residents who come together, licensing them to utilise it for community gardens or allotments. The City Council will do the legal work required under the Planning and Development Act. Residents/applicants don’t need to get a solicitor but they do need to form an entity for insurance purposes. The license is renewed annually until the land is needed for development. Details from Charlie Lowe, Community Gardens or Allotments, Central Area HQ, 51-53 Sean McDermott Street Lr, Dublin 1.