Green-fingered community

There are always people ready to tackle the town, and foremost among those involved in Cork 2005 is the Mandala of Community Gardens. The only trees in Blarney Street, for example, are those planted by the children at the Blarney Street national school where the Mandala team has established part of its Capital of Culture project.

Promoters Elinor Rivers and Claire Osborne hope this city-wide programme involving seven different neighbourhoods and helped by funding from the Rapid programme, the Heritage Council, the City Council, FÁS, the VEC and the Southern Health Board as well as 2005 itself will evolve into an association of community gardens.

There is a compost bucket in every classroom in Blarney Street, where the garden wormery is distinctly popular. So is the device of growing potatoes (as well as pumpkins, carrots, onions and parsnips) within the small growing circle of discarded tyres. Explaining this as a form of permaculture, Claire Osborne says that it is not only efficient but is also easier to manage, especially for smaller children. These sprouting circles border a south-facing slope of school grounds squared off into beds of flourishing vegetables rimmed by new plantings of raspberries, loganberries, currants, gooseberries and native tree and hedge saplings. Hawthorn, holly and wild rose interrupt the long grasses of the wildlife area and seeds are monitored on classroom window-ledges. Everyone helps: the school caretaker has built a set of timber steps and the beds are planked. Donal Hayes runs the garden assisted by local "volunteers", a development which encourages Elinor and Claire in their belief that ideally these gardens should become community meeting-places.

The garden produce can be cropped when the children return to school in September and a harvest festival is being planned to engage both children and parents, as well as the very traditional Blarney Street community. That identity in itself is now being revealed to the children through the local identification of items (a buried dart is a clue to the former popularity of the sport in the area) unearthed when digging the beds.

Both Osborne and Rivers are ardent gardeners, although their training was in community and disability arts, and their team includes Kate Kalin, initiator of the Blarney Street programme and Louise Harrington who manages the Traveller Women's Network scheme. At the Cheshire Home a sensory garden has been established in a courtyard. All the bedrooms of a new wing look out on this sheltered area which is backed by a typical stretch of Cork cliff. Even this has been put to use, with foxgloves, poppies, ox-eye daisies, aubretia and nasturtiums mixed among the wild flowers. Climbers decorate a new pergola and seedling tubs include grape-vines and papyrus. Rachel Aitken Crawshaw is the recreational organiser here and supervises the planting chosen or managed by the residents.

"We want to give people the skills for every stage of the project, so design and selection are all part of it," explains Rivers. "It's also a way of getting people to take responsibility for their own environment and to learn to work together. So we are putting in all the support systems now because the future is uncertain. Our wages run out at the end of the year and after that - we'll have to see!"