The walls have (p)ears
TV presenter opens market garden to feed up to 85 families
TV PRESENTER Michael Kelly is on a mission to return Ireland’s walled gardens to their original use as working food markets.
The presenter of the RTÉ series Food Matters and founder of GIY (Grow It Yourself) this week opened a new market garden amid the splendour of the 19th century walled garden at the Curraghmore Estate in Portlaw, Co. Waterford.
The project aims to feed up to 85 families and set an example as a ‘viable alternative model’ to the current systems of food production and consumption.
He told the Irish Mail on Sunday: ‘It hasn’t been used much for the last 30 to 40 years, so the opportunity to bring it back to life and give it a modern twist is just really exciting for us.’
The walled garden at Curraghmore will be brought back to its original use for food production by Mr Kelly’s GIY – a Waterford-based network that supports over a million people in growing their own food.
It comes as a comprehensive economic study published by the Potsdam Institute For Climate
‘It’s the opposite to modern agriculture’
Impact Research last week found that – aside from improving human health and climate prospects – a return to more sustainable food systems could create up to €9.3trillion of benefits a year.
Mr Kelly said he hopes to sign 85 families up to receive weekly boxes of organic produce from the 12-acre walled garden.
The ‘classic smallholding’ will have fruit, vegetables, poultry, pigs and beehives, cultivated following the principles of regenerative agriculture.
‘It’s the opposite to the way modern agriculture is set up, which is very focused on mono-cropping or specialising in dairy or veg and so on,’ Mr Kelly explained. ‘We’re doing a bit of everything.’
The walled garden at Curraghmore – one of the largest in Ireland and the UK – once fed the estate and surrounding area, even growing tropical fruit in its now derelict greenhouse.
There were around 50 gardeners in its late-1800s heyday. The famous gardener and writer William Robinson – considered a pioneer of rewilding – began his working life at Curraghmore before making his name in Britain as he developed what would become known as the Robinsonian naturalistic gardening style.
‘They would have been using a coal-fired furnace to heat the greenhouse to allow them to grow things like pineapples, bananas, grapes and all sorts of exotic things,’ Mr Kelly said.
‘It would have been a showcase for the estate at the time, to show they’re there, to show their wealth and power,’ he added.
The new market garden will also stock the GIY café in Waterford city and, ‘really importantly’, allow the social enterprise to run more courses in growing and consuming food sustainably.
‘I think it has the potential to be a viable alternative model,’ Mr Kelly said. ‘[The Potsdam report] talks about the radical change that’s needed to address climate change, and it focuses on smallholdings as very important parts of that – where you’re producing food in a way that’s locking in carbon rather than increasing the problems of carbon emissions. So I think it has the potential to be a viable alternative model.’
Many of the walled gardens around the country were originally used for growing food rather than for the ornamental plants and flowers common today.
If successful, the initiative at Curraghmore could inspire more stakeholders to rethink how to best utilise some crumbling walled gardens, although the ‘walls aspect probably isn’t the important thing’, Mr Kelly said.
‘There are some examples of food production in other walled gardens, mainly at hotel estates, but there are actually lots of examples of small patches of land in the community being turned into productive gardens that are producing food for communities.
‘In Cloughjordan in Co. Tipperary, for example, they have a community-supported agriculture scheme on a similar amount of land that supports 70, 80 families in the community. Also, the food is much more nutritious and much healthier for you.’
Mr Kelly said his ‘focus’ is on the consumer having ‘a really critical role’ in moving away from current food production systems, which contribute both directly and indirectly to climate change, destroy biodiversity and lead to worse health outcomes.
‘It’s a very unpopular message, but the reality is if we don’t support smaller growers and we keep focusing on buying cheap, imported foods, then that’ll be all that’s left for us,’ he said.
‘It would have been a showcase for the estate’
GIY has launched a registration process for people to find out more about their food boxes and sign up for the waiting list at www.GIY.ie