Olive Ryan: A visit to an inspirational eco-village 

Eco-village an inspirational place to visit

The cold November rain has been falling aplenty this year and the ground is now saturated.

A week of the wet stuff last week has nearly finished the autumn tree colour in the garden, but overall it has been a good season for deciduous trees displaying their seasonal coats.

The more sheltered the garden is, the better chance of good leaf colour in autumn and the weather plays a big part also.

This year, October and the first half of November have been really mild with no frost to speak of, but the wind and rain did hasten the leaf fall in the last week.

Best not to work on saturated soil as it will cause compaction, and at this time of the year, any jobs in the garden should be done from a solid pathway adjacent to beds and borders if possible.

Scaffolding planks are also useful on heavy soils to alleviate any pedestrian traffic and spread the weight over an area.

Really, when the weather turns like this, it is not gardening weather and it’s perhaps best to retreat indoors for some propagation, seed saving, tool maintenance, tidying or planning for next year.

Indoor growing spaces such as polytunnel and glasshouse will benefit from a good clean out now. Getting particularly perennial weeds out and clearing the soil of spent crops, which may be going to seed or harbouring moulds and mildew, will pave the way for adding soil conditioners like seaweed or garden compost to the surface of the soil.

If this is done now, it gives a few months to break down and allow soil insects and microbes to feed on the surface mulch and integrate it with the top layer of the soil.

This is all good news for the gardener as it cuts down on the need for digging and forking over the soil.

I usually wait until the new year to wash the plastic or glass with cider vinegar and water in preparation for sowing seeds in springtime as this helps with maximizing light levels.

It has been a great year for saving seeds with plenty of sunshine and some warm weather over the summer months to help plants set and ripen seed successfully.

A recent visit to Tipperary for the All Ireland Seed Meet Up last week took me to Cloughjordan, Ireland’s first eco village. Having often heard about this project, it was exciting to visit and see what goes on at this 67-acre site in the north of the Premier County .

The project was started in the late 1990s with an aim to build eco-friendly houses using sustainable materials, shared spaces like a farm, allotments and community gardens, using renewable energy like biomass and solar.

The first residents moved into their houses in 2009 and today there are more than 50 housing units with a population of over 100 living in the village.

There is a newly-planted woodland, eco-hostel, district heating system, community farm, enterprise centre, research gardens, amphitheatre, bakery and labyrinth, allotments and community garden on site.

The village is a hub for education and growth and there are regular workshops and gatherings hosted in the enterprise centre there.

Tree planting, biodiversity workshops, festivals celebrating apples, the earth, the different seasons and so much more are happening in the village throughout the year.

Check out www.thevillage.ie for more details about this inspirational project.

The All Ireland Seed Meet Up is an annual meet up organised by the Gaia Foundation to discuss important issues relating to seed sovereignty in Ireland, the EU, and globally.

The Gaia Foundation is an international body which aims to help communities around the world to revive and protect biocultural diversity.

In today’s modern world, a lot of autonomy is being handed over to larger corporations and this is a concern for the future of growing crops. When seed is grown and harvested in the environment in which it is to grow, then it is adapted to localised weather and soil conditions, making it more resilient.

This is particularly important for the future, with concerns about climate change and the rate at which we are seeing changes in temperatures and rainfall amounts in different parts of the world.

Gaia run seed-saving courses each year which involve online lectures about different seed-related topics as well as several visits to businesses growing and harvesting their own seed in Ireland.

Check out their website at www.gaiafoundation.org for more details about what they do and how you can register for training or networking with seed-saving organisations.

Plant of the Week

This week, it is a plant which is a great one to save seeds from, and the dried seeds heads are very effective in seasonal flower arrangements.

It is Honesty, or Lunaria Annua, a biennial that flowers in its second year of growth. It comes in many forms, variegated, green or red foliage.

It usually has purple or white flowers which appear in early springtime. It also has attractive foliage, particularly the variegated form.

Once it grows in the garden, it will usually seed itself, freely appearing close to where it was originally grown.

The seeds heads develop throughout the summer and turn a papery white colour the shape of a coin (it is also called the money plant). Inside this papery casing is flat brown round seed which can be extracted, and then the seed casing can be used as additions to seasonal flower arrangements.

A plant that provides wonderful value in the garden in springtime, its seeds can be saved and grown or gifted and the empty seed heads look great in dried flower arrangements.

It gets to a height of 60-90cm with a spread of about 60cm and will grow well in free-draining soil, not fussy about pH and full sun or partial shade.