| June 2017 – FOOD SECURITY Workshop: Another great turnout from the local community for our Edible Landscape Workshop at the Quay Centre yesterday. We added lavender, chives, fennel and many more plants to our Forest Garden which is now really taking shape. Have a peep in if you’re passing by!
February 2017: Great preparations in our ELP orchard near the Quay Community Centre in Westport with Horticulture 6 Class friom the VEC. We’re preparing for our new arrivals from the next ELP Grafting workshop by laying out a nursery bed for the next set of grafts. Next we clear the weeds which are particularly bad around the perimeter fence and flatten out the soil -a tricky job when you’ve 3 -year old trees in the midst of it all! Later in the week the TUS and RSS guys will help us lay more mypex and spread the bark mulch.
June 3rd 2016: We extended our forest garden planting site at the back of the Quay Community Centre during this workshop. We used some of the apple trees from our orchard which were taken from grafts of local trees in 2015. There’s Worcester berries and Loganberries, more chives and rhubarb with N-fixation coming from Eleagnus. Again planting was carried out by members of the local community with some help from Paula and Caithriona…
February 2015: Edible Landscapers and Westport GIY, helped by the Horticulture level 6 class from Westport College of Further Education transfer grafted apple trees and plant them out in their new home at the Quay Community Centre. It was a tricky job! We had to ensure none of the tree labels got mixed up as they contain the valuable information relating to rootstock size and origin of cutting…
Oct 16th 2015: What can only be described as a fabulous group of volunteers turned out at our Forest Gardening workshop on this glorious sunshiney day!
We planted apple trees grafted from Westport house trees: chives, raspberries and rhubarb: a groundcover of alpine strawberries and lemon balm – the list of edibles goes on…
Thank you everyone for helping create this beautiful community space.The workshop was facilitated by Caithriona McCarthy and Paula Halpin of the Edible Landscape Project,  Oct 13th 2015: Have a look at our Forest Garden design. We’re nearly ready to go! The soil was covered over the summer, last week compost was dug through and the shelter belt is in place since spring. Roll on friday’s Forest Gardening Workshop…
 Workshop included on site preparation, planning and planting a Forest Garden on a site allocated to us by Mayo County Council at the Quay Community Centre in Westport. The garden will mimic a natural, temperate woodland, except we’ll be using mainly edible plants and we’ll be sourcing as many plants as we can from local nurseries.
Aug 2015: Which fruit trees to choose?Paula clears apples from baby trees grafted from Westport House Orchard – they’re collapsing under the weight of a bumper harvest of cider apples!
Forest Gardening Workshop July 2014: The 2-day workshop provided an introduction to Forest Gardening, a technique based on planting a mix of trees, shrubs and perennial plants. This is a low maintenance, permanent, resilient, stable, organic system of producing your food & other needs, within a fertility hub.
The workshop facilitator was Cleo de Vito, an experienced Forest Gardening teacher and group facilitator who has studied with Martin Crawford at the Agroforestry Research Trust in the UK.
Funding for the workshop was kindly provided by Westport Town Council.
Attendees at the 2-day workshop learned:
– Forest Gardening design principles
– The various & varied layers & plants
– Making best use of a site’s position & advantages
– Planting techniques
– Ground clearance & preparation
In addition, we looked at some of the many annual & perennial plants suitable for food, fuel, fibre & much more.
The workshop took place at Sharkey Hill in Westport and involved both classroom work and a smaller, outdoor section whee we planted on the Westport Town Greenway extension.
 
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