Remarks at the Official Opening o Nenagh Community Garden
6th June 2012
Ladies and Gentlemen
Tá áthas an domhain orm bheith anseo inniu chun Togra an Ghairdín Pobail ins an tAonach a oscailt. Ba mhaith liom buíochas a ghabháil le Gerry Coffey as a chuireadh cneasta bheith anseo i bhur measc inniu agus, dar ndóigh, buíochas a ghabháil libhse as an bhfáilte croíúil.
[I am delighted to be here with you all today to open the Nenagh Community Garden Project. I would like to thank Gerry Coffey for his kind invitation to join you this afternoon and also to all of you for your welcome. ]
Your stated objectives of this project include to enhance the quality of life for those taking part, to promote a healthier lifestyle and to provide participants with opportunities for social and personal development. These are laudable goals and that you approach the project using community development principles will ensure that the initiative has the real potential to enhance the skills of the participants through discussion, questioning and participation and also to build the community’s capacity for investigating and analysing local need and developing appropriate responses.
The benefits from developing a community garden are very real: from the physical and mental health gains that come with exercise outdoors, to educating people on how and why to grow their own food, to encouraging the production of more food locally.
Community gardening can also help to reduce our reliance on imported and unsustainable food sources, build community relations and developing social networks. The trend in community gardens as in your own garden is now towards organic growing, providing people with locally produced organic, food.
Our fragile planet compels us to understand it better, to respect it more genuinely and to nurture and protect it. This garden is being developed locally within the context of serious food insecurity globally. Improving local food production is a significant global challenge: the world’s population will increase from 7 billion today to 9 billion by 2050 and with this global food supply will need to more than double. We will need to achieve this increased production under increasingly tight water and land constraints. To do this successfully we must reconcile these urgent goals: the achievement of global food security with the safeguarding of biodiversity and protection of our environment.
The challenge will continue to be finding ways to increase production with fewer resources. It is essential that we understand that sustainable development is not a set of problems to be solved, but an enduring condition to be lived with. A community garden such as this is an excellent way of developing this awareness and practice at local level.
Is dea-shampla an gairdín seo de phobal ag teacht le chéile. Mar gheall ar a gcuid dianiarrachtaí agus a ndíogras cruthaítear rud íontach a bheidh againnn go deo. Faightear rian de smaointí na ndaoine sa ghairdín seo. Beidh an gairdín seo ina ábhar áthais agus síochána do mhórán sna blianta amach anseo.
[This garden is a valuable example of a community coming together, sharing their time, energy, skills and dedication to craft something that is truly good and lasting; reflective of your global consciousness, something that will continue to grow and mature and to give pleasure and peace for years to come. ]
This garden also exemplifies how statutory funding, accompanied by local development work can leverage results for the community at a time of severe economic difficulty for many people. The initial funding provided by the North Tipperary Leader Partnership was an important catalyst but today is the culmination of many hours of hard work by you, the community, who have been tireless in bringing the process to this stage. You now have a significant community resource that will never be the same two seasons, or two years, in a row. The garden will mature in the coming years and give people great pleasure throughout the changing seasons. Always though, it will be a place to be proud of the work of a community that cares about its people and its environment.
Anyone looking at this can only be impressed at what partnership working can accomplish. This was no sixty minute makeover. You had to be patient, to plan, plant and wait for nature to take her course. Nenagh’s new garden will soon see its first summer, and each season will have a new story to tell, of plants that thrived and others that didn’t do so well, of birds that came and went, of people who visited and came away with their own unique experience. Here you will see the seasons charted, the years passing, the constant re-growth and regeneration of life. Enjoy it and nurture it so that it flourishes as you want your community to flourish.
A few days ago I had the pleasure of opening the Bloom festival in the Phoenix Park and saw, yet again, the enjoyment and satisfaction that can be derived from the creation of a beautiful garden; how some people see a garden as a serene oasis of calm where everything should work together in perfect harmony and balance, while for others a garden is a joyful expression of creativity and a colourful celebration of nature at its very best.
Your community is well represented here today, a sign of how much this amenity means to all of you. A good community garden project generally has the characteristics of being made by, and for, members of the local community. It brings together people of different ages and cultural backgrounds and creates a sense of belonging and that is what has happened here in Nenagh.
I appreciate that this project represents the time, energy, hard work and dedication of a large number of volunteers. I would like to thank all of you for welcoming me here to celebrate this lovely occasion and for your contribution to making today a success.
I congratulate everyone involved in the organisation of today’s opening.
I would now like to declare the Nenagh Community Garden officially open.
Go raibh míle maith agaibh go léir.