Food growing projects in Donegal receive share of €75,000 funding

The community food growing fund ‘Energia Get Ireland Growing’ created by GIY (Grow It Yourself) in partnership with Energia has awarded a fund of €75,000 to food growing projects all across Ireland.
 
In Donegal an Energia Get Ireland Growing funding award goes to Artlink, Buncrana, St. Francis N.S., Donegal Town and Moville Community Garden.
The Artlink community garden is open to all visitors to Fort Dunree which is a busy site on the Wild Atlantic Way. At the moment a core group of 6 maintain the space but workshops are open to the public and have been well attended by people who want to learn more about growing your own food. They have a satellite garden in the town centre at The Exchange Inishowen where people can come and potter in the garden and collect herbs to use.
The group with this funding would like to build two more raised beds, organic seeds to plant and hand tools to help maintain it.
The children at St. Francis N.S., Donegal Town work with teachers and parents and link in with members of the local community country market. They plan to put their funding towards Pot plants, hanging baskets and shrubs for the school grounds & raised beds for growing vegetables.
The Moville Community Garden operates under the auspices of Moville Family Resource Centre. It provides an example of how to grow organic fruit and vegetables. The courses encourage sustainability, recycling, composting etc and encourage the participation of young people. The planting of the heritage orchard gives a sense of the history of horticulture in Ireland. The garden provides an outlet for all sections of the community to meet and socialise. The grant will be used to improve the growing areas for the annual harvest by application of compost, soil conditioners e.g. seaweed extract and organic fertilisers and microrizal fungii.
In addition to the funding provided, GIY will also provide additional supports and opportunities for knowledge exchange between the projects, helping the best ideas to be shared through ‘Energia Get Ireland Growing’. All of the projects remain part of the GIY network in the long term, giving them access to other GIY resources and additional groups and projects within the network, creating a long-term legacy.