TD 1
Deep down, everyone loves gardening. They just do
n’t know it yet. are bad news stories; residents on trial for possessing a submachine gun, gangland crime, declarations that the suburb is a national litter “blackspot”. The broken window is now a story shared online. “We constantly have to compete with these headlines, easy headlines that don’t reflect the community,” he continues. “If you look at the percentage of positive stories to negative stories the tendency is towards the sensational.” “If we can change perceptions and get people to realise this is not the place you think, these aren’t the people you imagine, then we can improve the prospects for our kids.” What they want is to take the community back to its roots. “There’s a history of farming in the area,” says Michael Keating, an award-winning local wildlife photographer and bus driver. “I worked on a farm in the ‘70s and ‘80s just up the road,” he continues. “You have to remember, the M50 wasn’t always there. From the Axis Theatre to Santry Cross was all just fields. Countryside. We’re so close to countryside. We knew a farmer there. He used to give us jobs; drive tractors and combines. I’ve these memories of the hay bales and jumping off trees. That was only up the road.” “People on Facebook tell us when they were kids, they’d be coming down in the morning shooing cows,” Stephen adds. “DCU was once the national centre for agricultural excellence. That is what Ballymun is built on. There is a generation that realise the value of those experiences growing up. Now another generation is not getting those opportunities for a rounder appreciation of life.” “Scratch below the surface,” Stephen insists, and the three men guide me around the area to do precisely that. In the same way that the ‘Joseph Plunkett Tower’ plaque changes one’s view of a grassy plain, they altered the scope by recalling this construction site used to be a meadow and that road used to be farmlands. “There were actually peregrine falcons nesting here,” Michael points out as we reach the old Boiler House to admire its gargantuan red and white chimney. Formerly the largest civic heating scheme nationally, the Boiler House went up at the same time as the flats, and supplied them their heating and water. Yet, when demolition was offered as a solution to the towers, a decision was made to salvage this building instead. The result of this choice is the Rediscovery Centre. An environmental social enterprise described as a “3-D textbook” in experiential living, its core principle is that waste is not an end, but an opportunity. “Everything in there is recycled,” Stephen says. There is a genuine sense of pride in his voice as he points that out. Indeed, at each turn there is something that the three men not only want to show me, but admire for their own selves too. When they point out a vertical garden that grows up the side of one façade, Michael drops behind briefly to photograph it as the rest of us proceed up to the rooftop garden, passing sensory pillars, a mosaic of repurporsed plastic recreating ‘The Great Wave’ Ukiyo-e print and the bottom half of a clothing mannequin, painted white and wrapped in Ethernet cables. “There shouldn’t be a construction that doesn’t have a rooftop garden,” Stephen says once we reach the top. “I divide off these beds with comfrey,” Ronnie says, guiding me around a set of zig-zagging soil beds containing everything from red lettuce to elephant garlic. Then he gestures to a small enclosure across the green from the centre, which is where his Muck and Magic community garden sits. Proceeding there next, Ronnie explains that he co-founded the place in 2011 with a group of local volunteers involved in the Ballymun Gardening Club. An “oasis”, Stephen calls it, noting too that this is a partial template for the city farm. There is a polytunnel, a wormery, a gazebo, a living fence woven from willow and an “insect hotel” built from wooden crates, baskets, bamboo, mussel shells, bricks and grass. “We have hedgehogs underneath,” Ronnie points out. Inclusivity is a vital part of Muck And Magic, as it is will be too in the City Farm, which Stephen says is engaging with a series of disability service providers at present. Ronnie is a wheelchair user and has mounds of insight on how they can accommodate all people. 27