Totally Dublin 1
SCHOOL From a garden in Santry to a school withou
t walls, Dubliner Denise Dunne has been teaching people how to reconnect with nature through herbs. WORDS Iqra Siddiqui PHOTOS Emma Winters In the quiet, green heart of North County Dublin, an educational initiative redefining how people learn about plants, food and nature. Denise Dunne, whose life’s work is a beautiful, unbroken line from a childhood garden to a vision of reconnecting people with the wild bounty of Ireland. A patch of wild garlic, a cluster of nettles, a flowering herb hidden in a hedgerow-each becomes a lesson in food, history and the natural world. This is the Herb School, founded by Denise Dunne, which takes learning beyond traditional classrooms to gardens, woodlands, coastlines, and people’s homes. “The vision of The Herb School did not emerge overnight,” Denise says. It was shaped by her childhood roots and later turned into reality. Denise Dunne’s story begins not in a classroom, but in a garden. Her parents purchased their first home in suburban Dublin in the 1960s. “My parents picked their house from the plans because it had the biggest garden and it was in the cul-de-sac, she recalls, my mom and dad created the beautiful garden from nothing.” The garden they created reflected a strong philosophy of self-sufficiency. As she recalls, “In the 60s in Ireland, people would have been growing potatoes and turnips and carrots and stuff,” but her parents grew more “exotic stuff like purple sprouting broccoli, asparagus, aubergines, peppers, chillies, garlic and all that” in the garden. They also kept hens and used a barbecue to smoke their own food, producing dishes like smoked pheasant and pigeon. “They were like hipsters and foragers before either term was used,” she says. At the heart of it was all the herb garden, designed with stepping stones and circular beds, which she describes as her favourite part of the garden, filled with scents, learning, and hands-on picking. She adds, “Good good was always central in our family – we were practically selfsufficient long before it was fashionable, my parents were living this way long before it became a trend.” “My granny had the greatest influence on our love of good food and cooking,” she says. She began working as a kitchen maid in Killeen Castle and later became a cook, skilled in culinary arts and in fine dinning.“I have memories of helping my Granny in the Kitchen as a child, learning from stocks and sauces to baking, and cooking with seasonal produce, and her cookbooks and utensils are among my most treasured possessions.” At twelve, her mother’s friend brought a book titled The Herb Book. “I still have that book, she says, I absolutely loved it. Filled with watercolour illustrations, recipes, and even sections on using herbs for cosmetics, it opened a new world for her,” Denise shares. It taught her how to make a chamomile rinse for her blonde hair. “I used to have blonde hair, so I would pick chamomile and make a chamomile rinse for my hair,” she says. “Even as a kid, I’d go down before school, collect eggs from the hens, then come back and pick 23
