This article appeared in The Fingal Independent Tuesday 22nd November 2011:

Garden podcast puts Peter up for award

By JOHN MANNING

Tuesday November 22 2011

A BALLYBOUGHAL man is up for a national award for his Podcast that introduces the listener to the joys of gardening. Ace landscape gardner and community stalwart down Ballyboughal way is Peter Donegan and his popular podcast called The Sodshow is up for a national web award this year. Peter is the man behind Ballyboughal.net and a great champion of life in Ballyboughal as well as an enthusiastic promoter of all things green-fingered. He is an award winning landscape gardener and designer with Peter Donegan Landscaping and has had several eye-catching exhibits at the Bloom festival. Apart from imparting his gardening wisdom on the Podcast, Peter has had more face-to-face encounters with budding horticulturalists in Fingal classrooms over the last few weeks. Fingal Libraries in conjunction with Peter Donegan are hosting a series of classes with primary school children to teach them the real facts of nature through October and November. The sessions cover topics such as gardening, water, the great outdoors, how plants make their own food and how we grow ours, fruit and vegetables, trees and flowers, making a living edible garden and staying green at home. The classes give the children the opportunity to get their hands dirty and do some planting themselves and at the same time have fun while exploring the natural world and biodiversity. The garden classes entitled, Adventures in Green Gardening, started Tuesday 16th October and run for six weeks. Even if you missed the classes, a list of books has been compiled by Peter Donegan and Fingal Libraries for children to read themselves and also a list of more detailed books for parents. All of the books are available from Fingal Libraries.

– JOHN MANNING