Head Honcho, Dave Robinson and his team were nothing but absolutely brilliant, inspirational and genuine lovely people and from the bottom of my heart a huge thank you to all who made the day great for us. To those who came along on the day, you are all very simply lovely people.
Fact: Did you know the compostable toilet at Rathbeggan Lakes [photgraphed below] was officially opened by Mary Robinson ?
For the great outdoors enthusiast, the gardener or the horticulturist no matter the age or level of experience Rathbeggan has something for everyone. I’m looking forward to this Friday’s garden radio show already 😉
Details: Dave Robinson, Manager/ Owner of Rathbeggan Lakes will be our personal guide for this wonderful day out and the first official gig of 2012.
Numbers: limited to 18
New To The Garden Group ?
There’s no membership. It’s very simply people who like the great outdoors with a side order of horticulture, should you ask the question. There’s no membership and I try to keep it as free as possible. This usually comes by people likle Dave donating me and you their time and venue.
Dave tells me – they have 85 allotments, a viewing tower, a new geometric garden, a two year old orchard and new mini woodland walk! And that’s without going near the lakes themselves. We also have a small coffee shop on site.
Please Note:
There will be no charge for the tour of the gardens – but – and only on this occasion you can make a donation to Temple Street childrens Hospital should you wish.
Children, kids, Grandads and families are more than welcome. Very much a case of the more the merrier so long as you say hello, goodbye and thank you.
I do this garden group for free. This is year 3. The best thing you can do to help is come along – the day you don’t is the day I scratch my head – also: Garden Group for 2012.
Garden Group-ees Note:
Booking: via comment – here only. Its a very easy numbers count.
Contact me: see below. not a problem
Other: My suggestion is car pooling from Dublin City or Swords meeting point. Most of you know each other. If you are stuck and wanna go just leave a comment noting that – it will be easily solved.
Dress Code: this is Ireland. See weather.
Duration: 1.75 hours or longer if you are enjoying yourself
Weather: the weather…. your guess is as good as mine.
Lunch: I had suggested bringing a picnic. That’s what I will be doing anyway. All things going good it’ll be a flask of coffee and some nice sambos!
Anything else: leave a comment below or gimme a call.
Directions: Rathbeggan Lakes, Dunshaughlin, County Meath – on the old N3 now called the R147 and are easily found by taking Junction 6 on the M50 and then leaving the M3 at exit 5. See what you think. Dave Robinson
Since then we have visited The War Memorial Gardens, Ireland Eye, The Battle of The Boyne site and even gone hedgerow walking with approx 200 mainly non gardeners in 2 years. All with huge thanks to you for coming along and equally to those who offered me sites, gardens and their time so for the group to visit.
At the time I also noted the characteristics I felt you needed:
an ability to smile
a likening for the colour green in any shape or form
Now it’s 2012. And I need your suggestions as a garden group go-er or the suggest-er/ owner/ know-er of a place were where it would be good for us to visit.
Answers on a postcard or leave a comment below ? 🙂
The 6th Garden Group outing takes place this weekend coming Sunday August 7th. The hedgerow walk has been done before but, this time the route should be in full fruit.
Date: This Sunday August 7th 2011
Where: Ballyboughal, The Slí na Sceacha/ Hedgerow Walk – The Fruiting Trail
Time: 11.30 am
Details: meet outside O’Connors Pub – the only pub in the village in Ballyboughal [directions below]
Numbers: limited to 15 [can be extended if I give enough notice]
Cost: None. Never is.
If you use an iphone app for your walks runs – this is was runkeeper showed last time.
It is Sunday May 29th as I’m typing this weeks piece and I’ve just returned from doing the fifth outing for the garden group that I started last year.
What goes through my brain and why I decide to start these things I’ll never know. I know I get asked if I make money out my green adventure[s], but the answer to all variations in question is a very swift no. No I don’t make money from writing a garden blog. Nor from presenting the garden radio show, the SodShow. Not even from running a garden group.
So why the flipper do you do these things Peter….?
The last time I was asked that question…. it was a woman, nee, a Mother with a child; swinging out of her like a rotary washing line, pre-filled with a barrel of cola and caster sugar relishing in the energy derived from the gale force winds it had just decided to take full advantage of.
I looked at her and her son, he dressed in full Gaelic hurling Wexford attire. I know it was hurling as a by the way because the spritely seven year old was still wearing the helmet. And as he bounced his head off every Easter egg of every shelf in the supermarket, I asked Mom was he getting his game. Her mind cocooned in a sort of time warp, immune to the protected cranium around her now acting as a sort of battering ram, brought to this earth to destroy anything in its path made of food stuffs, she softly answered…
No Peter, they put him on for the last few minutes if they are losing badly, but that’s only because we have the mini bus and drive the team everywhere….. I reckon they just feel sorry him. To be honest, he s***e , I know he’s mine and all but…. fair play to them….
Explosion! Like a whirl wind passing off at the speed of light, someone clicked the imaginary magic switch and even though it was for just a moment, this soft calm spoken almost frail in her speak woman had by some unidentified odd form of metamorphosis had turned into Missus Terminator…..
Great to see you again……
I think she was trying to end the sentence with my name, but as she ended this unusual holler, my name turned into something different as she began running faster and faster away from me, her head like an owls revolving a full 180 degrees in the direction she was travelling….
….Pet…Jo…er….hnny!
As I took the corner I could see Johnny had just bounced off the mayonnaise display. Aisle 7 was on the verge of turning into the OK Coral and Mom had the only gun! Poor Johnny I thought as I quickly took the corner.
Back to gardens and my relevance. One can’t measure nor monetise a level of enjoyment. At least I can’t. Not when it comes to gardens. To be quite honest I always thought garden groups as a really boring place to be where levels of hierarchy maybe had a chance to shine through a means of speaking botanical latin, which is absolutely grand. And whilst I am well versed in that tongue, what I realised was that unless one had the language, knew the lingo and how to speak it, one could be very quickly alienated to the peripherals of [the horticultural] society.
If one wishes to think of it very simply and in a different light, let me pose this question. If one lives in an apartment, in Dublin City centre, works in the computer industry and has one house plant which some how manages to look green only because it is plastic…. how do I manage to get that person to take an interest in anything horticultural related, never mind a garden group outing.
What if that person described above did and then maybe started to write about this place and the outing on their weblog. What if they maybe then started to ask the odd garden question and got a taste of just how amazing the great outdoors actually is.
Let me give you some amazing statistics on the garden group attendees
90% of all those who have come on the garden group outings I have organised live in apartments.
90% of those don’t have gardens.
95% of those have never gardened before.
100% have never been a member of a garden group
98% have never bought a garden magazine before.
95% have never bought a plant before
But yet I can somehow or other get this demograph to come to Ballyboughal, middle of nowhere North county Dublin to walk the Slí na Sceacha, The Hedgerow Walk. Without wishing to sound selfish, but what do I get out of it ? On one hand not a lot. On the other I’m thinking and the aforementioned Mom and I most probably have a lot in common.
I don’t have a child of that age [yet] but the elation a parent must feel when your little runs out on the pitch or whatever it may be and does well, or not, must be immense.
Not to blow my own trumpet, but I’m just wondering if it is that easy for me to get a garden group together, then why aren’t there more non-garden-er groups like mine [?] I don’t have an answer to that, but I am of the thinking That The Tribesman isn’t such a bad place to start.
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