It was absolutely lashing out of the heavens when I put these planters together for Aoife at Two Spots Café in Swords and whilst our Irish rain [it’s wetter than you think….] might get some a little down, one really has to give credit and take some inspiration from any business that tries to make their punters smile that little greater amid the January blues.
Hand made with aged, rustic if you will timber, painted and branded; I decided upon a hand picked select choice of [not bedding] plants that would last the full year through, throwing out a trickle of colour as the seasons pass. Bearing in mind, this being the starting month of the year, one can gather [see image above] they have yet to show their true colours, if you’ll pardon the cliché.
There’s a wee bit of reeling in the years with this garden, but it cropped up [see what I did there ? cropped ? anyhow…] in conversation very, very recently and fair to say this garden and the people I made it for made me smile very much. The best ones always do. 😉
To the gardens advantage you might say horticulturally, there were neighbouring buildings overlooking and almost immediately that allowed the introduction of some younger lower in height growing tress and taller growing shrubs to be planted across the white-painted back wall. And though it may sound funny looking a little closer at the image above, the thinking behind this garden was for it to be of low maintenance. Not car park type zero maintenance, if you get me – just lower.
Wanna see what it looked liked before I got to the tasty bits ?
where: ballyboughal [just outside Swords, north Dublin]
when: saturday 21st August 2010
time: 9.30am – 3.30pm
cost: €75 – including morning tea, lunch and all materials
numbers limit: minimum of 8 and 12 people max
Who is it for:
If you don’t wish to farm your entire garden
or remortgage the house so you can garden full time
If don’t [or do] have an allotment
or you simply wish to gather the simple basics to get started
whether you have a window ledge or a small patio
or just wish to grow in pots on that amount of space
I’ll assume you have a life, possibly kids and a full time job
or just enough time in life between eastenders and the 9 o’clock news.
A similar set up to the previous GYO class, the theory is that in one session you will go home with enough skills to be able to look after yourself from a grow your own – without the use of a tractor – point of view 😉
if numbers are 8 or more it’ll run – if not no bother. If you do put your name down keep an eye on this blog post. But I don’t see any reason why it shouldn’t. Weather won’t pose a problem. Numbers will include only the first 8/12 names down on the list.
There’s an idea:
interested in having your very own personalised class done at your place of work or home for your group of friends or colleagues…. ? contact details above.
To some of you this article will prove worthless. I [peter donegan]hope it proves of benefit. I wrote this for the farmers journal in 2006 but as is life in the editorial world sometimes it just doesnt enter the publication. I thought it was a great article and an email from my editor some time after confirmed that too. I should put it to some benefit I suppose.
Enjoy
peter
Two months ago I purchased a ride on lawnmower, but it has never been used on any contract. I tried to buy a trailer to go with it but I couldn’t be sold one. Eventually I did buy one and it was such a nice feeling to hand over such a large amount of money for such a simple and well-built invention. The tailgate allowed us to drive up onto the back straight away but what happened to my latest acquisition? It evaporated, into thin air. I parked it at the back of the house and when I got up the next day, you guessed it in one – it was not there anymore! Magic? Mystery? I don’t think so.
When through my research for this article I put ‘trailers – stolen’ into a web search to my surprise the ‘theft of a 40-foot white box trailer and tractor unit, which was stolen from outside Irish Ferries at Dublin Port at the weekend’ was one of the headlines. Through my own sources two firms had informed me that they could not supply me with trailers of any size or form as their place of business had been cleared out of almost forty trailers within two weeks between them. It’s possible that this rapid transpiration of steel framed attachments was becoming somewhat of an epidemic. It seems the only way to prevent the theft is to make yours the most difficult to steal. Sources in the UK tell us that Trailers are being stolen to order. Logically, the obvious primary steps include installing a hitch lock, a wheel clamp and a driveway security post, but my opinion it that this is only a deterrent and that we need to go one stage further.
In the UK for any size of trailer (or anything of value to you) a system know as Thiefbeaters which involves applying a unique comprehensive identification including electronic transponders and microdots to hidden and visible locations on the trailer has been put in place. Each trailer is meticulously identified in up to 50 locations by various techniques and each location of the unique TB number is recorded. A record of the entire ID is kept along with six digital photographs. Furthermore, a registration document is produced complete with two colour photographs of each trailer they have identified.
With a 24-hour database service, this allows any police force to make necessary enquiries. A prospective purchaser of a trailer with a Thiefbeaters marking can also enquire to ensure the trailer is not reported stolen prior to any purchase. The estimated cost of which is approximately Three hundred euro.
John Friel of BDF Trailers estimates that “at least four trailers a day are taken in this country” of these John also points out that “most of the ones stolen in the south go north and vice versa”. John who with his wife Kathleen manages a business in North County Dublin also added that at present there is no company that install this tracking system in Ireland” that he is aware of.
Stolen trailers are almost impossible to recover with the main problem being that they are notoriously difficult to secure and may often have to be left unattended for long periods. It is recommend by some English insurance companies that trailers be fitted with a stolen vehicle recovery system such as ‘tracker’Tracking systems work via an electronic homing device which, when activated, emits a silent signal to dedicated equipment fitted in police cars and helicopters of every force in the UK. There are two different versions available: TRACKER Retrieve where the owner discovers the theft and TRACKER Monitor which will alert TRACKER HQ directly of any unauthorised movement, allowing them to quickly contact the owner and begin tracing. In January 2002 one UK insurance company reported their first theft of a trailer fitted with Tracker. The trailer valued at £30,000 and only 4 weeks old was recovered completely undamaged. Recorded CCTV pictures showed that the thieves entered the locked compound at 9.00pm and left with the trailer 45 minutes later. A Police aeroplane the following morning, 40 minutes after the theft had been reported, detected the Tracker signal. This trailer has since been stolen and recovered again by Tracker, 200 miles from home.So where does this leave me. I had a trailer. I now have no trailer. If I buy another trailer I could end up right back where I started. There used to be a time when a trailer could be left in a driveway or on a premise until the next time you needed it. It now appears this is something that can no more happen.
Peter Donegan MI Hort and Peter Donegan Landscaping Ltd won its first award from the Association of Landscape Contractors of Ireland in October 2006.
The Award of Merit in best private garden category (over €13.000) was awarded to Peter Donegan Landscaping Ltd as contractor and Peter Donegan MI Hort as designer of the fifty-five acre private garden set on the estuary of Donabate in North County Dublin.
It had taken two years to reconstruct the one famous eighteenth century gardens of Newport Farm. Donegan Landscaping was only one of thirteen companies in Ireland to receive award in 2006.
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