The new vegetable garden at the National Botanic Gardens reveals a forgotten corner and illustrates just what we can grow locally, even in the depths of winter, writes CATHERINE CLEARY
PETER MELEADY'S garden is resting. Like gardens all over the country growing has slowed in the cold soil under pale December sunlight.
Yet, a closer look reveals broad beans poking fresh green leaves through their bed of straw. And just recently he found a clump of sleepy but very much alive greenfly on a fennel plant despite the hard night frosts that turn the walled garden into one big fridge.
As gardener in charge of the National Botanic Garden's new vegetable garden in Glasnevin, Meleady has big plans for the spring growing season. A midwinter walk around the garden, where the work is still going on to finish landscaping, is an education in seasonal eating.
Unlike the supermarket shelves groaning with long-haul vegetables crated and shipped from all over the world, there are just the green winter vegetables available in this traditional Irish garden. There is kale, large green leaves of it with vibrant orange stems, and a cabbage the size of a small armchair. In the middle, budding from the stems of their plants, are the Brussels sprouts that look like they will make for a tasty side course to the turkey dinners of some of the staff who work here.
The growing of vegetables was always a small feature of life in Dublin's Botanic Gardens but it was sidelined when work began on the restoration of the greenhouses and palm house nearly 10 years ago. The plot that houses the new garden was given to the Botanic Gardens by Glasnevin Cemetery in the 1830s. It was used as a training garden and then an orchard for botany students, curator Paul Maher explains. He remembers one mature student, who was a nurse, turning over the soil and discovering something she was able to identify as a human bone.
It was something of a secret garden within the wider gardens, walled and with one door leading into it. Until this year it was not open to the public. Increased interest led to the idea of installing a vegetable garden. "People started saying in big numbers that they wanted to come to the Botanic Gardens and see vegetables, see the things ending up on their plates," Maher says.
So he designed the garden "to bring the general public in and show them the fruit and vegetables you can grow in this country". There were some murmurs of concern that the produce might walk out in the pockets of garden visitors but Maher took a larger view of things.
"If you grow apples people are bound to say, 'that one looks lovely', and pick it for themselves. But if a young child comes into the garden picks a tomato, eats it and loves tomatoes for ever more then so be it. We're not going to encourage it, but so be it."
Maher's key target audience is school groups. He remembers the reaction of a group of children from a city school earlier this year when they saw ripe sweetcorn cobs peeping out from their green cocoons.
"They were enthralled. It really made their day and I think that's wonderful." The increase in the number of people growing their own is also fuelling interest in practical vegetable gardening. As curator, Maher has plenty of experience of this. He lives in one of the two staff houses on the grounds and his garden has been used for growing vegetables by head gardeners for almost 80 years. As a result the soil is almost black and light enough for a spade to go effortlessly deep.
"People are starting to see that we need to start feeding ourselves from plots around our houses and apartments . . . and it's not an economic thing, it's people being more health and taste conscious and realising that something flown thousands of miles does lose part of its value on the way."
The garden project hopes to inspire everybody, even those who only have a balcony space, to think about growing food. "We will have a small raised bed within the garden and will manage it as a small area you could have in a suburban back garden. We will be keeping a tally of what we can grow in such a small space."
PETER MELEADY SPENT six years working in the New York Botanical Gardens in the Bronx, a vast expanse of 250 acres with the biggest botanical library in the world. He studied in Glasnevin in the late 1970s before heading to New York but found that he "ended up in front of a computer entering data" on the gardens' collections. So he returned to Dublin to get his fingers back into the soil.
He is proud of the new garden and the move to grow everything in it on organic principles. Part of the system involves using the technique of green manure, where a seed mix - usually of grasses, vetch and a legume - is planted and allowed grow underneath the fruit trees and other plants. Then this ground covering is cut and allowed to rot back into the soil. Even in midwinter the system is already showing itself to be self-seeding and the fertiliser guards against the rain leaching out too many of the soil's nutrients. At the same time the growth pumps natural nitrogen into the soil without the use of artificial feed.
On a tour of the garden the first stop is the greenhouse, a curved structure with special struts inside its ceiling to hold vine tendrils. New vines have just been planted and, yes, there could be Château Glasnevin, Meleady laughs. Peach trees, too, will be trained up the warm walls of the greenhouse.
Dozens of varieties of herbs, both edible and medicinal, will be grown. The poisonous ones, like a spiky, mean-looking datura, are labelled in red. Behind the giant cabbage, (an Irish variety called Gortahork after the Donegal village) there is a four foot square plot marked off with string. It will give those with small gardens some inspiration. Already the plot is planted with radishes, scallions, onions and garlic. By the end of next year Meleady plans to have a list of every item that the tiny patch produced.
At the moment everything the garden produces is eaten. Some of the salad leaves and herbs make their way to the cafe on the grounds but most are eaten by the gardeners and other staff at the grounds. A new protocol is being drawn up on how next year's produce, the first year of full production, will be disposed of. "These are old Irish varieties of apples," Meleady says, indicating a line of young trees. "We are trying to get one from each county."
Although the garden is virtually empty there is no bare earth, with the surface of the soil protected with a mixture of the green manure growth and some manure and straw mulch.
Many visitors to the garden already tap the staff for advice on their own home vegetable patches. As the proud but extremely amateur owner of a few square feet of lettuce bed, I ask Meleady what I should do now the plants have bolted and the leaves have turned bitter in the winter.
Chop up the lettuce and put it on the soil to rot back down and cover it over with manure and straw to rest it before starting to plant in the spring, is his advice.
I've missed the boat for onions and those early broad beans but there should be plenty of inspiration in his four-by-four garden to show just how much can be produced with a bit of care and attention.
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