Housing association Respond has built over 5,000 houses around Ireland since 1982, providing homes for lone-parent families, older persons, the homeless and people with disabilities. They understand that for vulnerable people to have a positive future, they need more than just a home – support and social integration is also vital. And so, at the organisation’s sites around Ireland (almost 100 of them), they provide not only housing but also access to a care package that includes education, childcare, community development programmes and other supports.
GIYing can also play a role. Tucked away at the top of Dominick Place in Waterford at the Respond estate at Airmount is a remarkable community garden, which we were delighted to get to visit this week. The project was initiatited and led by residents, and consists of over 30 raised beds and a profoundly neat polytunnel!
Respond’s David Phelan told us that the garden has attracted people (and particularly men) who have never engaged in the other supports provided at the site. The organisation therefore considers it a vital tool from an engagement and mental health perspective. We men are useless when it comes to talking through our problems of course – but we will chat to other men if we’re doing some chore or other. The Men’s Shed maxim that men talk ‘shoulder to shoulder rather than face to face’ applies here too.
As is often the case with GIY projects, one senses that in some ways the vegetable growing is secondary. The real impact happens at the picnic benches or in the potting shed, putting the world to right over a cup of tea. The community garden acts as a focal point in the estate, bringing people together in a very natural, unforced way. There is an understandable, tremendous pride in what has been achieved – an unused area turned in to a beautiful and productive veg garden.
We were delighted in particular to meet garden stalwarts Martin Hodgers and Christine O’Donoghue. “It’s like heaven to me,” Christine told us. “I love gardening anyway and it’s a meeting place now. We all help each other out and it just takes you out of yourself if you are feeling a bit down.” The Respond project received funding from the GIY Get Ireland Growing Fund in association with AIB. Plans are afoot to develop community gardens at other Respond sites nationwide.
