Hi, and thank you for visiting.

We are a small rural community in the hills outside Toomevara, Co. Tipperary, working together to create a community garden that we hope will serve our village for generations to come.

At its heart, the project is about something very simple: bringing people together around food, nature, learning and community.

We are transforming an acre of land beside our local national school into a thriving community space — somewhere people of all ages can grow, learn, share and spend time together.

Our vision is to create a garden that will help us:

* Grow our own food organically, with the long-term ambition of producing fresh, healthy food for our community of around 250 people.

* Learn how to care for and improve our soil, developing practical knowledge that can be shared with households and growers throughout the community.

* Give local schoolchildren a place to learn outdoors, helping them understand where food comes from and giving them hands-on experience of growing, planting, composting and caring for the natural world.

* Rebuild community connections that have gradually been lost over the years, creating a place where different generations can meet, work alongside one another and share skills.

* Create and protect a healthy ecosystem, demonstrating how food production, wildlife, pollinators, healthy soil, water and people can all exist together.

* Share what we learn, so that other villages and communities might see what is possible and be inspired to create something similar.

A Garden That Belongs to Everyone

This isn’t intended to be a short-term project.

We hope that trees planted today will still be producing fruit decades from now. We hope children who learn to grow food here will one day bring their own children into the garden. And we hope the knowledge, friendships and sense of community created here will spread far beyond the garden itself.

Much of the project is being built through local people giving their time, energy, skills and resources. We are taking things step by step and building as our means allow.

We aren’t running a fundraising event or asking anyone to feel obliged to contribute. We simply know that, from time to time, someone may come across our project online, connect with what we’re trying to create and want to help us along the way.

If that’s you, and you have the means to contribute, we would be incredibly grateful for your support.

Every donation, large or small, will be used carefully and responsibly to help develop the garden — from seeds, trees and soil improvement to tools, growing spaces, water infrastructure and the other practical things needed to create a garden that can flourish long into the future.

Most importantly, your contribution won’t simply be helping us build a garden.

You’ll be helping us grow food, knowledge, connection and community — and hopefully create something that will still be here for generations to come.

Thank you for taking the time to learn about what we’re creating.

Gurtagarry Community Garden

Growing food. Growing knowledge. Growing community.