Ciarán de Buitléar

So nature helps us to grow our vegetables here in this garden by maintaining a balance so we don't spray with anything.

We don't have

huge influxes of green fly anything like that we don't have the white fly and the black fly and I won't name all the pests but we have the pests and we have the predators we have a few of each and the whole thing works we've never sprayed anything here.

I absolutely would and this project has actually moved outside the walls of the garden I did write a book about it called Nature's Acre

And I've brought that into the local primary school and read parts of it and talked about it to the kids.

Now, one girl, about eight, came up to me after that and said, you've inspired me to do gardening.

Now, a neighbour also, down the road, about a mile away, gave me a call and said, could you come around and look at my garden?

I've got an acre of grass and I'm sick of cutting it.

I'd like to put in wild plants instead.

So I went around and we got our heads together and...

I gave her a planting list.

So she's replaced half of her lawn with wild shrubs and trees and wild plants.

Right.

And she wants the birds to be able to come into that space and make more space for wildlife.

So this project hasn't just stopped here.

The project has gone way outside the garden.

Another lady in Dundalk got in touch.

She had a flooded back garden, no light.

Very shady, flooded back garden.

The whole garden flooded regularly.