The community group of Saltmills and St Kearns have been announced as the first community winners in the GIY and Energia Get Ireland Growing initiative.

Following the announcement of the nationwide Get Ireland Growing initiative on June 30th applications from all across the country have flooded into www.getirelandgrowing.ie to be in with a chance to win a Community GROWBox.

The community of Saltmills and St Kearns in Wexford submitted an application for a community grow box stating,

“We have a community social space which we had planned to plant a Moon Garden pre-COVID, however, we are conscious of placing a burden of fundraising on the Community at this time. We are a beautiful, rural coastal village on the Hook Peninsula and are very proud of our heritage and our strong community spirit.”

“We now want to bring the generations back together through a ‘Seed Off’ as we love a bit of competition!”

“We believe that the enforced isolation and loneliness of the COVID restrictions will need positive action such as a ‘Community Planting Week’, we have many excellent horticulturalists and plant lovers who are willing to “dig in” and get their hands dirty for the Community and we are especially thankful to all our front line and remote workers and will honour them in this event.”

On hearing that they had, in fact, won a community GrowBox Kate Murphy of the Saltmills and St Kearns group said,

“We are thrilled to be selected as the first winners of a Community GrowBox from ‘Get Ireland Growing’ Saltmills and St Kearns will be absolutely Blooming. We would like to thank all of our volunteers and community supporters along with our CE Scheme workers Deirdre Earl and Thomas Donnelly who carry out great work for our group.”

The Saltmills and St Kearns Community Group was formed in 2017 and they have taken on various community projects over the last number of years. In particular, they have been working to restore the heritage walls of the historical buildings, ‘The Pound’ and ‘The Buildings’ through FLAG funding aswell as Town and Village funding they achieved with St Kearns Rowing Club and the Tintern Trails Group. They have ambitious plans to create community spaces in these historical locations with the goal of creating a community garden and an educational Aquaponics display in ‘The Buildings’ which will highlight awareness around the importance of local marine life and the coast. In ‘The Pound’ there are plans to create a small amphitheatre and Moon Garden for the community.

A Community GROWBox is a bespoke ‘seed library’, and once filled with the contents of the Community GROWBox it offers a community library of 100 packs of vegetable, herb and wildflower seeds all freely available to interested growers. These community growers are also encouraged to return seeds that they don’t use, along with others of their own that might otherwise go to waste.

It is hoped that each Community GROWBox will enable several hundred people to grow their own and in addition provide more food for pollinators this summer.

Applications for Community GROWBoxes will be accepted until August 14th 2020, and the GIY and Energia Get Ireland Growing team are now calling out to anyone across the country with a passion for food growing who would be interested in hosting a Community GROWBox to apply at www.getirelandgrowing.ie

Through this initiative, Energia has supported 257 community groups with grants totalling €220,000. The recipients include schools, NGOs and Not for Profits, community gardens and allotment groups, GIY groups, hospitals, crèches, direct provision centres and men’s sheds all across the country.

For further details see, www.getirelandgrowing.ie to register and enter the draw for your free Community GROWBox. Share your food growing success pictures across social using #GetIrelandGrowing, and follow the Get Ireland Growing campaign through @EnergiaGIG on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube.