Recording System :: Flower-Insect Timed Count
Last Saturday, the biodiversity group met and our FIT Counts in the garden was added to the Biodiversity Data Centre Ireland database (). 87 pollinating insects on buttercups, wild mustard (we think), poppies and nettles 🤓😍. Be interesting to track how the numbers change…
‘Shared community spaces help displaced people feel valued, connected, and push for fairer systems and support’ Meabh Bonham Corcoran, 2026.
Read the article HERE
Nollaig na mBan (Women’s Christmas), traditionally observed on January 6th, is an ancient Irish custom where women took a well-deserved break after the festive season. Today, this tradition has evolved into a vibrant community celebration, and nollaignamban.ie is the official hub for the festival in Dublin’s North Inner City.
The festival honors the contributions of local women—often unsung heroes—through awards, live music, art exhibitions, and engaging panel discussions. Each year, 10–12 women are recognized for their impact on the community, with their portraits displayed publicly and celebrated at an award ceremony. Events take place in venues such as Charleville Mall Library, Annesley House and Clonliffe House, creating a lively atmosphere filled with music, workshops, and networking opportunities.
Founded by local woman Laura Williams from Ballybough, North Strand, and supported by Dublin City Council and community partners, the festival aims to empower women and strengthen community bonds. It provides a platform for storytelling, creativity, and solidarity, ensuring that women’s voices and achievements are celebrated.
Visit nollaignamban.ie to learn more, nominate inspiring women, and join the festivities on January 6th. Together, let’s keep this cherished tradition alive while uplifting the women who shape our communities.
And congratulations to our Chairperson, Nathalie Crowley who is celebrated this year. We celebrated Maeve Foreman and Fionnuala Halpin in previous years.
Here is a lovely biography written by Maeve :
It’s good to remind ourselves what Mud Island was like in 2009 when we first started campaigning for permission to build a community garden on the council owned derelict site in Newcomen Court. Nathalie was involved from the beginning, pictured here with her son Max 3rd from left. He’s now just finished university! While always a member of Mud Island, Nathalie eventually joined the committee and became its chairperson in 2023
She’s passionate about the importance of biodiversity in the inner city and has encouraged Mud Island members to do all we can to improve biodiversity in and around our small patch. She has led on many innovative initiatives in the garden. She developed a good working relationship with East Wall here 4 All and Cross-Cultural Conversations, which led to Fridays being for ‘learning English through gardening, then the language classes started! First Arabic, then Spanish, French, and Irish. They ebb and flo depending on the availability of volunteers but Fridays are about learning and sharing.
Fridays have also been about cooking – Nathalie loves cooking and cooking from produce in the garden all the better. Many asylum seekers who do not have access to cookers can prepare food and store it in fridges in DP centres to feed children their native foods.
She started our monthly Repair Café in April 2023 and since then it’s happened on the last Sunday of every month. Sometimes it includes a ‘vide-grenier’, in French ‘empty your attic’ yard sale. The repair café won 1st place in the Community Environment Initiative category in Dublin City Council Central Area City Neighbourhood Competition 2024, and got second in the citywide competition.
She has represented Mud Island in many forums dear to her heart – e.g. in April 2024 she represented Mud Island on the panel at the ICON Climate Change day. We nominated her as a Community Circular Hero in the Full Circle Awards run by circular.ie and she was successfully shortlisted as a finalist this year. While she did not win, we’re proud she got that far!
In her day job she is a French as a Foreign Language (FLE) lecturer at the Technological University Dublin where she teaches business French to first- to fourth-year students.
The garden is always full of activities and we are grateful of all we have achieved throughout the years (see all the events posters and help we got in 2024!)
This week we are calling an Emergency Meitheal on Saturday!
We need lots of help to prepare for our annual Open Day and to catch up with lots of planting. If you could commit to an hour or so tomorrow it would really help us. Activities will include:
– Preparing beds for planting.
– Planting out our abundance of seedlings. Painting (but not the artistic kind!).
– Labelling plants & making labels.
– A bit of DIY.
– Weeding pathways.
– Watering thirsty plants and trees.
– Enjoying our fecund garden ; )
Thanks from Mud Island!
Well a lot…
In 2023, the garden was very busy as we opened our urban haven to multiple groups and organisations. There are so many that we are probably forgetting some. Drop us a line if you used the garden and we forgot to mention it. Big HELLO & shout out to our friends from:
Dublin Cycles Campaign annual Food Cycle (trip around community gardens) (May)
Refugee Health European conference visit (June)
Cruinniu na nog – Nature Mobile workshop (June)
Lets Set Sail (with Ellie O’Neill and Silver Birch) (July)
ATD Ireland (Altogether in Dignity with Saol, Pavee Point and more) – Festival of Change (July)
Sonnie Condell & Robbie Overson concert (August)
Ceili with Ceoltoiri Chluain Tarbh (August)
Rather Gather festivalito (September)
Huni Kui – Amazonian culture (September)
Kevin Murphy & friends (concert) – (October)
2 instrument making workshops with Masamba (October)
12th European Forum ECLLD Field trip (October)
Workequal – workshop about being confident (december)
Other partnership (ongoing)
NCIRL Early Learning Initiative After School projects (local primary schools) ‘Doodle Den’
A Playful City + Swan Youth Club / UCD students
Hill Street Family Resource Centre visits ( with one of our gardener Breffni’s workshop)
Cluid Housing Association residents (inspiration for their own gardens)
Liberty Park Creche
Young adults from Shaping Futures project, (INOU initiative)
Teacher Heather Gray (Creative Minds Arts & Culture festival)
Dublin City Community Co-operative
Our Organic Garden
Community Climate Action (on zoom)
EasyTreesie
Gaelic Woodland Project
8 week Get Growing training for learners of English (GreenFriends)
Common Purpose training organisation (innovative community initiatives)
Patuyu – bolivian dancing group (ongoing)
Take One Ingredient (ongoing)
Global Citizenship Education / Lourdes Youth & Community Service (LYCS)
Sea Scouts
Local Community Safety Partnership (LCSP) Probation & Community Service team
(Welcomed referrals from Social Prescribing workers & mental health workers to join as gardeners)
DCC’s biodiversity officer & DCC’s community climate action officer.
Afghan Kite making workshop (August)
CPR training (September)
East Wall Here 4 All, Cross Cultural Conversations, Intercultural Language Service and the lovely Integration officers and volunteers
from Gateway, East Wall.
TCD research
Cloud Café (adds to compost, brings us brownies and lend us their barbecue!)
Da Mimmo (pizzas & school project)
Tree craft (wood chip for garden paths)
Child Vision (delivering precious horse manure)
Forthcoming visits planned include students from Trinity’s Botanical Society and we are also looking for volunteers interested in getting involved with Heritage Keepers and do not miss out Tornaido Fire Performance & fundraiser March 23 rd (from 6pm)!
Festival in a van (with Narrative4) received a DCC Neighbourhood Grant to develop ‘the Stories of Hope’, a storytelling exchange
project in Mud Island in 2024 Date TBC.
We also helped some two film crews (short film shot in Alderborough House) & a small Film crew shooting onsite.
Promotional video for ‘Mad Dog’ (launch 24 th March 2024 in the garden!).
Our team of volunteers also organise our own events:
Table Quiz in Cusack’s (April), Spring Fair (in collaboration Five Lamps Arts Festival), Open Day (June), Harvest Festival (August), Halloween (700 visitors!) & Christmas Fair with our first Irish language festival, Féile na Láibe.
Seed to Pizza project with local primary schools (March to September).
And our first own Brigid’s celebration (February).
In 2023, we also had some ongoing activities in the garden, which will continue in 2024:
– Crochet & knitting group.
– Monthly Repair Café mending bicycles, clothes, crockery and sharpening gardening tools and knives
with potluck picnic and swap shop / bric-à-brac.
– Language classes in Arabic & Spanish from our volunteers (we’re looking for a volunteer to front an Irish one).
– Sewing classes / group.
– Relaxation Sundays.
And finally, we did win some awards (and we are so proud!). We must thank our funders without whom all these activities could not be:
In 2023, we got 2nd place in our section at Dublin City Council’s Citywide Neighbourhood Award 2023!
The Urban Land Institute‘s National Excellence in Place-making Award got us in the front page of the commercial property of the Irish Times. We are currently shortlisted for the LAMA (Local Authority Members Association) All Ireland Community & Council Awards 2024 under their Best Green Sustainable category. Fingers crossed!
Thanks to our trusted funders: Croke Park, NEIC and DCC, and IFSC Inner City Trust and new additions: Wheels We Deliver for pollinators and Central Bank.
So bring it on 2024!
On Sundays, from 2:30 to 5:30, join us for our Repair Café. Bring your bike, buggy, clothes, jewelry and garden tools to be fixed (hopefully!). You can learn, you can share skills and you will meet a lot of people!
(No ELECTRICAL)
The idea: We throw away vast amounts of stuff – stuff which could get a new lease of life after a simple repair. Lots of people have forgotten that they can repair things themselves or they no longer know how. Repair Cafés are free meeting places where people come together to repair things together. In a local Repair Café, you’ll find tools and materials to help you make any repairs you need on clothes, furniture, electrical appliances, bicycles, crockery, appliances, toys, etc. You’ll also find expert volunteers, with repair skills in all kinds of fields. Visitors bring their broken items from home and in the Repair Café, they start making their repairs with the specialists. It’s an ongoing learning process.
Repair Cafés help people in the community whose skills may not always be valued to get involved again. It helps neighbours from different backgrounds connect with each other and allows valuable practical knowledge to be shared. Repairing things at a Repair Cafe means things are being used for longer and don’t have to be thrown away. This reduces the volume of raw materials and energy needed to make new products.
Discover ChangeX
The fantastic Rather Gather will be back in Mudisland for their annual extravaganza!
Keep your eyes peeled for more info coming soon but save the date already…
Mud Island Community Garden Biodiversity Action Group (BAG) met for the 1st time on Sat April 18th. We shared a sense of collective hope from taking positive action to promote […]
‘Shared community spaces help displaced people feel valued, connected, and push for fairer systems and support’ Meabh Bonham Corcoran, 2026. Read the article HERE
