Garden of Eden Projects

Nature's Bounty for Now and for the Future

About Garden of Eden Projects
Some Reasons Why
How to Start
Sourcing Plants
Support and Advice
Workshops
A year in the wildlife garden

Why would we want a Garden of Eden Project?

Existing Environmental Challenge
A quick look around at the environmental challenges we all face are conformation that the first tenants have filled the Earth and multiplied just a little too efficiently for safety’s sake. Taking in the scale of the global environmental situation can be overwhelming and yet many of us feel compelled to do something constructive to address the challenge.

Solution: The Garden of Eden Project
The Garden of Eden Project is designed to bring a positive action-based solution to our global environmental situation right into the heart of every community. We all now know that in combination with reducing our own carbon footprint, we need to plant trees to act as a carbon sink to reduce the excesses of global warming. The Garden of Eden Project originated as a two-fold approach to tackle climate change. Firstly, by growing trees with edible fruit, nuts and berries we contribute to locally grown food thus cutting down our food miles, helping to reduce our carbon footprint. Secondly, the extra trees act as a carbon sink, soaking up atmospheric carbon and assisting with the stabilisation of global climatic conditions.

What better place to start than in our own communities. In the green areas of our neighbourhoods, the gardens of our churches, meeting houses and parish halls and in quiet forgotten corners of parks and other community spaces. Imagine trees of fruit, nuts and berries filled with food each year, soaking up carbon for growth and providing a bountiful community-centred focus year after year.

The Garden of Eden Project impacts beneficially on a number of different areas:

• Tackling climate change by minimising our carbon footprint in terms of food miles, and also planting trees to soak up additional atmospheric carbon.

• Planning for Peak Oil is another benefit of the project. By introducing food trees and bushes right into the heart of our communities, we make the produce available independent of the availability of oil-dependant imports. Food security is a major issue for Ireland in the coming decades, with about 95% of our food needs currently met by imports. Even globally, much of our current food production is heavily reliant on oil for machinery, biocides, fertilisers and transportation.

• Maximising local sustainability by providing local food sources for otherwise imported products such as nuts and fruit.

• Educating children and adults in organic food tree cultivation, and provide the community focus for gathering the produce each year. Local, human-scale growing is a new experience for many people. As Peak Oil approaches, it is more important than ever for us to know how to grow our own food to meet at least some of our own needs.

• Waste minimisation is a by-product of the project; food from the garden doesn’t come in plastic!

• Community building is enhanced and facilitated by the regular meeting times to discuss plans, dig the earth together and pick the fruits of collective labour.

• Social inclusion is another by-product of the project. By introducing beauty in the form of trees and wildlife to our urban centres, and by introducing food-crops in the form of fruit and nut bearing trees we can encourage every member of our community to enjoy the benefits that these bring.

• Protection of agricultural biodiversity, particularly focusing on fruit and nut trees that grow well in the Irish soil and climatic conditions.

• Enhancing local wildlife habitats by providing habitat cover, flowers for nectar, and fruit and nuts for food (birds tend to be more efficient at harvesting cherries than people, for example).



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          Contact: Feidhlim Harty    065-7075631      reeds@wetlandsystems.ie     Lahinch, Co Clare, Ireland