Rain Garden building with the Glen Community Garden

We welcomed groups from Scoil Bernadette, St. Brendans GNS and St. Killian’s Schools as well as Mayfield’s Mens’ Shed and Chuchfield and Togher Community Gardens to The Glen community Garden for a Rain Garden Planter Building event. It was fast and furious – enabled by Barry Hickey and the Glen Community Gardeners amazing organisation of timber already cut and numbered and bundled into kits, ready for us to hit the ground running with electric screwdrivers in hand. -We learnt some basic carpentry skills as we went along – putting pressure on the back of the drill to drive in the screws, creating pilot holes and countersinking these to avoid splitting the timber (especially on the edges), We had to create the sides in bands by joining the edges together before we joined them to the uprights at the corners holding them in place (because they want to splay out every which way off kilter and skew the box) There were enthusiastic teams creating a sporting event out of the day – I spent most of the morning adding ballast to the St Brendan’s Planter and I had to try it out for size – … would I float ? Barry showed us the pilot Rain Garden Planter he had been trying out over the summer. The planter had not been watered at all since it was made in May and we have had a very dry (if not sunny) season. They planted it with broad leaf plants to aid transpiration off the large surface area and some others had blown in over the summer. He recommends using a clay soil that will hold the mositure. We saw how the overflow drainage works a precaution in case the soil becomes oversaturated.

We are hoping that each group will create more planters for their organisaton and there are already people talking about using old fibreglass baths and creating layers of wall hanging planters where there are no drains or space at street level.

An able young student at the rain garden planter building workshop demonstrates how to put pressure on the back of the drill to drive in screws with aplomb and using a pilot hole with countersycning to avoid splitting the timber.