DCU President launches Community Garden

As part of the University's Green Campus initiative, the President, Professor Brian MacCraith, along with the DCU Student Union President Mr. Paul Doherty, today launched the DCU Community Garden. The garden is an open, all-inclusive area that can be utilised by staff, students and the community for a wide range of purposes - teaching, research, education, training, community engagement and, of course, recreation. It is situated at the corner of a field at the back of St Aidan's school and can be accessed by the lane just at the 'dog leg' in the perimeter road behind the DCU library.

Speaking at the launch, Professor MacCraith said, "It is great to see the launch of this DCU community initiative which marks another step in our campaign toward a more sustainable campus for DCU and which will hopefully lead to a Green Flag award from An Taisce. This garden will provide a new environment and platform for enhanced engagement across the entire DCU community.

According to Samantha Fahy, the garden is currently overgrown and in need of considerable work to transform it into a working garden; "Fortunately we have been able to create a little pot of gold to support its transformation. We are much indebted to Dublin City Council who have awarded us €3,500 under their Local Agenda 21 Environmental Partnership Fund and also to DCU Quality Promotion Office for their support of €1,000 under the Quality Improvement & Development (QuID) Funding 2013. We are also thankful to Woodies for their donation of equipment to help us get the work off the ground".