Pride of Place 2013

aerial view

Thomond Park, Limerick was the venue...the famous home of Munster rugby....and it turned out to be a mighty successful trip for the Foyle Community Garden Initiative....all be it 5.5hours drive down....

(Foyle Community Garen Iniative was a blanket name given to the countless schools, communitygardens, community groups, community cente who are involved with Gareth Austin)

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the munster motto!

is there a truer statement?

my award

and we were honoured to win a Runners Up in the Community Garden category......a complete surprise, I read the programme with the other nominees in them- community gardens which had tens of thousands spent on them, many had 10-15 employees....so i had resigned my self that it wasn't for us. But to my amazement Foyle Community Garden Initiative was called. We won the award as a result of the network of small community gardens that exist in the Foyle area, projects such as Leafair Community Garden, Fountain Community Garden - that were presented to the judges. The judges commented on the joined-up thinking that existed in derry between the statuary bodies, the high level of participations, the ability for participants to get qualifications, the way the projects have changed peoples lives...amazing stuff really.

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with the castlefinn award

we didn't win, sadly, but the winner in the Country ctegory was the Castlefin Community Centre (home to the north west garden show), so when you're runner -up to a project that got 20,000 visitors in 2012 you can't argue. and the set-up in 3rd place was mighty impressive too, 250k spent on it etc etc so for us to come second was an unbelievable achievement.

Thanks to Derry City Council for the nomination and thanks to the folks of the Leafair Community Garden (Leafair Community Association) and Fountain Community Garden (Cathedral Youth Club) for impressing the judges on their visit back in the summer...

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