“Community gardens are where the soul of a neighbourhood blossoms.”

So said lead volunteer Mandie Rekaby on the re-opening of Togher Community Garden in Cork earlier this month.

She said it was a place where “strangers become neighbours and neighbours become friends. In these shared sanctuaries, tomatoes ripen and herbs grow alongside laughter. Children learn that carrots come from the earth, not plastic bags, and the older generation passes down knowledge like heirlooms, one season at a time.”

What a lovely description of the huge benefits that community gardens bring to a neighbourhood. Those words kept going through my head as I toiled with my vegetable patch in the front garden this May.

Last year, I decided to plant vegetables there beside the gate. It’s a sunny sloping patch that demands attention every time I go in and out, ensuring that the bed was kept well weeded and watered and burgeoning crops were picked before they went to seed.

But there were other advantages. A constant flow of neighbours up and down the road would stop to chat, offer advice, talk to their kids about growing veg while accepting lettuce, onions and carrots plucked from the ground.

I began to think of all the advantages fruit and vegetable plots in the front garden can offer - not just to me and my family but to the whole community.

Imagine if every household converted a strip in their front garden to growing fruit and vegetables – what would that do for health and wellbeing in communities?

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