Divergent growth

12/06/2026

Productive morning 🌱♻️

Started collecting bits and pieces for the mud station through thrifting and recycling, along with a bit of repotting and getting some pumpkins planted into the hugel -kultur mound.

The mound acts like a sponge, helping to hold moisture while slowly feeding the soil as the organic matter breaks down.

The compost steam speaks for itself.

Happy Friday! 🌿

Big thanks to @ Groundworks for their continued support and letting us use this space

10/06/2026

Currently obsessed with filming bees. 🐝

A gentle reminder to slow down and observe the world around you. Nature is full of little moments that are easy to miss, but often it’s the small things that make the biggest difference. 🌿

Big thanks to Grow for their continued support and to Gairdín an Phobail for giving us space to grow

# small things

30/05/2026

Update! The forest garden is now halfway through its second season and is beginning to come together.

In many ways, this little 7 x 4 metre plot is the flagship design for Divergent Growth.

It represents the culmination of seven years of frustrations, failures, observations and experimentation, alongside the emergence of a design approach that began asking a different question:

“How can we work together?”

This space became an exercise in letting go of control and entering into negotiation with the living system itself. Instead of forcing outcomes, the focus shifted towards understanding what the space needed in order to thrive.

There have been failures, and there will continue to be failures. But when taking an adaptive design approach, failure is not something to avoid. It is information. Every success and every setback becomes feedback that helps guide the next step.

Every element that remains has earned its place within the system.

The goal is not to create a perfect design, but to steward a resilient and healthy one.

The design is evolving, not towards completion, but towards adaptability.

This small plot has taught me more than I ever expected. It showed me that meaningful ecological change does not require acres of land. Sometimes all it takes is a willingness to observe, listen, and respond to what a space is telling you.

This little Forest Garden continues to shape the way I think about ecological design. Thank you to Growfor supporting, encouraging and believing in my work over the years.

28/05/2026

The LORAGremediation pilot is off to a flying start.

Since laying the first berm and woodchip layer, the team have now added two further berms and sown a range of green manures.

Just two weeks later, the first green shoots are already beginning to emerge.

These are the early stages of using ecological processes to help heal contaminated land. Getting a diversity of roots into the soil is important for kick-starting the biology within the soil layers. Green manures are particularly effective at this. They germinate quickly, establish fast and rapidly signal to the existing soil biology that conditions within the system are changing.

The woodchip is one of the key players within this remediation pilot. Over time, fungal networks will begin colonising the layers beneath the surface and contribute to breaking down hydrocarbons within the soil profile.

Coupled with microbiology and selected plants, the growing mycelium effectively becomes nature’s Hazmat team: working collectively to restore and regenerate the land.

Over the coming months we will continue observing the plot closely, learning what works, what doesn’t, and adjusting the system as it develops.

20/05/2026

20/05/2026

Team work makes the dream work 🌿

Heads bursting with ideas today while bringing old and forgotten things around the garden back to life.

This little corner is slowly turning into a sensory space full of opportunities to touch, smell, taste, dig, play, explore and create. Sensory experiences look different for everyone and we want this space to be left open for whatever the explorer has in mind ✨

Big thanks to Grow for their continued support and to Groundwork NI for their support and letting us use this space

16/05/2026

Design update. Following on from my previous post were I spoke about implementing the intervention ditch element of the design for this site. It has become clear after cutting grass on the sloped area that the hydrology needs further consideration.

Often with an observation based approach we can feel ready to implement and then the land gives us feedback that asks us to pause, slow down and consider whether the proposed intervention is necessary.

After further observations and discussing the design approach with a fresh set of eyes. I have agreed to temporarily pause the intervention ditch element of the design I have for the site.

Sometimes when we are trying to design responsibly, with the successional cycles of the land foremost, we have to be willing to set aside a design element for the benefit of the overall site ecology.

This does not mean the intervention ditch has been completely abandoned. The planned buffering hedgerow will hopefully be established over the winter/ dormant months of the season so there is time to make further observations and weigh up potential alternatives to hard land excavation.

A big thank you to Groundwork NI for their ongoing support of my design approach and to Dylan Cargill for bringing a fresh perspective to this design process.