15/05/2021
Hey 👋 , my Name is Eric Kavanagh , I am the outgoing garden manager and have been in that role for the last 3 or so years taking over from Molly Garvey who was manager before me.
It’s been me posting on this and the Instagram and have been organising various things in the garden like organising and running workshops, planning, organising speakers and workshop leaders etc the garden has been in a bit of transition as it has been decided that it will be run now as more of a cooperative, with a committee and an organisational structure that should allow for more involvement and larger functioning within the university.
It’s been a great 2 years, I’ve learnt a lot.
It’s been nice for me as in my undergrad I set up the envirosoc and succeeded in petitioning UCC for the use of this site the old plant science department for the use as a functioning organic garden to teach students but also to have a green space that would serve the UCC community well, it has had some great initiatives over the years and it is great to see it having a functioning organisational structure that should allow it to yield fruit as a project over many years to come.
I also started and ran the first farmers market on campus, laid out a plan on how to overhaul the university in terms of energy, waste and sustainability which has led to savings of over 1 million euros in UCC alone and successfully petitioned Kylemore to improve sustainability metric
I initiated the green campus project with a vision I had before starting the society which has led UCC to go from strength to strength along with green campuses all over the world, I kinda messed up my degree doing that so it was nice to come back and to study environmental science at nights and to help to lend a hand to the project to get it going again.
The new committee will be on to post shortly about who they are and what their positions are and there are also positions up for grabs so please do get in touch hopefully the garden will be open again soon with the lessening of restrictions.
But goodbye for now and a big shout out to all those who came to the workshops and those that have helped with the project along the way.
Slàn anois 🤙
Eric
