An Taisce Green Communities Pallet Vertical Planter Workshop

Saturday the 4th of July saw the first of two July Green Communities Training Events, and this was held at Brookfield Community Garden, Jobstown, Tallaght, South Dublin. The day's main focus saw volunteers attempt to transform a wooden pallet into a flower planter to hang from walls or railings. This was no easy task as the warm sunny day was quite breezy which made measuring and afixing the landscaping material to the wooden planters more difficult. The workshop did not get underway until 1 pm as many people arrived quite late, the location being well hidden within a laneway off Brookfield Road in Jobstown. Also at least two guided tours of the garden were provided by Mary Clare Wallace, explaining who looks after the various different parts of the garden and the sequence of events thus far involved in the transformation of a disused laneway into this peaceful community garden next to Saint Aidan's National School. The workshop showed that by lining with landscaping material and planting with bedding flowers we can convert waste into a beneficial object that greatly improves the look of urban concrete walls and palisade fencing. It is a lot more time consuming than anticipated, but simple enough to do requiring only pallets, landscape material, staple gun, measuring tape, and scissors. Carpentry skills are not necessary, and the end result looks stunning. Hopefully the 30 odd people who attended will encourage more community gardens to begin transforming Dublin's ubiquitous palisade fencing into vertical floral displays using this method. For detailed instructions see:

http://www.upcyclethat.com/vertical-pallet-planter/3745/

The afternoon was beautifully warm and relaxed with a pleasant breeze, one light rain shower interrupted summer briefly just before lunch but this was over within minutes. After lunch we summoned our remaining energy to mount the planter upon the railings with cable ties before planting it up and watering the new vertical bed.