mca: Winners of Belfast Telegraph Making a Difference Award 2012 for Best Garden

MCA Gardners (Left to right back Darren McKinney,Craig Somerville,Emma McGuigan,Martin McCann,Sinead Campbell,Lorna Somerville,Fidelma Maher Ainda Andress, Front Left to right Magdalena Rachanska,Muriel Renou,Keith Evans,Ian Simms)

On friday the 23 March 2012 twelve of MCA,s gardners decended on the Grand Opera House Belfast for the Belfast Telegraph Making a Difference Awards 2012. Muriel Renou nominated Minnowburn Community Allotments (National Trust) for the Best Garden category and wrote a eloquent letter to the Belfast Telegraph in Feburary 2012. The letter wrote as follows:

"After years living in South Belfast desperate to grow my vegetables, I had lost hope of ever getting a plot in the city’s allotments but a walk up Terrace Hill changed that. There I had a chance encounter with one of National Trust wardens based at Minnowburn, Mick Walls, who rewarded my interest in their new community garden scheme with their last small available patch of grass and a key to the entrance gate.

My partner and I did not waste any time. The next morning, we arrived equipped with tools, manure and compost to dig up our plot and prepare the soil for the growing season. At the time we didn’t realise just what a remarkable impact Minnowburn Community Allotments would have on our lives. For me, new friendships, a supportive environment and access to precious food growing space has motivated me to keep active despite a disabling health condition and for my partner it has inspired a complete change of career..From what was a green field, we look on with pride three years later at what we have achieved as an enthusiastic community of gardeners and volunteers. The communal grounds surrounding the individual plots have been transformed into beautiful, productive areas, planted to support biodiversity; from a herb garden, to a mixed native species hedgerow, to fruit trees and soft fruit area, all very attractive to wildlife, particularly the bees from Belfast Beekeepers Association’s hives hosted on National Trust ground beside the garden.

Each month we host Community Work Days when we put to good use the skills and enthusiasm of all gardeners in various development projects, it’s a good opportunity to learn some new skills too! Together we’ve rebuilt a gazebo and set up a polytunnel which has increased our communal growing space and for the last 2 seasons supplied us with generous crops of tomatoes, peppers, chillies, cucumbers and gherkins.

Minnowburn Community Allotment has become so much more than a growing space. We have become a tight community enriched by this experience of sharing space, time and ideas with needs or motivations that might vary but always with the same joy. This community is composed of people from different cultures, families with young children, couples and single adults, working and retired folks, unemployed, disabled and able bodied gardeners, individual and group users including a drug and alcohol rehab group, a group of children with autism and a Challenge for Youth group. It is our diversity that makes Minnowburn Community Allotments so vibrant and our shared love of growing that brings us together and strengthens our community"(Muriel Renou, 2012).